TOP 10 of 2023

Spiral

Longshot

Blob

Corsair

Banshee (Training Uniform)

Star-Lord (Earth-791)

Drax the Destroyer

Joe Fixit

Captain Marvel (Rambeau)

Dr Doom (Secret Wars)

I like to call it my Top Ten Favorite ML of 2023, because there’s a definite character bias involved.  In no particular order:

Tigra (West Coast Avengers Box Set) - Hasbro deserves a metaphorical slap upside the head for their shenanigans, but the end result is that I have a ML Tigra that I absolutely love, so I guess all’s well that ends well.

Black Widow (Beyond Earth’s Mightest) - There’s a parallel Earth where Hasbro puts this much care, effort and budget into all their releases.  On that Earth, Hasbro just hired 1,100 people two weeks before Christmas to keep up with the overwhelming demand for their product…and no one in the toy community has ever heard of “Ollie’s”.

Bishop (X-Men ‘97) - Sleeper hit of the year for me.

Blob - Would have been a welcome upgrade even if I hadn’t sold off the BAF a few years ago.

Clea - Hasbro did everything right here except the single hinged elbows.  I can live with that.

Monet St Croix - So good, and so under appreciated.

Sersi (Beyond Earth’s Mightest) - Yeah, yeah.  The holes around the arms on the jacket overlay are distracting, she’s missing the Avengers symbols on the upper sleeves of the jacket, and the base body isn’t the best…but she was one of my grails in this costume, and I’m very happy with her.

Spiral - Near the top in most lists.  Wasn’t sure they could beat the first attempt which I considered one of the best MLS of all time.  They did.

The Orb - Nothing special, but very toyetic, and a big nostalgia factor as his first appearance in Marvel Team Up No 15 was one of my earliest comics.

Ultimate Captain America - Just a great all around figure that has been a staple in top tens this year.

I'm still narrowing down my lists, and by far the two figures I'm having the most trouble with are Final Swing Spidey and Garfield Spidey.  Is there a clear objective case to pick one of those over the other?  They both have awesome sculpts, almost the same articulation, and well above average paint jobs for the line.

I do lean slightly towards Garfield though for two engineering reasons.  Final Swing Spidey's colors are really nice, but they're nowhere near as vibrant as the actual suit in the film was.  I don't even mind it personally because the colors are still great, but they don't match the film as closely as Garfield's colors do.  Also the brittleness of the plastic with Final Swing Spidey is a clear minus that I have to objectively factor in.

Subjectively I like them both about the same, but objectively it seems like Garfield wins.  What's pushing Final Swing forward on most people's top ten lists is nostalgia for the comic look since this suit matches it better than any other film suit has, but that's the film design and not really the figure design.  Objectively I can't weigh that in because it's personal preference.  It'll definitely weigh in for my subjective list though.

Black Widow

Clea

Secret Wars Monica Rambeau

Blade

Orb

Hawkeye & Sky Cycle

Longshot

Wonder Man

Baron Von Strucker

Power Man (I know, the figure has issues, but I'm so freaking happy to have classic Luke on my shelf that I don't care!)

Blob & X-Men 97 Wolverine would likely have made my list if I'd gotten them (in both cases, I was broke when they went up for sale on the various sites, and I've never seen them at retail. They're now sold-out online, so I just have to make due with those gaps in my collection).

Posted by: @enigmaticclarity

↑

I'm still narrowing down my lists, and by far the two figures I'm having the most trouble with are Final Swing Spidey and Garfield Spidey.  Is there a clear objective case to pick one of those over the other?  They both have awesome sculpts, almost the same articulation, and well above average paint jobs for the line.

This is a tough call, both figures are really well done.  For me I go with Garfield just for the fact that there are other passable Holland Spideys and there was more of need for a redone Garfield.  As far as execution goes, these are pretty even.  Maybe you take point off Garfield because Hasbro held out on giving you all the hands?  I don't know....

Here are my top Marvel Legends for 2023 in order of quality. I’ve had all of these on my desk for most of the past month to make sure I felt good about how I was ranking them while also double-checking against the 2023 figures at the LegendsVerse web site to make sure I didn't forget any.

As always I make an objective list that ignores my personal preference as much as possible and focuses on the quality of the figures followed by my subjective list of the figures I personally liked the best that is highly driven by my bias towards characters or other design elements I prefer. I started with a list of forty or so figures and narrowed it down to these twenty, so consider numbers 11 through 20 honorable mentions.

1. Black Widow – the best-articulated female Legends figure ever, and one of the best-articulated female figures across all lines.  Superior sculpt and accessories, particularly the three great head sculpts.
2. Andrew Garfield Spider-Man – superior articulation, sculpt, and paint.  One of Hasbro’s best Spider-Man sculpts ever.
3. Green Goblin (No Way Home) – terrific glider and awesome sculpt and paint details on the figure.  The Willem Dafoe head sculpt is spectacular, and the way the hood and goggles work with the head is perfect.  Including the masked head sculpt brings him over the top as an awesome release.
4. Spiral – great sculpt for a difficult-to-design character.  A near-perfect rendering aside from some engineering issues with gummy plastic on the arms that held it back from Figure of the Year contention.
5. Final Swing Spider-Man – would have virtually tied with the Andrew Garfield figure since it has the same superior sculpt and articulation, but most or all copies of this figure suffer from overly-stiff joints that are a slight challenge to bend without breaking the plastic.  If you’re mindful of that he’s completely workable though.
6. Cassie Lang BAF – surprisingly great sculpt with surprisingly great articulation–very surprised this figure had both a diaphragm joint and lower ab crunch, plus the range of motion on the legs is spectacular.  Including a masked and unmasked head sculpt with articulated pony tail sends her over the top as a great BAF.
7. Blob – awesome sculpt and decent articulation for such a bulky figure.  The screaming head sculpt is pure fire in dynamic displays.
8. Spider-Punk - has some gummy engineering issues due to the thin arms and legs, but the sculpt, paint, and overall aesthetic of this figure are amazing.
9. Ultimate Cap – best Cap figure made to date due to the intricate sculpted details on the costume.
10. Destroyer – I didn’t think Hasbro could improve on the Diamond Select Destroyer, but they managed to do it.  Looks just as good as the Diamond figure but with MUCH better articulation.  Amazing figure.
11. Tobey Maguire Spider-Man – not quite as good as Andrew Garfield Spidey or Final Swing Spidey due to sculpt and paint issues, but still an exceptional rendering of the character with all of the same great articulation of the other No Way Home Spidey figures.
12. '97 Bishop – surprisingly great update to the previous Bishop figure.  Great body sculpt with a terrific head sculpt.
13. '97 Wolverine – in a vacuum this is the figure of the year, but it’s really just an incremental update over previous Wolverine figures that were already great so I can’t give it full credit.  Just the fact that they found upgrades to an already-fantastic figure is worthy of note, and the head sculpts, pin-less joints, and overall engineering is impeccable.
14. Pretty Boy – nice all-new sculpt that will likely be used in cyborg and android bodies for years.
15. Clea – extremely attractive figure with one of Hasbro’s best female head sculpts.
16. Iron Man Mark I  – simple design implemented extremely well.
17. MCU Wasp  – massive sculpt upgrade from the previous MCU Wasp figure with two absolutely great head sculpts.
18. Elektra Daredevil  – fun figure with a great sculpt and articulation.
19. Mania  – great pin-less upgrade to the Legends teenage female body sculpt with nice symbiote details.
20. Astonishing Cyclops – surprisingly good tweak to the Vulcan mold with terrific sculpted line details.

Here's my list of subjective favorites. Several of these aren't at all innovative, but I just love them more for whatever reason.

1. Andrew Garfield Spider-Man
2. Blob
3. Destroyer
4. Clea
5. Black Widow
6. '97 Wolverine
7. Tarantula – not an objectively great figure, but the first comic book I collected to completion was Peter Parker the Spectacular Spider-Man, and I vividly recall this guy gracing the first issue cover of that title.  A completely sentimental favorite of mine simply due to when I started collecting Marvel comics.
8. Elektra Daredevil
9. Spiral
10. MCU Green Goblin

Here's some posing I did of most of the figures from these lists while deciding which were the best.

@enigmaticclarity Interesting to read your thoughts! I appreciate how much thought you put into this each year. I haven’t gotten some of the figures you mentioned, like Final Swing Spidey and Blob. So you are making my think about them.

Considering how you seem to highly rate new sculpting, I was surprised to not see Extremis Iron Man on your list. Out of a fantastic year overall, Extremis Iron Man was my favorite. 

Posted by: @akatsuki

↑

Considering how you seem to highly rate new sculpting, I was surprised to not see Extremis Iron Man on your list. Out of a fantastic year overall, Extremis Iron Man was my favorite. 

I definitely considered him at some point, but perhaps not well enough.  I'll compare him to the list again and see if I was too hasty in eliminating him.

1. Walmart Star Lord - Would've never in a million years expected Hasbro to put out this figure, especially with how little they produce for the far more popular modern Guardians.

2. Target Ant-Man - Much needed fully accurate rendition.

3. Skycycle Hawkeye - Favorite Avenger finally given proprietary sculpt with improved articulation, points docked for ugly soft goods.

4. Destroyer Armor

5. Wonder Man

6. 97' Wolverine

7. Mockingbird

8. Power Man - "Hey Luke I think you tore a few holes in your shirt man!"

9. Astonishing Cyclops - Cyclops hasn't had a good looking headsculpt since HoX/PoX wave.

10. Best Captain Marvel - There is not a single female character that warrants a bicep swivel more than Monica Rambeau in this costume.

Bump as a reminder of the best of last year as we consider the best of 2024.

Here's my late submission:

Blob

Ronan

Destroyer

Corsair

Yondu

Luke Cage

Wolverine 97

Captain Marvel

Black Widow

Blade