ROM has been on my most wanted Legends list for a long time, but I honestly never thought it was going to happen and sort of gave up on it because of his relative obscurity and the more complicated licensing. To be honest, the Crystar release actually gave me hope it could happen. The reveal at comic-con was one of my favorites at the show and I’ve been antsy to get this figure ever since then. These kind of personal grail releases can be tricky in that I’m predisposed to like it, but I’m also apt to be super nitpicky because I’m a super-fan. Let’s take a look at the Hasbro Marvel Legends ROM!
ROM is part of a new retro-card style series that features in scale mini-comic book pack-in. It’s kinda cool to me as a ROM fan to get a figure with the ROM Spaceknight logo on the front and a little throwback comic cover corner box graphic with the ROM figure so I ended up grabbing two to keep one carded. I haven’t picked up the others in this line yet, so I’m not sure if the cards are as impactful to me as this one is because of my ROM fandom and the general lack of ROM merch.
ROM comes with a good amount of stuff including four hands (two grips, one fist, and one open), a neutralizer, an analyzer, a blast effect, and a mini-comic accessory.
The mini-comic is a small chunk of black plastic that’s sculpted to give the impression of a comic with pages inside. I like it, but I do think a lot of that has to do with my personal love of ROM. I also have a little comic rack scale model a friend online made for me, so I’ve got a good place to store it.
I think the extra hands are great and have the appropriate mitten-like appearance from ROM’s comic design, I just wish I had two of each fist and open hands because he usually flew around with two open or two hands in fists. The grip hands are good to have left and right because while he was not really shown dual wielding analyzer and neutralizer, he was show as ambidextrous, firing from either hand. I think the fist could stand to be slightly more mitten-like and chunkier.
My main critique of this figure has to do with the analyzer design. To be fair it’s not drawn consistently in the books, but the analyzer usually had some sort of parallel lines on the front, often making an H on its side. For this figure, they use the same barrel design for the analyzer and neutralizer. I can see why they might do that to save money and allow both weapons to use the blast effect, but I would have preferred the different design.
The neutralizer is a bit bigger than the analyzer and can also plug securely into the blast effect. I like the proportions and sort of clunky old school sci-fi design and the techno-greeblie detail on the back. I do wish they included ROM’s translator device for completeness sake, but since he doesn’t use it often in the comics, I can forgive the omission.
I feel like they nailed the sculpting on this guy with his strange merge of human anatomy with big chunky robot parts. They did a few nice things with the sculpting to integrate the articulation points like the thigh cuts are at the thigh boots and the ab crunch and mid-torso wobble are at parts of the figure where the design already has break points.
He’s also appropriately scaled, being a bit bigger than the average hero, but not quite Hulk sized.
The articulation is particularly effective on ROM with the crunch/ wobble combo at the torso having great range and the ball and socket lower neck/ hinged head allowing for great looking up movement for this frequent flyer. ROM has:
- Swivel/hinge shoulders, hips, wrists, ankles
- Double hinged knees and elbows
- Hinged lower torso and neck
- Ball and socket lower neck, head, and mid-torso
- Swivel thighs and biceps
Paint is pretty solid with the whole body getting as shiny a paint job as they seem able to do in Legends. I think ROM reads as chrome in the comics, and this isn’t that, but this silver is plenty reflective. The red details are cleanly applied and the eyes are printed with a permanent glow effect. I think that paint application is a pretty good representation of the constant glow of his eyes in the comic, though I think it could stand to be a hair brighter.
Overall, I’m really happy with this figure and feel extremely grateful that a more obscure favorite of mine got such nice treatment. I have a couple of nitpicks, but they are greatly outweighed by the overall quality presentation. I hope they will make some more figures to go with him like other Spaceknights or the Dire Wraiths. I think he’s pretty fun to mess with on a general figure level and one of the better Legends releases lately, so maybe he can introduce more people to the comic. There are some nice omnibus collections out right now that collect the entire series if you are interested.
