I’m not really an Iron Man guy, which extends to not really being a War Machine fan either. I think my main connection to Iron Man is I have a lot of nostalgia for the Secret Wars Iron Man figure my mother bought me as a treat one day when I was a child. That said, I could not pass this figure up when I passed it by. Let’s take a look!
I think a big part of the shelf appeal here is the gorgeous illustration that graces both sides of the box. The photo on the back is pretty great, too. I love it when they do that foggy backdrop on the figure pics. Also, the window is huge and shows off a lot of that sweet, sweet, translucent blast effect plastic. That plastic calls to me, dear reader, with siren call of cool shelf displays and (hopefully) cooler action photos.
War Machine comes with 11 different attachment pieces including a strafing blast for the right gauntlet gun, two little muzzle flashes for that gun, two swirling smoke effects for that gun, a massive muzzle flash for the left shoulder cannon, missile firing effect for the right rocket launcher, two boot jets and two booster cloud base pieces. He also comes with an alternate head.
The tiny little muzzle flashes plug into holes in the right arm cannon and the one looks like a re-use from the recent Black Widow, but the other one is a little smaller. They kind of fight each other fitting into the cannon and I couldn’t line them up as straight as I would like.
The smokey wisp attachements are a similar, but a little different from each other, so they don’t get in the way of one another in the gun.
The rocket launch effect has a square detent that plugs fairly securely onto the muzzle of the rocket launcher. The three mid-flight missiles have a nice sense of energy to them and are separate pieces from the blast effect.
The shoulder cannon blast effect also plugs fairly securely to the cannon and has a nice transition from orange to yellow.
This attachment effectively captures the feel of how comic book illustrators render a gun fired in an arc. It’s cast in softer plastic, so the tines can bend a bit which marrs the effect somewhat.
The booster are a two part piece with a pointy piece that has a peg that plugs into the foot and then that can be plugged into the smokey base pieces. It’s similar to the flight effect seen on the Star Wars Rebels Chopper figure and the figure balances easily on two stands together. I tried to get him to balance on one, but it didn’t work well. It might be nice on a shelf to add a little height variety too.
The alternate head is nice and sports a radical super ’90s hairdo, appropriate to the character. I have been buying so many figures lately with face printing that the eyes feel especially cartoony here. The one accessory I wish they included was a couple of Repulsor Beam hands. I know he’s got all these other guns, but Rhodey still packed Repulsors in this armor, right?
This looks to re-use some of the Iron Man parts from the Recent Iron Man, but it’s got enough unique bits that it’s hardly noticeable and doesn’t affect accuracy. The sculpting is sharp and the figure holds detail well. The one downside I noticed is that the barrels on the right arm cannon are soft plastic and do tend to bend on you.
The shoulder weapons are attached to a track that slides up the back and over the shoulder. The guns are on ball sockets and can be easily popped and swapped. Articulation is ML standard, though the shoulder pads are really cool and swivel with the shoulder and are soft enough that they don’t hinder outward hinge movement.
Paint is minimal and War Machine is cast in mostly black and a shiny silver plastic. The silver reminds me of that sometimes swirly metallic plastic Iron Man armors are cast in, but it seems well mixed here. So it is metallic, and shiny, but very light and it I think it works fairly well for War Machine and matches the paint on the mask pretty well.
Overall, this is a solid figure and the blast effects add a real fun factor.
