Marvel in the 1990’s was a great era to be into comics. Back then, before Marvel had been bought up by Disney, fans were treated to some of the best story lines in Marvel’s history. Feel free to disagree with that, but we feel that Marvel in the 90’s had better story telling than what you see today. Some of our personal favorite classic X-Men storylines include Age of Apocalypse, and Onslaught Saga. That’s not even including some of the best Marvel animated series ever to hit television. In the early and mid 1990’s, Marvel dominated the airways.
X-Men was introduced into the homes of millions on the television screen back in 1992, and the storyline somewhat followed some of the classic story lines. Later on, fans were treated to additional shows in the same continuity. This included Spider-Man, The Incredible Hulk, The Fantastic Four, and Iron Man (in The Marvel Action Hour). These shows, with the exception of Hulk, had several characters appear in Spider-Man’s Secret Wars episodes.
While the story’s were great, the costumes is what really sold it. Some toy companies, which include Toybiz, Hasbro, and Diamond Select Toys had released action figures in the 90’s uniforms over the years. In the 90’s, Toybiz had brought out a wide selection of Marvel action figures, with some characters that haven’t even seen a new release to this day. The classic 5″ line would turn into one of the all-time best Marvel offerings fans will ever see. While the figures weren’t as articulated as the Spider-Man Classics line in 2000, and the Marvel Legends brand, it was still a good time to be a Marvel fan.
When Toybiz started Marvel Legends in 2002, they had offered some figures in the 90’s classic uniforms, including an X-Men boxset, which remains to be one of the more sought after collectibles to this day. In 2005, Toybiz had offered in Marvel Legends Omega Red figure in his classic 90’s X-Men red and white outfit. That is after releasing many other 90’s X-Men figures such as Cyclops, Rogue, Storm, Colossus, and others.
When Hasbro took the license in 2007, they have also been focused on the 90’s outfits, as well as mixing it up with more recent costumes. Since Toybiz had already made an Omega Red figure, there is no reason for Hasbro to do this as well.
Diamond Select Toys is another company that has focused on the 90’s costumes in their 7″ scale Marvel Select line. In recent years, fans have enjoyed characters such as Wolverine, Gambit, Colossus, Nightcrawler, Magneto, Sabertooth, and Cable. DST is limited to how many figures that they can release a year, with additional Marvel Shop and Disney Store exclusives. While Minimates offers more releases, they have to be more selective for Marvel Select. While classic villains of Marvel are certainly on their radar, we do wish to see more. One character that should make the list is Omega Red, and offer him in his classic red and white 90’s outfit. Some additional character selections would be Apocalypse, Mr. Sinister, Onslaught, Dark Phoenix, The Blob, Toad, Mystique, Lady Deathstrike, among others.