White Tiger

While reviewing Series 1 of the Spider-Man Marvel Legends, we questioned whether Hasbro really still needed to do the whole "swap figure" thing. Now, in Series 2, we have to question whether Hasbro is messing with us. Two figures - Misty Knight and Ghost Rider - are sold under the name "Heroes for Hire" but come with different BAF pieces. Meanwhile, White Tiger, who's sold by herself, comes with the same BAF piece as Misty. The heck?! Endowed with martial arts powers by the Jade Tiger amulets, Angela Del Toro is White Tiger! Yes she is. Or was. Either way, this isn't her. The original White Tiger, Hector Ayala, was framed for murder, and shot before Matt Murdock was able to clear his name. He passed the amulets to his neice Angela, who used them for a while. They were at some point passed on to Hector's younger sister Ava Ayala, who joined the Avengers Academy, and also appears on the Ultimate Spider-Man cartoon - she was created for the comics, but Marvel liked the idea of her so much that they started integrating her to the cartoon even before her first appearance. That's who this toy represents. The biggest clue that this is Ava, not Angela, is the head. Ava, like Hector before her, has a full-head mask that looks like a white version of Black Panther; Angela wore a little half-mask that wouldn't conceal anything at all. The long hair poking out the back of this mask does limit the range of the neck joint, but it's true to the design. Another giveaway is that Ava is still a teenager, not an adult, so she uses Hasbro's teen girl body. It's almost solid white, with thin black stripes painted on the shoulders and hips. The arms were clearly painted before the figure was assembled, because the stripes only line up when the arms are in one specific pose, and that pose puts one of the stripes inside the torso. Good planning. The hands are new molds, done in a "clawing" pose. The Jade Tiger necklace is a separate piece, dangling around her neck - in the cartoon, she wears it as a belt, so there's no mistaking this for an animated figure. White Tiger moves at the head, neck, shoulders, elbows, wrists, torso, hips, thighs, knees, shins, and ankles. Like we said, the head is somewhat limited by her long hair, and she's got a bit of that ankle problem that pretty much every use of this mold has evidenced: the left ankle tends to stick when you try to use the peg joint. Everything else usually works just fine - it's only ever the ankle that seems to have any kind of problem. "Usually," you ask? The elbows on this figure are incredibly stiff; seriously, it takes real effort to bend her arms, and I'm worried that something might break. Will that affect every White Tiger figure? No clue. Since the figure is so small, she comes with the largest piece of the Series 2 Build-A-Figure, Rhino. She gets the entire torso, which we remind you is the same piece Misty Knight had. And yet White Tiger is not the swap figure for Misty Knight - how much sense does that make? Having been in Avengers Academy as well as Mighty Avengers, you'd think White Tiger would have shown up in an Avengers-themed line, not Spider-Man. But the important thing is we've got a figure of her, not what logo is on the box. -- 09/14/15

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