Classic Iron Man

Who's feeling horny?! Technology unlike anything the world has ever seen... behold... the unstoppable Iron Man! Thanks, brief and pointless back-of-the-card text that tells us nothing about the character inside! You're the specialest! Of course, this is pretty much the Iron Man armor, the one he wore for 20 real years. Basically, between the first appearance armor and the Silver Centurion armor, all he ever wore was variations on this suit, so maybe they figured everyone was already familiar with it. Let's see if this "Inside the Armor Vault" paper has anything of interest to say. The mysterious Mr. Doll has Iron Man in a voodoo vice grip, using the powers of his doll to control Tony Stark's golden armor! Stark creates a new ultra-light red-and-gold design, allowing him to break the villain's control and marking the dawn of a new hero! I did not know any of that. This is the third time Hasbro has released this mold - last time it was in stealth paint, but before that it looked exactly like this (more or less)! So hopefully you didn't buy that one, or else you're going to have an extra. The sculpt is crisp, but the body still looks too skinny. How is this a suit of armor? It just looks like he painted his legs gold. The original original ML1 version has a better proportions, for cryin' out loud! The one thing this figure has in its favor is the mask. Helmet. Head. Whatever. This release keeps the "swapping head" feature of the previous releases, but instead of a Tony Stark head, the second helmet is the vintage "horned" model. This is something that hasn't been done since the ML1 variant back in 2002, so it's much-needed! Between the horns on the forehead and the bars in the mouth suggesting "teeth," this is a rather villainous-looking design! The other head is just the same standard helmet the previous two releases of this mold came with, which is less than exciting at this point. Still, there's surely someone out there who would have been mad if they couldn't get the smooth mask in gold, and now we won't have to hear them complain. Unlike the previous releases, this one doesn't come with alternate hands: he just has a right fist, and a "curled fingers" repulsor blast hand on the left. Tony's articulation is the same as before: balljoint head, hinge neck, swivel/hinge shoulders, swivel biceps, double-hinge elbows, swivel/hinge wrists, hinge torso, swivel waist, swivel/hinge hips, swivel thighs, double-hinge knees and swivel/hinge ankles. The width of the bicep "muscles" combined with the hard edges of the shoulder rings keep the arms from coming down to his sides properly, and the discs on the waist interfere with the mobility of the hips to a degree, but short of mounting them on hinges, that was always going to happen. Rather than red and yellow, this armor is red and gold. The red is metallic, but lighter than the previous release and semi-translucent, which is Hasbro's "thing" these days. The tone of the gloves and boots doesn't seem to match his central body, either. The gold is nice, but the dot on his chest beam is small and off-center, so watch out for that when you buy. He comes with the right leg of BAF Iron Monger, and its blue plastic has the same kind of translucence as Tony's trunk. If not for the BAF part, I never would have bought this figure - the horned helmet is nice, but not worth triple-dipping on the mold. However, he's not a bad figure, and the gold sets him apart from the other release nicely, so you won't feel cheated into buying him. The mold is still too skinny, though. -- 03/25/13

Tweet