Thanos has been gaining a significant amount of momentum in the cinematic world lately, with his brief appearances in various Marvel movies, all leading up to his leading villainous role in Infinity War. Despite this, he has only garnered a single figure in the entirety of the existence of the Marvel Legends line, and he was ignored completely throughout ToyBiz’s domination of 6-inch Marvel figures. The 4 -nch Marvel Universe line was forced to pick up the slack with a couple of Thanos releases, but for Marvel Legends fans, you could either buy the oversized Diamond Select figure, or you were screwed.
It wasn’t always this way. In the ’90s, Thanos was enjoying a popular and lucrative renaissance in the form of several line-wide mini-series based around the acquisition of — and loss of — the nigh-omnipotent Infinity gems. After debuting in the ’70s, Thanos spent the ’80s being quite dead, before getting undeaded by creator Jim Starlin, who shepherded Thanos back into the limelight through several teaser appearances in the Silver Surfer comic, and then the excellent two-part prestige format Thanos Quest comic. This would be followed by Infinity Gauntlet, and then milked by two follow-ups: Infinity War and Infinity Crusade.
Due to his comic-book popularity, Thanos managed to get a pair of 5-inch action figures, each vastly different in execution.
I loved the build-up to Infinity Gauntlet, and the series itself was one of the high points of a much maligned (one could say unfairly maligned) decade. Just seeing Thanos versus a googleplex of heroes, and then Thanos versus the various abstract cosmic entities was as exciting and “comic booky” as it got. If you wanted to recreate such battles in the comfort of your living room you were out of luck for a couple of years, up until the 1995 Fantastic Four line.
Spinning off of the Fantastic Four cartoon — and a side-note, if you have not watched this cartoon, do yourself a favor and do so. The first season is decent enough, but the second season is some of the finest and most respectful cartoon work featuring marvel heroes you’re going to find — the Fantastic Four toy line managed to squeeze in a Thanos among such great offerings as Terrax, Blastaar Firelord and some Inhumans. In short, it was a pretty damn great line at the time, and scratched a lot of itches that really needed scratching.
The Thanos figure itself was definitely a decent figure for the time. Getting jointed elbows and knees was a big deal after the nearly static beginnings of the 5-inch figures, and he had a decent enough size so he looked like he could hold his own against any number of figures that had been released. It was great to finally be able to recreate some Infinity gauntlet match-ups, even if you had to pretend he was wearing the gauntlet itself.
Like most toys at the time, he had an action figure along the twist-and-punch vein, but you could easily ignore it. His arm would occasionally yank up as if he knew the answer to the question and really wanted the teacher to call on him, but otherwise he was a well-done and accurate figure.
Thanos would return two years later in a toy line dedicated to the Silver Surfer cartoon. Yes, Silver Surfer not only had his own (brief) cartoon, but he had a toy line as well. Thanos shared this line with several variants of the Surfer himself, along with characters like Drax, Beta Ray Bill and Ronan the Accuser.
The new Thanos would gain a wider range of articulation in the shoulders, but lose the articulation in the elbows and knees. I liked the wider heft and bulk of this figure, as it seemed to fit more with the chunkier Thanos as depicted in the Infinity Gauntlet, but the loss of articulation was a bummer. I remember at the time eschewing the old Thanos for this new one despite the articulation laments, but in hindsight the FF wave figure might be the better of the two. It doesn’t suffer quite so much from the pre-posed sculpting conceits that had started creeping into the 5-inch figures.
However the first Thanos figure couldn’t point at things, so you win some, you lose some.
Regardless of which figure you preferred, it was great to get two chances to grab one of Marvel’s more interesting villains — primarily when Jim Starlin is writing him and he’s not being used as a generic villain of the week — and put him up against any number of heroes that were available.
Stay tuned for further installments as I continue to dig around in my vault in search of five inches of memory.