I think it's completely fair to say Toy Biz was the more innovative of the two companies, even while conceding that a lot of what they made doesn't hold up. The mere fact that some do when the line has been dead almost 20 years is actually pretty damn good. And people will always have a soft spot for them because we watched the action figure line grow-up with Toy Biz going from 5-7 POA figures to the last Legends they put out, some of which were their best. They had plenty of bumps along the way. I didn't like the big shoulders they reused quite a bit between Daredevil, Deadpool, Angel, Ice Man, and a host of others. The articulated fingers were always more of a novelty than anything and rarely added much while sacrificing grip. I actually didn't and still don't mind the ball-hinged hips so much. At least they worked. My Legends Deadpool can still do better splits than pretty much every Hasbro Spider-Man I own.
The thing with Hasbro is the innovation has mostly dried up. They have their array of molds they use and 95% of the figures in the line fit one of those handful of tools with minimal modification. We've seen paint apps go away, accessories reduced, and prices go up - not exactly consumer-minded changes. A lot of the gripes I have with their tools just keep on going - the ball-hinged neck, the tiny and low shoulders, the ugly ab crunch. It's why I don't buy many Legends anymore and the few I do buy rarely impress. It would be great if Hasbro sees all of the praise being thrown Jada's way for their Street Fighter figures and it motivates them to do something. Ball-jointed waists and diaphragms would be a real benefit to the line. They're aesthetically pleasing and provide terrific range if executed properly, but I doubt Hasbro wants to overhaul their infrastructure so drastically when it's far more cost-effective to just keep doing what they're doing.
Looking back at Toy Biz's innovations is a lot like looking back at old pictures of people trying to unsuccessfully fly in drastically non-aerodynamic machines before the airplane was invented. They had a lot of desire to achieve greatness but most of it just didn't fly.
I think one place Hasbro has definitely excelled is team building and era appropriate character variants. I can easily do five different X-Men displays covering five different decades. With Toy Biz you pretty much had one display and it was a weird juxtaposition of time-displaced X-Men. We got that one Rogue and we knew that was going to be it and we were lucky to get here. Characters like Dazzler seemed like a pipe dream and now we have three different options for her.
What a time to be a Marvel collector now.
@justice weren't there two Rogues? I remember a Jim Lee one in a box set and an X-Treme X-Men one in the sister line, X-Men Classics. Either way, I'm pretty sure if Toy Biz had been able to produce Marvel Legends for the same length of time as Hasbro we would have likely seen a pretty substantial mix of characters and teams as well. Hasbro is a bigger company so the output may not have been exactly the same in terms of volume, but popular characters in their most popular attire all likely would have been made. Toy Biz really only produced Legends and the Legends-adjacent lines for a few years. And after doing a line of X-Men and Spider-Man figures that were very much 90s centric for a decade before the creation of Legends, it's not that surprising we didn't see a ton of 90s designs in the figures they did produce. The further removed from that decade and the comics boom that came with it, the stronger the pull of nostalgia.
Legends output has gone way up once the MCU became such a big hit. Even if ToyBiz had wanted to, I doubt they could have gotten retail support for 100 figures a year. This is both a blessing and a curse for Hasbro, that's alot of figures to make each year so naturally they have to go with buck reuse. But Hasbro has probably produced 5 or 6 times the figures ToyBiz did - which I doubt anyone would have predicted when Hasbro took over.
The two eras* really are aesthetically fairly different at this point, but I think if you display the ToyBiz stuff on its own, it holds up well as the line was mostly internally consistent in terms of washes, articulation and proportions - it doesn't match Hasbro as well as it could, but I remember when Hasbro's first offerings lacked the washes and with smaller heads - that was met with frustration as they didn't blend in at all.
But things like the BAF concept, the running changes/short run figures to add in some variants, the boxsets for teams, interesting articulation - lots of good stuff was tried in the ToyBiz days.
The line is still great of course. Just different.
*I think there are really three eras -
1. ToyBiz
2. Hasbro's first few years up through the TRU Two-packs.
3. 2012 on, more or less starting with the SDCC Thor, Terrax and Arnim Zola waves as the modern Legends era.
I’d say those eras are pretty spot on. I tend to refer to the second era as the Dark Days. Hasbro really didn’t have much going for it. Even some of that bled into the next era, or at least the time fac is delineating. I call that era Return of ML. From SDCC Thor through the card backed waves with small BAFs like Hit Monkey and Rocket, that still used some Toy Biz offspring (Daken, Constrictor, Drax). I’d probably start the next era at ML Infinite, when they changed to the current package style, and pretty much abandoned any Toy Biz bodies, and everyone had pin forward style rocker ankles.
Toy Biz tried a lot of stuff. Some of it worked, most of it didn't. But I commend them for trying. Wasn't a lot of that in western action figures at the time.
Hasbro got the license and took a couple step backwards, and then slowly began to get it right. And now I think we're at a point where the aesthetic has never been better. The problem now is usually the lack of value for the money.
You could sort of divide the Hasbro portion in three waves for a 2nd, 3rd & 4th era of ML. Toybiz obviously being the first.
Era 2: the Dark Days of Hasbro. Few waves, terrible bodies. All the figures they went to redo right now. Emblematic figure of this era: Floppy foot Quicksilver?
Era 3: the Rebirth. Waves proliferating. Major figure improvements. ML was back. Emblematic figure of this era: Anything on a Bucky Cap buck
Era 4: The Squeeze. Hasbro publicly announces they want tripling of their sales in one year or whatever it was. Prices start going haywire. Paint starts disappearing from figures, etc. Technological improvements better than ever but the margins are getting squeezed. Emblematic figure of this era: Mephisto. Never produced. Modern costume. Month's rent entry point.
You could sort of divide the Hasbro portion in three waves for a 2nd, 3rd & 4th era of ML. Toybiz obviously being the first.
Era 2: the Dark Days of Hasbro. Few waves, terrible bodies. All the figures they went to redo right now. Emblematic figure of this era: Floppy foot Quicksilver?
Era 3: the Rebirth. Waves proliferating. Major figure improvements. ML was back. Emblematic figure of this era: Anything on a Bucky Cap buck
Era 4: The Squeeze. Hasbro publicly announces they want tripling of their sales in one year or whatever it was. Prices start going haywire. Paint starts disappearing from figures, etc. Technological improvements better than ever but the margins are getting squeezed. Emblematic figure of this era: Mephisto. Never produced. Modern costume. Month's rent entry point.
I agree with what you say about "the squeeze" but that really just started happening in the last couple of years or so. I'd say Hasbro's heyday was roughly from the Mandroid wave until about the time the GOTG vol2 wave came out. That might be a bigger window, I don't have the waves organized by year in my head so don't go too crazy correcting me there, but man that GOTG wave really impressed me. Look at the Nebula and Gamora and Mantis that they did for that wave, I don't care if you're not a MCU collector, those figures were objectively top quality for a retail release with beautiful paint apps, sculpt and articulation, on par with any high end import. Hasbro really showed their hand at that time because it's proof that they can make awesome stuff when they try. It's possible. Heck, around about that time I went on here and started a thread that was basically a love letter to Hasbro ML that praised all the things they were doing (lost to the passage of time and a complete and total forum reboot, unfortunately).
So yes, I wouldn't jump straight from ROML to "the squeeze", but the squeeze is definitely real. Haywire pricing is exactly the correct term, and you're getting less and less for it. There is also, of course, the Haslab factor. Crowd funding is for an everyman who wants to start their own action figure line, not multimillion dollar corporations. Marvel Legends is a proven, 30 year old toy line made by the biggest toy maker in the world, they're no underdog. The excuse that retailers "won't take a chance" on a big figure or that "it's too big for toy shelves".....it just doesn't fly. I know Hasbro said so so we're supposed to believe it, I just don't. I'm sorry.
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Well, you certainly know better than them. A giant shield featured in a popular movie is certainly the same as a giant action figure in a costume from 1975 that costs hundreds of dollars. Which business school did you graduate from?
I do agree that the GOTG2 wave is one of Hasbro's best.
What Targets were actually stocking that shield? I don't think I've ever seen any Legends role-playing item in any Target or Walmart.
Well, you certainly know better than them. A giant shield featured in a popular movie is certainly the same as a giant action figure in a costume from 1975 that costs hundreds of dollars. Which business school did you graduate from?
The one that tells us mass producing a $200 figure will bring the price down to at least the $150 that shield costs. It's not a question of business school, man, it's a matter of common sense and questioning what you're told. We're told retailers won't take a chance on big boxes. Someone points out big boxes from other lines on the toy shelf, but the excuses keep flying. Someone points out big boxes from HASBRO THEMSELVES and the excuses keep flying.
"Hey, look at that giant Batwing" Excuse: "You do realize Batman is very popular, right?"
"Hey look at that giant Diplodocus." Excuse: "You do realize Jurassic Park is a popular movie, right?"
"Hey look at that giant shield" Excuse: "You do realize that 'popular movie' is more popular right?"
(If I wanted to do my Olympic Hairsplitting I'd point out that it's What If.... and not Dr. Strange and that Agent Carter is significantly less popular than Captain America but I'm guessing there's an excuse for that too).
The goal posts just keep getting moved. We're just supposed to believe what we're told, not what we see.
What Targets were actually stocking that shield? I don't think I've ever seen any Legends role-playing item in any Target or Walmart.
I took that pic myself at my local Target this past Monday.
Saw the What If shield at a local Target a couple weeks ago and had the exact same thought as Yojoebro. And it's not a giant shield from a popular movie, it's a giant shield from a cartoon show that now features the British flag. At $150 a pop, too.
But my Targets made space for it — on the top shelf of all places, like in the photo.
They'd do the same for a large-scale figure. And with a '70s, '80s, '00s costume, whatever. It's all just super heroes to them.
Know what they probably wouldn't do? Allow Hasbro to put a $200 price tag on it.
Haha, had a six second urge to debate the differences between a large disk that's been reused several times and a two foot tall super articulated action figure but decided.....nah.
Haha, had a six second urge to debate the differences between a large disk that's been reused several times and a two foot tall super articulated action figure but decided.....nah.
Are you referring to how both of these pieces would cost about the same to produce? A big plastic disc with straps, and a 2' tall action figure with nearly a hundred moving parts?
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