I just happened to be on eBay at the right time and ran across a fairly cheap Captain America: The Winter Soldier Captain America in his new duds from the soon-to-be-released Captain America Legends Infinite Series 2, so I thought what the hell, might as well go for it. Plus, I just really like typing Captain America way more times in a paragraph than necessary, so this figure and I are a great fit. Captain America. Oops, did it again.
First of all, before all the flowery prose and detailed rambling, I’ll say this: This figure rocks. Just straight-up hand candy. It has a couple of nits, but overall? Fantastic.
All the articulation is here. New style rocker swivels, double elbows and knees, neck hinge and swivel. All of it. But really, what more do you expect from Gentle Giant? The only hindrance I can find is the way the hips are sculpted limits the swing-out at the pelvis. He won’t be doing high side kicks, but the silhouette is perfectly maintained. So it’s a trade off.
Most of all, he has the best ab hinge I have seen in a long time in terms of crunching forward. He can bend forward nearly a full 90°. Arching back is pretty good, but looks a little weird, sort of a distended belly thing going on. Again, a trade off.
There is not a millimeter of this figure that doesn’t have some sort of sculpting on it. Well, the straps on the boots, but otherwise every single piece has some sort of texture on it. The majority of what you would think is smooth actually has a carbon fiber-type look to it. The belt and leather parts have a rough feel. The top of the helmet has some small smooth places but broken up into panels by sculpted seams. Most of all, everything is crisp. I’ve had this figure for several days and I’m still finding things I didn’t know were there.
Paint is nice an clean, even the silver parts — those I was a little worried about, especially the American flag and “ROGERS” on the left shoulder, but I was wrong. There is a slight scrape on the left pec, but I chalk that up to loose shipping from a Hong Kong eBay auction. I’ll even give Hasbro this: the eyes are passable decent. Not great, not terrible. The masked eyes are noticeably better than on the unmasked Rogers, but, again, both are okay. And you guys know I give them grief every chance I can get on that front.
Speaking of the Rogers head, I wanted to see if it would fit on the Marvel Legends Commander Rogers body, but I can’t seem to find it anywhere. I found a lot of other stuff I forgot I had, but not that figure. Maybe I hated the huge noggin so much I threw it away and blacked out.
The other talking point is the extra hands.
While weird when we originally saw them, these turned out to be really fun. Saluting and pointing is right up Captain America’s alley when you think about it. Plus, the saluting hand doubles as a karate chop weapon of Hydra destruction! It also serves another purpose as you’ll see in the next section. But, really, great additions. The extra hands and head are easy to change out, and I’ve done it more times than I care to count.
My big nit comes from the shield. I feel like we’ve seen this shield before with this strap setup, but I can’t place it at the moment. The shield itself is great, nice and shield-shaped. The problem comes into play when trying to get the figure to hold it. The straps are hard plastic, and, while the bigger strap is bigger than Cap’s upper arm, the lower strap is too small to fit his fist through. But there are a couple of workarounds for this.
This is where the interchangeable hands come to the rescue. If you want the shield on his left arm, you can pop his fist off, slide the shield on, and then pop the fist back on. It stays nice and tight because it pinched between the hand and glove cuff. If you want the shield on his right arm, just pop on the saluting/karate hand. It slides right onto this hand and slightly locks onto the thick part of the palm. So, really, it’s not a huge problem, just something I had to sit and think about.
So like I said at the beginning, this is a great figure. Does it help that I’m super excited for Captain America: The Winter Soldier? Maybe. And you probably won’t like the figure if you hate cinematic entertainment pertaining to comic characters. But even that aside, use him as a better, more detailed Commander Rogers if you must have only comic versions.
Comparison pictures!
