A lot of times when I buy a Marvel Legends figure it’s because I’ve read decades of material featuring that character or the figure itself looks super cool. Other times I buy figures just because they look fun and amuse me. I sort of half remember some Great Lakes Avengers stories, so Squirrel Girl definitely falls into the latter category for me and I think Hasbro sold this set to me on the strength of their promotional photos. Let’s take a look!
Squirrel Girl comes in the over-sized Legendary Riders series box that comfortably fits her, the moped, and three squirrel figures. The side has some extremely charming artwork of Squirrel Girl in action and the back features some really cute photo scenes. I love the feel of these pics and they went a long way towards selling me on the set and reading the more modern Squirrel Girl material.
The moped will be familiar to you if you bought the Legendary Riders Deadpool figure since it’s basically a repaint with a new basket piece. It’s a nicely sculpted vehicle, though I don’t love how the wind screen is cast in a somewhat foggy clear plastic.
Crystal clear would have been preferable. The scooter does have a horn that can clip on the handlebar, but it can flop around easily as it’s not a tight fit. The kickstand is invaluable in keeping this thing upright, but can be hinged back for driving.
She fits pretty well on the scooter, though if you plug her feet into the pegs on the scooter and get her hands on the handlebars, she is sitting on the very edge of her seat. That hits at my one gripe for the set is that she doesn’t have grip hands. I feel like a moped driver needs grip hands. Fists would have been nice too.
The squirrels are appropriately cute and one has the little bow that Tippy-Toe wears in the books. The second one is eating an acorn and the third is in a bit of a mid-run pose. The sculpting on these is great and conveys a lot of personality per squirrel, though the paint is pretty basic. I did have an issue with the Tippy Toe squirrel as she liked to (ahem) tip over, but all three work great in the basket.
Squirrel girl looks to be based on the existing teen base body, but there is plenty of original pieces on there to create Squirrel Girl’s modern look.
The tail is huge and fluffy looking, but it’s a solid chunk of plastic that can throw off balance (you can see I’ve got her leaning forward to counterbalance some of those vanilla poses below).
She does seem a little overly thin for a lot of the recent interpretations I have seen of the modern Squirrel Girl, but I do expect a certain amount of homogenization in this re-use heavy line. I think the portrait does convey the vibe of the character well, though oddly not her chipmunk front teeth.
I think I would have preferred her GLA look, as that’s my first experience with the character, but I’m developing affection for this costume since I’m now reading the book. Articulation is ML standard and all moves pretty well. She has:
- Swivel/hinge neck, shoulders, wrists, hips and ankles
- Double hinged knees
- Ball and socket head and mid-torso
- Thigh swivels
I like the range of motion on the neck ball joint as she can get some nice tilting.
The paint is solid, if not too fancy and it’s clean but doesn’t feature washes or drybrushing that I can see. Her facial features are bright and clean and I do really like the plastic they used for her skin. It’s not too glossy and has an ever so slight translucence. I’m seeing a little bit of a paint mismatch on the brown parts of her costume that didn’t jump out at me in hand, but seem much more pronounced in these photos.
Overall, I like this set a lot. If she came with some alternate hands, I would like it a lot more, but at any rate the figure piqued my curiosity to read some of the Unbeatable Squirrel Girl books and I’m enjoying those quite a bit too.
