Bucky is a throwback to the days when it was clear Hasbro was still trying to wrap their collective heads around this 6-inch figure business. Considering what Hasbro is capable of producing now, Bucky is representative of Hasbro’s formative years, in terms of producing figures in this scale, and of a transitional period for the Marvel Legends imprint in general.
The figure was released in the fall of 2007 as part of the Brood Queen series, and I can remember being pretty impressed that Hasbro was releasing him at all. The character is a relic from the earliest, pre-Marvel Captain America comics by Jack Kirby and Joe Simon. He was basically Marvel’s answer to DC’s Robin — a teen sidekick who accompanied a flagship character in each issue’s respective adventures. Bucky became a staple of the early Captain America comics, partnering with Cap right up until Cap became frozen in a block of ice in the middle of the ocean. And then it would be decades before Bucky would be heard from again…
Bucky’s card art featured an image or two from those very early comics, which was so cool to see in big-box retail stores. Being part of the Brood Queen series, he came with the Queen’s tail, which was his only accessory. This was actually just fine since the character never had any “defining” accessories.
This old packaging design seems charming now, but I positively hated it at the time. All the character-specific art did not make up for the lack of a comic pack-in, but looking at it now, it does seem to do a well enough job of tethering the figure to its comic origins.
The figure itself is not one of Hasbro’s better efforts. It’s a gangly mess with a head that too closely resembles Howdy Doody or some other ventriloquist dummy. The body used was basically ToyBiz’s Patriot figure with a few newly tooled parts that were more character-specific, but the body didn’t work as well here as it did with Patriot.
The head sculpt is pretty bad, even for its time. I mean, it sort of works as an homage to the simpler Golden Age days from which Bucky hails, but when the figure is displayed on a shelf with other Marvel Legends figures, its deficiencies become all too apparent. The sculpt is soft and his paint apps are sparce. It’s not just his head sculpt either — look at his chest. What is going on there? Are those supposed to be pectoral muscles? Whatever it is, it looks strange.
When I was a little kid, Bucky and Robin were pretty much interchangeable. Bucky had the cooler costume, but Robin scored points just by virtue of his having a cape.
Also part of the Brood Queen wave was what appeared to be a Kirby-esque Golden Age Captain America. When posed together, they succeed in looking like a matched pair, even though Bucky here is much too tall. His limbs and torso almost look stretched out, which becomes evident when he’s posed alongside any other figure.
He’s a nicely posable figure with an articulation breakdown that goes like this:
- Hinged neck
- Ball shoulders
- Double elbows
- Hinged wrist
- Hinged fingers
- Ab crunch
- Ball hips
- Double knees
- Calf swivel
- Rocker ankles
- Hinged toes
We’ve seen variations of this sculpt/body three times now: Patriot, Bucky, and on last summer’s Ghost from the SDCC Thunderbolts box set. It works well with Patriot and Ghost, but on Bucky it’s not the best fit for the character. He does not pull it off as well as the other two and looks like something of a freakshow.
While Bucky was a bit of a mixed bag, we have received two solid figures based on his later incarnation — the Winter Soldier (the Bucky Captain America wasn’t bad either). While both Winter Soldier figures are certainly good, it would be nice to have a good Bucky figure too. Maybe Hasbro will revisit Bucky now that the new Captain America movie is about to hit — an SDCC Invaders box set perhaps? Man, that would be cool.
