Marvel Comics “The Phoenix Saga” is one of the most important and iconic stories to have come out of the publisher in the companies history. It’s a classic X-Men story and a major turning point to the characterization of Jean Grey as she finds both good and evil within herself as she is possessed by The Phoenix Force entity.
In the past year Hasbro has been offering fans several themed waves of X-Men characters that had a good assortment of characters that have been needing updates as well as some new figures since the old Toybiz line. This 2-pack is a good example of two excellent updates, as both characters have been previously used in this line, but it’s taken an update to Dark Phoenix well over a decade to get a second figure. This 2-packs marks a new era of store exclusives with this current style of Marvel Legends X-Men action figures. One thing is for sure with the success of these X-Men figures, fans can’t get enough of these, and both Hasbro and Marvel are doing an excellent job on character selection. This is no doubt one of the best action figure lines offered right now, and also one of the longest running Marvel lines in history.
Availability: June 2017
This box set commemorates one of the most important and classic X-Men stories ever told by Marvel, and two of the most iconic X-Men characters, Scott Summers and Jean Grey. The characters are no strangers to the Marvel Legends brand, as both has seen several releases by both Toybiz and Hasbro in the course of the lines history. Toybiz did offer both characters in these costumes well over a decade ago, and now Hasbro takes a crack at it with these beautiful updates.
Cyclops has seen two recent figures by Hasbro, with the other being the Jim Lee costume from the 1990’s, which is also one of the more popular costumes for him. Jean has also seen several recent figures by Hasbro, which includes her Jim Lee costume, as well as both Phoenix and Dark Phoenix in their X-Men waves. While some of the X-Men figures have become a bit easy to find lately, Phoenix however is one of the more popular releases in the set, as she should be, because powerful beings like the Phoenix Force deserves to fly off the store shelves, rather than face the peg warming dilemma that other figures face.
This costume for Cyclops isn’t one of the more complicated one’s, and it’s pretty much straight forward as far as design wise. Cyclops uses the Bucky/Captain America figure base and this is a good use for him, as well as some obvious new parts such as the head, hands, belt and feet. The head sculpt features a great likeness to the character, and the visor is nicely sculpted and the transition from comic to plastic on this likeness is well executed. The sculpt and figure base is a nice choice for Cyclops, and you can even get his left hand to touch the side of the visor just like in the comics. The only thing about the figure that is missing, is that it needs an optic blast attachment. Even without it, it’s still a good figure, and the dark blue wash is done very nicely over the light blue on the costume. The figure is also capable of holding Dark Phoenix just like on the cover to Uncanny X-Men #136. The balance of the deco, sculpt, and design really comes together for this figure. Now that Hasbro has finished some of the more important costumes to Cyclops, we’re hoping that other incarnations could be such such as Age of Apocalypse Cyclops and maybe even Mutant X.
Dark Phoenix has an improved figure sculpt over the Phoenix figure from last year, which was a good sculpt, but this new one looks even better. The head sculpt for Dark Phoenix is also brand new, so you don’t have to worry about owning the same head for both bodies. The figure sculpt losses the high heels, for flat feet, and while that’s not entirely comic accurate, it does help the figure to stand a little easier. The upper torso is newly sculpted, and the Phoenix Force logo is bigger on the chest. There is also a tiny Phoenix symbol on the sash. The red and gold deco on the costume is much more dynamic and eye catching over the green and gold. Dark Phoenix comes with some great accessories including three alternate head sculpts, and the new heads really define the different personalities of the Dark Phoenix. Two of the head sculpts are a calmer Jean Grey while being posses, and the other one is a powered up head that is no doubtably ready to destroy a star and billions of lives. The sculpt and deco on the heads are really good, and the powered up head is by far the best of the bunch. Also included with her is a little Phoenix fire attachment that can be applied to either Phoenix figure, a might also be attachable to the figures that Toybiz put out many years ago, and even better, this figure could make an ideal centerpiece for that old Toybiz Phoenix figure base.
Overall, Classic X-Men are still very popular, and Hasbro and Gentle Giant have done a fantastic job capturing the likeness of both of these iconic characters. Both Cyclops and Dark Phoenix are two great figures that fans will love.
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