I must confess I’m not a big Iron Man fan and I have this condition I call Iron Man Armor Blindness where I cannot differentiate between a Mark II and a Mark XLII. I suppose it is less “cannot” and more “don’t care enough to”, so I probably would have skipped this set if not for the inclusion of Happy Hogan. Hap is a classic comic character and I enjoy Favreau’s portrayal of the character so I needed him for the MCU collection. Let’s take a look!
Looks like FedEx kicked my box around pretty good on the way to me, so the fancy packaging was pretty beat up before I got it, though it did the job of protecting the figures well.
The set is fairly light on accessories with a slim little iPhone for Happy and alternate hands and blast effects for the Midas armor.
The phone has little tampo with a hang up/ answer graphics from an iPhone, so Happy can send Nick Fury to voicemail. Since the set is labeled Iron Man 3, I would have liked Happy to come with an ID badge to tap as that was one of the cute gags from that film. Still, the plain suit does fit for more situations, so I can see why they wouldn’t do that. The Midas Armor has swappable fists and repulsor blast hands, similar to a lot of recent Iron Man releases and the familiar blast effects can pop into the hands or boots.
The sculpting on this is very nice, with some sharp detail and a nice build that actually looks like a man could be inside this armor. I do try to avoid buying Iron Man figures, so I’m not sure if this is a re-use and finding screen shots of this armor from the film wasn’t very illuminating, so I’m also not sure if this is film accurate.
I do like the back flaps that hinge open and make for an interesting look.
Happy looks to be a new suit body for Marvel Legends with an appropriately bulkier build that I think will work well for them for future characters and suits Favreau very well and I feel like they nailed the likeness too. It’s a regular guy in normal suit clothes, so I could see how people might find this dull, but I love this kind of stuff.
The articulation is standard Marvel Legends fare, but I do like they made the crotch piece a little softer plastic, so the legs can kick forward a little farther. He can almost hit the hero landing, but can’t look up quite enough, so for the below photo I cheated it a bit and popped his head off and rested it on the peg. Happy has:
- Ball and socket head and neck (barbell)
- Swivel/hinge shoulders, wrists, hips, and ankles
- Double hinged knees and elbows
- Swivel waist, thighs, and biceps
- Mid-torso hinge
The paint is okay. Happy is mostly cast in the right colored plastics, so his paint is only on the fairly effective face printing. The Mark XXII armor has a combo of slightly metallic plastic and painted gold plastic that works pretty well, but the glossy plastic does feel a little more like a butterscotch candy than armor. I think it would have been better if there was another metallic paint in lieu of the swirly metallic plastic.
Overall, I’m slightly more pleased with this set than I thought I would be. Happy met my expectations for a MCU figure of this character, but the Iron Man armor was a little more fun than I was expecting. The little flappy bits and mostly useful articulation made that figure a bit more fun to mess around with than I was expecting. One weird thing that maybe only I would care about is that the Favreau head does not easily swap onto the Heavy Mando figure from the Black Series line. I thought that might be a fun little custom, but the barbell peg on the Heavy Mando is a little too long, so that would need to be shortened or swapped out.
Source: The Fwoosh
