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Look! It's that hero who tricked her mentally ill boyfriend into marrying her!
(Hey, equal credit: if we're going to give Hank crap for hitting her, then we're going to give her crap for all the creepy things she did, too.)
Janet Van Dyne flies and fights alongside Ant-Man, stinging evil-doers with bio-electric blasts!
Each case of Ant-Man Marvel Legends has eight figures. But there are only six figures in the series, so you know what that means: two of the figures are heavy-packs. It makes sense that one of them would be Ant-Man himself (it's his movie, after all), but what's really surprising is that the other one is Miss Van Dyne, here. For once, the female action figure isn't shortpacked? It's what we've been dreaming about for years! Somewhere in the time/space continuum, tiny yo who searched and searched for an April O'Neil is cheering. Maybe this will finally put to bed the idiotic and outdated notion that girl toys don't sell? Break new ground, Wasp!
It's a bit ironic that Wasp, a character who's changed her costume more than anyone else, is wearing the same outfit on this toy
that she wore on her last one. Granted, it's an excellent costume, one of the best she's ever worn and one of the ones she wore the longest, but still.
The reason she stuck with it is clear: with its black and gold colorscheme, and the pattern on the front, it's the only version that actually looks like a wasp! We get that Jan was a fashion designer, but when you're designing costumes, shouldn't they at least try to look like your supranym? Black Panther's got two words in his name, and his costume fulfills both of them; Wasp has one word, and usually ended up wearing leotards and cocktail dresses. So once she finally had some smart design, it makes sense that it would stick.
We've complained before that Hasbro doesn't credit their sculptors, but we can still tell that they have one got-to guy (or girl) who does all their female faces. You look at Wasp, with her cute little smile, and you can tell she was made by the same person as Jean Grey, Moonstone, Captain Marvel, etc. Her short hair is great - tons better than ToyBiz's!
Wasp gets the "gesturing" hands, to let you play that she's firing her sting. She's built on the medium female body, but gets a slightly remolded torso. No, they didn't enhance
her bust, they added ports on her shoulders, so her wings can plug in. When ToyBiz did this, the wings were just plain swivels; Hasbro, meanwhile, has made them swivel/hinges, so you have more posing options. Plus, the smaller set of wings actually plug into the larger ones, adding another swivel joint without cluttering up her back. This is very nicely done. Oh, and she still stands just fine. It takes some work to find the balance, but Wasp can stand unsupported even with her giant wings.
It's a good thing Wasp is heavy-packed,
because you'll really want to examine the paint before you buy her. The edges of the gold pattern on her suit can get pretty sloppy, and I have yet to see one where the eyes weren't painted too far apart. So be careful of that. Also (and this isn't something you have to worry about), while the palms of her hands are surprisingly complex, it's a bit annoying that they only painted the edges of her feet gold, rather than doing the entire sole.
As the smallest figure in this series, Jan comes with the biggest BAF piece: Ultron's entire torso. We see that he's going to have the same completely restricted hips as Thanos, and the paint is really uneven, too. Hopefully the final product looks okay.
While it would have been nice to get the Wasp in a different costume - say, her Uncanny Avengers number, which looked like her original but in black and yellow - this is a really nice update. The ToyBiz figure was... okay for its time, but this one blows it away.
-- 08/30/15
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