Guardians of the Galaxy is probably my favorite of the Marvel films, so I was looking forward to the sequel and it’s accompanying toy line. This time around we got the Guardians team spread out over two waves interspersed with some great comic book characters. We’ve reviewed all of these figures and I’m terribly late to the party, but click through for some pics of and thoughts about these movie figures.
Today we are taking a look at the Guardians Movie figures. I’ll probably take a look at the comic based figures on another date. I liked the wave of figures from the last film, but these blow those away for the most part.
I’m going to start off with my personal favorite, Yondu!
Even though he’s nothing like his comic counterpart, Yondu quickly became one of my favorite characters from the first film, due in large part to the charm factory that is Michael Rooker. I loved that they brought him back for Vol. 2 because I had hopes for a figure.
The figure has a lot of re-use, but it’s really cleverly done and makes for a great representation with two different and highly accurate head sculpts.
His devilish grin is perfect! I can almost hear Rooker’s signature laugh when I look at the smiling portrait. I imagine him as the devil in an old cartoon, sitting on Peter Quill’s shoulder. Speaking of Mr. Quill, Hasbro did two versions of him this go round, both with really nice head sculpts and a pair of deadly blaster pistols.
I like that you can combine the pieces, mixing and matching heads and accessories with between this Star Lord and the one from wave one. Another nice feature is that the face painting technology combined with the sculpt delivers some of the best ML likenesses yet. The only better ones in this wave for me would be Gamora and her Sister Nebula.
The Daughters of Thanos have astounding face sculpts and paint ops. I can’t get over how good these two look. The movement is a little clunky at the ankles and hips, but ultimately these are almost import quality figures for domestic prices.
New Guardians member Mantis is remarkable in that she’s the first figure I’ve seen that uses the new “eyeball mask” technique where the eyes are a separate painted piece and the face is goes over the eyes. It’s got a neat 3D effect that I like on Mantis more than I did on Qui-Gon Jinn. She’s a little stiff, but there is a guy on instagram that is doing some amazing poses of this figure doing mantis style kung-fu moves that I love, so she’s not a brick by any means.
Rocket is back in a more articulated body than the original release and I really appreciate that, along with the screaming portrait. It’s perfect. His buddy Groot got a TRU exclusive that was tough to find, but included a couple of cool mini-figures. I think the only thing I’m missing really is a jet pack for Rocket. Oh, and eventually teenage Groot.
Finally we will wrap up our late to the party look at the MCU Guardians figures with Drax the Destroyer. Like Rocket, I really like having the screaming portrait for Drax, but I just wish it matched up in color with the Vol.1 Drax so I could swap easily.
I love that they added villains Nebula and Yondu to these two Guardians waves and I wish they would eventually make a Sakarrian warrior and Ronan from the first film.
