Toad, the evil mutant warrior! Toad, the bane of the mutant world! Toad, the . . . Aaah, hell. Who am I kidding? The dude is a henchman, a janitor, a lackey, and at best an interesting side note in movie history. And his action figure? It doesn’t fare much better.
Marvel Comics introduced Toad, or Mortimer Toynbee, in 1964 in The Uncanny X-Men number 4, along with the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. At the time, Toad’s mutant power was to jump around. He wasn’t the brightest of the bunch, and he was an emotional mess after years of abuse. Magneto liked Toad’s mental state and abused him some more. While Toad’s stature in the Marvel Universe hasn’t improved, he has gained some smarts and new powers. After Bryan Singer’s X-Men movie, Toad gained the prehensile tongue in the comics, as well as the wart look. Essentially Toad became more today-like. And smarter. Which is why we’ve seen him act dimwitted as the Grey Academy’s janitor.
Toad’s action figure made his appearance in 2002’s Marvel Legends Series 1. A movie version was released before this figure, and this figure was meant to be part of a 2-pack with movie Toad, an X-Men Mutant “Evolution of X” box set like the one that featured Wolverine. Rumor was, that was the plan for Sabretooth as well. Toad made it into Marvel Legends Series 1 and it was greeted with a very mixed reception. There were a number of collectors that were ecstatic to get this unreleased figure, while some were not so happy. While the sculpt on Toad was excellent, the figure lacked the articulated goodness seen in the rest of the figures from the same series. Plus, it was an odd choice for a first launch, Toad isn’t exactly an A-lister.
The sculpt on this figure is excellent. Sculpted by Phil Ramirez and painted by Ed Wires, this is one of the stand-out sculpts of Marvel Legends. ToyBiz perfectly captured the essence of Toad, and this makes a great figure to have on shelf. The face sculpt is one of the best, and the detail in the figure’s clothing is some of the best ever done. The one complaint that you can bring against the sculpt is that the scale is off; Toad is a large figure for a character not much over 5 feet tall.
Toad is not super-articulated. Not like Captain America, Iron Man, and not even close to Hulk. He was never meant to be super-articulated, but it was expected. There are ball-jointed shoulders, t-crotch hips, swivel calves, swivel waist, swivel right elbow, and a swivel head. It’s not much and for a character that is supposed to have the powers of a toad, so the action figure does not.
There are two accessories. One is a base and not attached to the figure, and the other is a toad in Toad’s hand, but while it is part of the hand sculpt, I’m calling it out as an accessory. The base is fantastic, while one of my pegs broke right off the other maintains a stable manufacture after all these years. The base is made up of a sculpted swamp base with a clear acrylic top for the water. It’s a great base and works with several action figure properties.
While Toad may not meet your expectation of the perfect Marvel Legend due to the lack of articulation, it is a figure worth having. The sculpt is museum-level quality and the paint is beautifully done. You can still find Toad on eBay
