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Having finished reviewing the six figures in the first series of the Iron Man 3-based Marvel Legends, we can finally review the series' Build-A-Figure. But since there's no bio for the figure, we'll copy one from Iron Man 2:
The Iron Monger was built by an obsessed business rival of Tony Stark. Unable to defeat Stark through his deft manipulations of the billionaire's business and personal life, Obadiah Stane set about to destroy him. He employed dozens of super powered criminals, and eventually entered the fray wearing his own huge, immensely powerful battle suit.
That bio comes from figure #035 in the Iron Man 2 toyline,
Classic Iron Monger. It only seems fair, since this entire figure comes from figure #035 in the Iron Man 2 toyline. A retooling of the Hulkbuster figure near the end of the line, the Iron Monger figure was amazingly hard to find. Now it's been scaled up and broken into six pieces to be sold with the IM3 figures: head, torso, arms and legs. The pieces snap together tightly, but you might be able to get them apart again - we're not stupid enough to force them apart just to find out.
The little antenna on Iron Monger's shoulder just breaks the 7¾" mark, which seems to be perfectly accurate to the comics: when 6'5" Obadiah Stane stood before the completed suit deciding to put it on, his head came up just as high as the trapezoidal repulsor beam on the chest. This isn't the biggest ML figure ever, but neither has it been artificially inflated for no good reason.
Despite being intended for a 4" figure and scaled up, the sculpt is pretty good. It helps that the Iron Monger suit was designed in the '80s, so it's a sleek, smooth design rather than
lots of overlapping plates and intricate details. In fact, this toy may have more detail on it than was ever seen in the comics! The flexi-joint ankles, the little kneecaps, the elbow-hoses, the big shoulder pads... that was all seen in the comic art, but everything else is new. Ridges on the feet, pods on the hips, ornate belt, the detail on the hands, everything there is on the back... none of it was there before, but it all looks like it belongs.
Like we've said every time we mentioned one of the BAF pieces, Iron Monger is molded from semi-translucent, swirly plastic. It's darker than the 4" figure was, but at least that one was painted, so it didn't look cheap. The hoses and antenna are painted black, while the chest-beam is red. The head gets the most paint, though, with black for the mouth slit, and a black-to-red-to-black fade on the visor that convincingly makes it look like a light is coming from inside.
The articulation is pretty much the same as it was
on Hulkbuster: ankles, knees, thighs, hips, chest, wrists, elbows, shoulders and neck. It's pretty impressive that the head still has a full range of motion, despite the octagonal collar around the neck. The head sits up high enough above the neck balljoint that he can look up and down and even tilt side-to-side. The armor on the forearms and shoulders is fairly soft, so it'll move out of the way slightly when you bend the elbows or raise the arms.
Iron Monger was a short-lived Iron Man villain, but he was an important one - it was Obadiah Stane who intentionally drove Tony Stark to alcoholism, kicking off the whole "Demon in a Bottle" story and changing Stark's life forever, as well as leading to the creation of the Silver Centurion armor. There was a time when a figure of Iron Monger's size could have been sold by itself, but those days are past, and we're more annoyed by the swirly plastic than the fact that he's a Build-A-Figure.
Iron Patriot | Classic IM | Heroic Age IM | Iron Man Mk42 | Ultron | James Rhodes
-- 06/17/13
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