OAFE: your #1 source for toy reviews
B u y   t h e   t o y s ,   n o t   t h e   h y p e .

what's new?
reviews
articulation
figuretoons
customs
message board
links
blog
FAQ
accessories
main
Twitter Facebook RSS      
search


shop action figures at Entertainment Earth

Fearless Defenders

Avengers: Age of Ultron
by yo go re

Me, in 2013: "Is Hasbro really expecting to reuse this body in the future? Who for? How many seven-foot-tall women are there in the Marvel Universe?"

Hasbro, in 2015: "At least two more, dumb-dumb!"

With the unbreakable Dragonfang sword and a heavy steel chain, these heroines bring evil to its knees.

Valkyrie has had a Marvel Legend before, as one of the three winners of the 2009 fans' choice poll, but that one wasn't nearly as intimidating as this - not only was she wearing her original "swimsuit" costume, she barely broke the 6" mark. Okay, that fits with her official height of 6'3" (as opposed to the 7' this figure would be, in 1:12 scale), but for a character who's supposed to literally be one of the warrior maidens of Nordic myth, she feels like she should be taller than the average woman, right? Originally "Valkyrie" was just the spirit of Brunnhilde inhabiting various mortal bodies, but this is the real deal, her spirit in her natural body. You've got to be big to live in Asgaard!

Like the Marvel Uni-- sorry, the "Marvel Infiite Series" figure, this Valkyrie is wearing the Secret Avengers costume, which basicaly just added black pants to her original look. She has no kind of separate boots, and her bracelets and armbands are merely painted on. Surprisingly, her entire torso is a new mold. Oh, it's still based on the Red She-Hulk torso, but everything had to be remolded. The metal collar has sculpted edges, and the armored discs on her chest are 3D elements. Even her belt is a molded part of the body, not a free-floating piece. An unexpected choice!

Val wears her blonde hair pulled into two braids. And these aren't dainty little braids, no sir! These a big, thick braids, the kind that could really whollop someone if she turned her head too fast. The hair is a separate piece from the rest of the head, but it sits a little too high - it ends up making her look like she has an oversized forehead.

With bright silver paint immediately next to solid black, any paint errors would stand out easily, but everything here looks good - even the little silver studs on her brown belt are placed well. A black line around the top of the bracers would have helped sell the illusion that they're separate pieces, but it probably would have been too easy to get misaligned - seeing a line a millimeter or two out of place isn't a big deal when it's surrounded on both sides by one color, but it would really stand out where the silver meets the pink.

She has joints at the head, shoulders, biceps, elbows, wrists, torso, hips, thighs, knees, and ankles. The biceps and the elbows both provide the same range of motion, so it's weird that they'd do both. Like the bio suggested, she's armed with her signature weapon: Dragonfang, the sword handed down to her by Dr. Strange.

Both Fearless Defenders come with an arm for the Hulkbuster BAF - Valkyrie has the right arm, and Thundra has the left. So yes, to complete the full figure, you'll need to buy them both.

There are better Valkyrie costumes than this one (Mark Brooks' Fearless Defenders design, the more martial version of this outfit from Fear Itself, etc.), but they likely would have required too much new tooling, and a one-time-use torso was already biting into that budget; retool too much of her, and you defeat the purpose of reusing the Red She-Hulk molds in the first place. The important thing is, she and Thundra make a great pair of ass-kickers.

-- 11/16/15


back what's new? reviews

 
Report an Error 

Discuss this (and everything else) on our message board, the Loafing Lounge!


shop action figures at Entertainment Earth

Entertainment Earth

that exchange rate's a bitch

© 2001 - present, OAFE. All rights reserved.
Need help? Mail Us!