No, not that one. This one.
Ever heard the one about the mutant with magnetic eyeballs? Well, Cannonball isn’t that bad off, but his power-set did make him a bit of a joke for a while. The character debuted in Marvel Graphic Novel # 4: The New Mutants. Thanks to the thermo-chemical energy his mutant body produced, Cannonball was able to “fly” but, in keeping with his namesake, he couldn’t actually steer. Seriously. The only way he could stop was by crashing into something. Fortunately, the same mutant power that propelled him also protected him from splattering when he slammed head-first into walls, ceilings and assorted super villains. Cannonball eventually got his powers under control, but his fashion sense remains as untamed as ever.
Cannonball was a Wal-Mart exclusive, available in a two-pack with fellow mutant Domino. The figure is built on the series 7 Ghost Rider. So how do we go from a skeleton in leather biker gear to a living, breathing “Son of the Soil?” Well, Cannonball has always been depicted as tall and thin, so I guess it works — if you squint. From a distance. In the dark. Sure, his arms are comically-scrawny, and the double-joints make him look like a marionette, but if you can get past all that, he’s all right.
Cannonball is 90% re-use. The only new bits here are his undershirt and head. Now, Sam Guthrie here isn’t exactly “A”-list, so using pre-existing tooling was about the only way the character would ever see release. Cannonball only wore his purple flight-suit for a handful of issues, but that was long enough in the eyes of Hasbro. It’s kind of unfair, really: imagine if someone made an action figure of you, but wearing the clothes you wore in high school? You’d try and explain that, back in the day, everyone used to wear lavender and leather, and your kids would just roll their eyes and go back to texting their friends.
While the bulk of the figure is plastic, the jacket overlay is rubber. Obviously the choice to use rubber on any action figure is a bad idea. I understand why Toy Biz (and later Hasbro) did it, but it does little to ease the pain. Cannonball hasn’t done much but stand on my shelf for the past few years but his jacket has still cracked and split. In fact, the rubber on the back tore as I snapped these photos. Medic!
Cannonball is approximately 6 1/2 ” tall. Here is is next to fellow mutant Scott “Slim” Summers. Obviously Cannonball deserves that nickname a little more than Cyke does. Someone get this kid a Walking Taco and a Pepsi STAT.
Cannonball’s paintwork is fairly clean. While the bulk of the figure is molded in the intended colors, he does get some grey paint on the seams of his flight-suit and brown on the padding. There’s no appreciable wash or over-spray present. This issue, combined with the figure’s color scheme, give Cannonball a very toy-like appearance. Its a shame, as a bit of dry-brushing would have brought all the details present in the sculpt to the fore.
Thanks to his recycled body, Cannonball is loaded with articulation. He features a ball-jointed head, ball-shoulders on a butterfly hinge, swivel biceps, double-jointed elbows, swivels as the top of the gloves, and hinged wrists and fingers. There’s a standard torso crunch, a swivel waist, ball hips, upper thigh swivels, double-jointed knees, swivels at the boot-tops, rocker ankles and hinged toes. that should be more than enough to get Cannonball in a classic “blastin'” pose. That is, if you don’t mind the rubber tearing.
When all is said and done, Cannonball is worth a place in your Marvel Legends collection. When it comes to a display shelf, the X-Men work best when there’s a mess of ’em. There, among his fellow mutants, Cannonball’s Jack Skellington-like proportions and Easter-hued uniform shouldn’t look too out of place. The figure is far from perfect and his disintegrating jacket means he’s not long for this world, but if you can find one in decent condition, you might as well add him to the gang. The more the merrier!
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