Luke Cage. Power Man. Hero for Hire. Avenger. Thunderbolt. He’s had many titles and names since his origins in the ’70s, but comparatively fewer figures. Hasbro is seeking to rectify that with the upcoming SDCC Thunderbolts set featuring Luke Cage. But this isn’t the first figure he’s received. Amazingly, it’s been seven years since he last saw plastic in six-inch scale.
When Iron Fist was released in wave 12, everyone figured it was only a matter of time before his title-mate Power Man would join him. Toy companies — Toy Biz in particular — can sometimes be allergic to completing teams, but luckily we only had to wait two waves before Cage was released to complete the Heroes for Hire. The eponymous duo featured in Power Man and Iron Fist would be one of the rare examples of team completion.
Luke got lucky that it took him 14 waves to be released. Toy Biz was just getting to a point where they were working out a lot of articulation and sculpting kinks that had plagued many of their earlier offerings. The shoulder balls were shrinking, the useless articulation was getting tossed out for more aesthetically pleasing figures, and overall the quality was improving. Because of this, Luke received a standout figure that stands to this day as one of the better figures of the Toy Biz era, and it’s a personal favorite.
Power Man as a character has always been a favorite of mine. I’ve always loved that he’s atypical in the “superhero” arena, eschewing tights and a cape and going with a basic yellow and black/blue (depending on the era) pants look. That yellow shirt got shredded in every issue — the man must have had a closet full of yellow shirts based on the amount he went through.
In addition, he didn’t talk like, work like, or act like any of the other heroes of the comic books of my youth. He was firmly ground in his grittier blaxploitation-esque origins, and, as such, his adventures were vastly different than those of Spider-Man. Mixing those decidedly different roots and mannerisms with the more typical superheroics led to a comic that was very different and stood out on the rack.
Because of my love of the character, I wanted no less than a stellar offering for a figure, and that’s essentially what I got. Luke looks like he jumped right out of a panel. As sculpted by Phil Ramirez, he has an instantly recognizable and iconic face sculpt that perfectly encapsulates his mean, ornery, determined disposition. Maybe I’m biased, but it’s one of the finest head-sculpts ML has produced.
Cage has the standard compliment of double joints and a nice set of 90-degree hips. He also sports a single fist — a rarity in a time when not even the Hulk could get a fist. That’s how bad-ass Luke Cage is: the man wants a fist, he’s going to get a fist. And that leads to the only misstep of the figures: the slap-hand.
I know they were going for expressiveness with it, aiming for the capability to point, or pull off a “come here” pose or whatever, but it really fails in both aesthetics and practicality, and, as such, it’s really the only low point on an otherwise great figure. If he had had two fists, then the figure would be just about perfect for a toy from 2006. But Toy Biz had a bit of an articulated-hand fetish back then, so it’s actually a stroke of luck that he made it through with at least one fist.
But other than that one misstep, the figure looks like he bad-assed his way right off a comic page, and that’s exactly what I look for in a toy. Luke succeeds in capturing that unique combination of functionality, aesthetics and faithfulness that lesser toys struggle with or fail at completely.
