X-Force Nightcrawler

"BAMF"? He sure is! The teleporting mutant Nightcrawler joins forces with the X-Force team in order to hunt down his enemies. That's true, but it's missing a major part of the story. When Archangel began to evolve into the new Apocalypse, his teammates on X-Force needed to get a "Life Seed" to save him. With the help of Dark Beast, they went to the Age of Apocalypse reality to retrieve one; once they and some of that reality's X-Men got back and fixed things, AoA Nightcrawler chose to stay in the 616 to hunt down other fugitives from his world. This isn't just X-Force Nightcrawler, it's also Age of Apocalypse Nightcrawler! He wouldn't be an ideal inclusion for an "Age of Apocalypse" collection, unfortunately: when he joined X-Force, he got a new costume to match their grey-and-black colorscheme. Which means Fantomex is still the only one never made in the right colors! In his home world, wore a dark grey body suit with white hands and red armor on the wrists, knees, and shoulders, but doing that would have required new molds: this is just the existing sculpt with new colors (and the new X-Men '97 arms and legs). They didn't even change the paint masks! The shapes on his gloves and boots are the same as the Series 6 release, just in a different color. And not even the right ones: his boots should be solid black, not white; they were shown like this sometimes, but not often. The Marvel Universe toy got it right, so why not this one? The X logo on his chest tended to come and go (and sometimes was gray or white instead of red), but the red mark over his eye is a tattoo, which were so common on the AoA characters. We do at least get a new head. One of two. In the original crossover, Kurt Darkholme (AoA Mystique never gave him up as a baby, so he had her last name rather than the Wagners') had long hair. Because THE '90S!!!!!!!!! He'd cut it by the time the stories went back there, so the angry head was free to be reused from the existing toy. However, Earth-295 Kurt was never as happy and lighthearted as Earth-616 Kurt, so he gets a new, dour, head. Yes, there was an unhappy head with the first toy, but this one is still a new mold. Bit surprising, that. Articulation is unchanged from the previous release of this mold, and it's got the same accessory: a pirate sword. The hilt is painted black this time instead of gold, and in addition to the open hands and the hand to wield the sword, he also gets the pair of fists X-Men '97 Nightcrawler introduced. Finally, there are pieces for this series' Nemesis Build-A-Figure: the dome and backpack. The actual Nightcrawler was briefly dead at the time this one showed up, having died saving Hope from Bastion, so a major part of the new one's interaction with X-Force and other mutants was being annoyed that they all wanted to treat him like a friend. As a quick repaint, this isn't a very interesting toy, but you'll need it if you want to finish the BAF. -- 05/26/25