The 2019 onslaught of brand new Marvel Legends already began in earnest in 2018 with reports of people already finding the M’Baku wave at Gamestops, the Kingpin wave at Target, and the Captain Marvel wave at Walmart. Thankfully for my post holiday empty’s wallet’s sake, I’ve only seen the Dora Milaje figure on the pegs. Let’s take a look!
The current Marvel Legends line is built on smart part re-use, so I probably should have seen this Dora Milaje figure coming, but it was one of my favorite surprises from the 2018 SDCC announcements. I feel like Hasbro has made some great strides in the quality of their MCU figures lately, so I’m very glad to see that they decided to go more than one wave deep on their Black Panther movie line.
The Dora Milaje figure comes with a lot of stuff you are familiar with if you have the Nakia figure, the spear, spear head, disc weapons and even the body are straight from the Nakia figure from the Okoye BAF wave.
The weapons are all cast in a marbled, slightly shiny, silvery plastic. This type of plastic is really not my favorite way to depict metal weapons, but it gets the job done okay.
This metallic plastic is also used on the shoulder armor on the figure. Maybe I’m spoiled by the Mythic Legions super shiny metallic silver paints. I also still don’t really get the point (ahem) of the spear tip accessory. I think it’s meant to represent the magic spear in a collapsed mode or perhaps it is meant to be the spear General Okoye uses to anchor herself to the roof of the car in the film.
The figure also comes with M’baku’s leg, which looks very funny to me standing there by itself. I dig the detail I’m seeing in the fur sculpt, so I can’t wait to build this guy.
The highlight of this figure is, of course, the alternate heads and the army building aspect. The figure comes packaged with an amazing looking head with this absolutely beautiful snarl on her face.
It’s such a great looking sculpt and so realistically rendered that I want to go back and re-watch Black Panther looking for this person. The eyes are vibrant and the lips have a nice depth to the paint that almost looks like an expertly painted wash by a custom painter.
The second head is a little less successful and looks slightly less realistic, but it’s still very nice. It doesn’t quite read as quickly to me as a person I’ve seen in the film, but it’s still a well painted and sculpted face.
Finally, my favorite head looks very much like the woman who plays Black Panther’s head of security in Civil War, the one who says “MOVE. Or you will be moved” to Black Widow. That actress, Florence Kasumba, returns in Black Panther and Infinity War and gets the name Ayo.
I love that brief scene in Civil War so much and I feel like this lady pops in every background scene, so I’m super happy to have a figure of her. It’s probably the most obscure Marvel Legends MCU figure we’ll ever get. Combining an army builder with a super obscure character is like collecting catnip for me and I couldn’t be more pleased.
The figure has the standard Marvel Legends articulation for female characters including:
- Swivel/hinge shoulders, elbows, wrists, hips, and ankles
- Ball and socket mid-torso and head
- Swivel thighs
- Double hinged knees
- Hinged neck
The skirt hinders backward leg movement slightly, but the figure moves well otherwise.
The paint is also a little different on this figure than Nakia. There is a little more detail in the skirt and armor pieces, but the back is still rather plain. I also probably wouldn’t have noticed this if I hadn’t just watched Black Panther, but the armor is a little off-model.
The Dora I remember all have the shoulder armor similar to Okoye, Nakia’s right shoulder armor is a little different.I think it would have been a little better if they could have used Okoye’s upper arms for this figure.
Overall, this is a great army builder figure and I’d love more figures like this to come with multiple head sculpts. I wish the Star Wars team had done something similar with the recent Rebel Fleet Trooper figure. Rather than buy several of this figure I ended up buying a couple of extra Nakia figures to place the extra heads. It works pretty well even though the reds are slightly different.
