Sometimes, sometimes it’s difficult to find something new to say about a figure that’s been reviewed before and is in its third incarnation. Truth is, I bought this figure for one reason only — the Hulkbuster BAF (Build A Figure) head piece. War Machine Mark 2 comes with the head for the Avengers Age of Ultron Hulkbuster, aka Veronica, aka the Mark 44. But since I bought the figure and there doesn’t seem to be a review, I’ll write a few words.
War Machine Mark 2, or MK II, had a couple of appearances in the movies, at the end of Avengers Age of Ultron and technically Iron Man 3. Although in Iron Man 3 the armor was called “Iron Patriot” and painted in red, white, and blue, but it’s really the Mark 2. The Mark 2 does make an appearance in Age of Ultron and it’s back to the dark grey color of the traditional War Machine variety. Now, I’m going purely on memory here and I might have these appearances wrong. If I do, I apologize.
The Mark 2 is a new armor, it is not the Mark 1 sans all the Hammer tech, making it cool as it is the first official War Machine armor specifically built for James Rhodes. And it looks great. Hasbro did an excellent job of capturing the look of the armor, with tons of detail and articulation and in a great scale. Yeah, great scale! This figure is super tall and towers over the average-sized Coulson, as it should. With boots that add multiple inches and armor that adds more, the men wearing these suits aren’t wearing skin-tight armor or medieval thick plate armor, they are wearing armor with several layers of stuff on them. Which is why I get annoyed with the tiny hands the Mark 2 action figure — really? All that work for skinny arms and tiny hands? Can’t win them all.
As previously reviewed with the Disco Iron Man figure, there is a lot of good articulation on this figure. But there are few areas that do need improvement. The ankles — they have not figured out how to do the ankles on these Iron Man suits. There is forward motion, but there’s limited side-to-side and the backward motion is lacking, and, finally, there are no rocker ankles. I don’t have a suggestion on how this could be improved, maybe ankles like the Mark 46?
I’ll mention the paint. It’s got this dark grey, almost black pearlescence to it. It’s cool to look at and it pops on the shelf. In addition to the spiffy paint job, the Mark 2 action figure comes with the Hulkbuster BAF head and a War Machine head with an opened faceplate with James Rhodes peeking out.
This figure is not a must have. It isn’t a terrible figure, but it isn’t necessary. However, the BAF piece is because you can’t complete the Hulkbuster without him, and if you want a faceplate-up Rhodes, then this is the figure for you. You can pick him up here:
