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First Hasbro X-Men toys, now Fantastic Four? What's next, jet fuel can melt steel beams?
With HERBIE by her side, Sue Storm uses psionic energy to suit up as the incredible hero, Invisible Woman!
"Using psionic energy to suit up" makes it sound like she puts on her costume with her mind. Clearly somebody reads these bios before they get approved (because how else would they be able to get translated into French, Spanish and Portuguese), but is whomever is in charge of proofing doing it at 4:45 on a Friday afternoon? The translations use pour devenir ("to become"), para luchar como ("to fight as") and é ("is") respectively, so clearly the problem is that the English version was just trying to be too coloquial. Leave her suit out of it, Hasbro; she's not Iron Man; her powers work even in civilian clothes. Also, she stopped being Sue "Storm" years before she stopped being the Invisible "Girl" - she was married to Reed Richards and was even a mom before she decided to change her supranym.
Sue is the newest Walgreens exclusive,
reaching shelves almost a full year after their last one. Doesn't seem that long ago, does it? Anyway, like the guy she tells Reed not to worry about (aka "Namor, the man who doesn't need to come up for air"), Sue hasn't had an action figure since 2007, and that last one suuuuuucked. Amusingly, if you look at that old review, you'll see we said "Hasbro isn't as into body swapping as ToyBiz was," which is extra hilarious, since this Sue is made on a swapped body - the same new version of the medium body we saw on Phoenix. [You forgot one --ed.]
All the costume details are just painted on.
Sue's wearing the classic FF costume, a blue body with black gloves, belt, and collar. You'll definitely want to look at the paint before you buy her, however, because it gets very easy for the 4 logo on her chest to get messy. It show off her powers, her right arm is cast from translucent plastic, with faded apps of blue and black applied to the surface to make it blend with the rest of her body. She does not include a non-translucent arm, though she does come with an alternate trans left hand, to swap out with her normal black fist.
The head is new, with its short blonde hair falling close to Sue's shoulders. She's tucked it behind her ear on the left, but it hangs freely on the right. Some folks have compared Invisible Woman's face to Enchantress's, but while they may have been sculpted by the same artist,
they're definitely not the same mold: Sue's smile is even, and she doesn't have one eyebrow cocked.
The figure has swivel/hinge ankles, double-hinged knees, swivel thighs, balljointed hips, a balljointed chest, swivel/hinge wrists, double-hinged elbows, swivel/hinge shoulders, a hinged neck and a balljointed head, which is the same as the other uses of this mold. Since her hands are the "gesturing" style, you can easily make it look like she's putting up a forcefield or concentrating to turn something invisible. She doesn't have any clear accessories (other than the hand), but neither does she come alone in her box.
As the bio hinted, Sue is paired with H.E.R.B.I.E. - now that Disney owns Marvel, I guess they're trying to cross-promote their properties, but this thing doesn't look like a 1963 Volkswagen Beetle at all! Instead, it looks like some kind of little robotic helper that Reed would have designed.
HERBIE is a new mold, but not a new sculpt - it's a bigger version of the figure from the Marvel Universe Fantastic Four box set. His white body is soft and rounded, with three small "legs" near the bottom and a big circle on his tummy that looks like it should be a turbine. Meanwhile, his back gives new meaning to the phrase "butt plug." His only articulation is a large balljoint for the head, but Hasbro was nice enough to give us a thin plastic stand to make him hover. Again, you'll want to examine the paint on his face - the yellow on his crooked mouth doesn't always provide full coverage.
Interestingly, the packaging does not assign this figure to any specific lineup. They may not have always made sense (Punisher with Absorbing Man, Namor with Giant-Man, etc.), but the back at least had some kind of cross-sell, right? I know Marvel doesn't want Hasbro to put X-Men pieces in Avengers packaging (which is why Onslaught's head had to come with Shadowcat), but who knew that extended all the way to even pictures of characters? The box is bright blue, with a big 4 logo behind her, drawings of her on the sides, and only a single large picture of the toy on the back of the box.
HERBIE looks like he should be delivering sad pick-up lines, and Sue has a permanently invisible arm, but this is still a nice set. The only problem is that now we need the rest of the team to go with her.
-- 06/12/17
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