Let’s get the obvious and obligatory out of the way first: this is not fuzzy Zemo. While this design lends itself to Hasbro’s current (and completely acceptable) body reuse system, there will now always be that sting of not being able to complete various incarnations of Zemo-led Masters of Evil. Such is the way of toys.
However, with that aside, this is a great version of the more modern take on Zemo, and it’s an extremely fun toy, which alleviates some of the sting.
Way back during ToyBiz’s reign over Marvel Legends, we got the odd, yet welcome, choice of Baron Heinrich Zemo when most people wanted his son Helmut. While Helmut’s daddy headed up a few variations of the Masters of Evil during his own time under the hood, Helmut turned the Zemo name into something to be feared, heading up the Masters of Evil that put the Avengers Under Siege, and then running the greatest scam ever perpetrated on the Marvel Universe while leading the Thunderbolts. So his absence in ML’s 6-inch landscape has been palpable.
Baron Zemo debuts on their now standard go-to body for regularly proportioned superpeople. He’s a reuse of much of USAgent, including the glove cuffs, but he also has a brand new head, belt (with bonus pee-pee flap), and holsters. While I will always miss the Zemo confident enough to wear fur, I have nothing but praise for this design. It doesn’t completely throw away all the elements that made up Zemo, instead altering some aesthetics while retaining enough flavor to be immediately identifiable — the best direction a redesign can go.
Zemo’s new design adds bold accents in the choice of yellow for the boots and gloves, showing that he hasn’t missed his flair for the dramatic. I’m a sucker for color in my villains. And heroes. Hell, they’re comic books characters — the more color the better.
Zemo’s mask is iconic and remains untouched. While it’s hard to go wrong with a masked face, this one is well done and appropriately cold. You can see the schemes building behind that thin piece of cloth. The painted lines were all very straight and well done on mine.
Zemo comes with a sword that slides neatly into the loop on his belt, and he also comes with the Luger that came with Hasbro’s Dr. Doom figure. He holds both of them well due to the reuse of the hands from the Buckycap figure. Unfortunately his gun does not have a holster, which is a bummer as I’ve gotten spoiled by Hasbro’s well-done holsters lately. But that’s a minor quibble.
Speaking of holsters and quibbles, the only real weak spot on the figure is the fact that the guns are sculpted into the holsters on his chest straps. I understand from a tooling and cost perspective it would probably be too hopeful to wish for two guns and two working holsters, but it’s still something I would have liked to have seen.
Zemo poses well. His skirt is flexible enough so that it doesn’t impede those deep lunges, and though his joints are a little gummy as seems fairly prevalent, it doesn’t get in the way of his play value. In short, this is a great version of Zemo, and while maybe not my preferred version, he fills the Zemo-sized hole I had in my collection. As for the fur-trimmed one, well, there’s always customs to fill that particular void.
Baron Zemo is only available in the complete set on BBTS
As a single on Amazon
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