Another day, another Cyclops.
With the loss of Jean Grey still weighing on the team, Cyclops must rally the X-Men to face unprecedented new threats.
For those keeping track at home, that loss of Jean Grey would be the Grant Morrison New X-Men one. I know it's a meme that Jean Grey dies a lot, but that was the first "real" time it happened: Dark Phoenix wasn't her, Thanos snapping half the universe doesn't count, her hiding her mind in Emma Frost's so Sentinels wouldn't blast her doesn't count, regaining Phoenix powers after being mercy-stabbed by Wolverine doesn't count... so technically, the end of New X-Men was the first time she'd actually died. Hell, Cyclops had already died himself and come back by that point - twice! So why is Jean the one everybody jokes about and not him? Overlooked again, Captain Boring!
This is Cyclops' Astonishing X-Men costume,
which has had a Marvel Legend before - but that was back in the early days of Hasbro having the Marvel license, when things were still pretty rough. A lot of the figures from that era have gotten re-dos, we just didn't notice Scott needed one becaue we've had so many Cyclopes in the interim. Eight, in fact. Surprisingly, rather than stick to the same body all the others have gotten, this figure gets a new one; and even more surprisingly, rather than being fit for future re-use, it's pretty specifically just Cyke.
The underlying sculpt is fairly similar to the new too-tall body, and at first I thought that's what it was. I was disappointed, in fact, that after all those existing Scott Summerses looking like the same guy wearing different costume, this one was suddenly going to be taller and beefier for no good reason. And while he is suddenly taller and beefier for no good reason, we at least get the benefit of all that thin golden piping on his costume being a raised element instead of just paint. That's not unwelcome, but it is unexpected.
The figure gets a new head, but we've seen better. This one has a wisp of translucent red "smoke" curling up from the slit in the visor, implying Cyclops has just finished shooting his eyebeam. And that's neat, it's something we haven't seen before, but why make it the only feature? It's removable, if you want him fully "powered down," but since that leave a slot in the head, why not give us a full blast, like others have had? It's probably too much to ask for the interior of the visor to be painted red, but he should be able to shoot as well as sizzle.
If you're unhappy with the way the costume looks, that's an issue with the source material, not this toy. The body is dark blue, with a lighter metallic blue visor, and the golden details on him are actually
gold, not yellow. We'd have liked a slightly brighter shade for that, but this dark hue does blend with the blue decently. And hey, look at that, there is red painted in the back of the eye-slot! What do you know! That's a good attention to detail. The paint lines up with the thin piping incredibly well; you kids are too small to remember the days when you had to grab every toy you could find in the store to compare the paint apps and choose the best one.
This figure stands nearly 6⅜" tall, which is big, but not terrible: at 6'3", a true 1:12 scale figure of Cyclops would be 6¼",
so we're talking about 2" of full-scale height; the soles of the boots he's wearing could cover that. The figure has a balljointed head, hinged pecs, swivel/hinge shoulders, swivel biceps, double-hinged elbows, swivel/hinge wrists, a hinged torso, swivel waist, balljointed hips, swivel thighs, double-hinged knees, swivel boots, and swivel/hinge ankles. The extra chest joints really weren't necessary, but we don't hate them. It's just, why did they choose to do it? He can reach up to touch his visor fine without them, and what possible future use could they be planning for where those joints would be needed? Maybe they just threw them in as a treat for the fans. How thoughtful!
Cyclops doesn't have a part of this series' Ch'od Build-A-Figure, so his only accessories are the energy effect for the visor, an open right hand, and a visor-touching left hand.
If you want to use the full eye-beam accessory, well, sorry to tell you that it doesn't fit into the slot on this head -
the tab is too thin, so it will fall right out again. That said, the only substantial difference between the Astonishing suit and the "House of X" suit is that the visor there is slightly less blue, and there are caps over his ears - so if you wanted to give that "eyebeam" head to this figure, you can; the fit is a little tighter than usual, but better than being loose, and the colors match well.
I was not at all excited for this Cyclops, and was glad that he didn't have a BAF piece, so I didn't need to buy him. (Admittedly, I was also underestimating how long it had been since Hasbro made this costume; I thought there was one on the small body.) And yet, grabbing him on a whim and giving him a chance worked out well, because this is a far, far better toy than we were expecting. It's nice to be surprised sometimes.
-- 06/19/23
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