Marvel in the 1990’s was the best decade for the brand in my personal opinion, with some unique and very compelling X-Men storylines such as Days of Future Past, Age of Apocalypse, and of course Jim Lee breaking boundary’s in 1991 when he launched X-Men #1. Let’s not forget that X-Men 1992 animated series that many of us reading this right now grew up watching. It was a great time to be a fan and these stories remain timeless in the hearts and souls of the fanbase.
Dark Beast was depicted as a mad scientist that experimented on his fellow mutants and had worked for Mr. Sinister, and it was his intention of on breeding more powerful mutants according to Apocalypse’s “survival of the fittest” ideology. McCoy was very skilled at causing pain and suffering to his subjects, and mutant that he deemed unworthy was turned into a component of a genetic stew that was used to create Apocalypse’s army of Infinites.
X-Men: Age of Apocalypse has had some figures in the past from Toybiz in the 1990’s, Toybiz Marvel Legends, and even Hasbro offered AOA Sunfire as a HTS exclusive. Jumping ahead, this storyline is finally getting the recognition it deserves and we have a full wave of figures to check out, including a Sugar Man Build-A-Figure joining the line. It’s a good time to be a fan again and 90’s Marvel lives on again in toy form!
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Thank you to Zavvi for providing Hasbro’s Marvel Legends X-Men: Age Of Apocalypse Dark Beast Figure for review.
Availability: June 2020
Dark Beast is packaged in the standard single carded packaging with artwork and logo’s on the front, sides, and on the back is an image of the figure, a brief bio, and images of the rest of the wave, including Sugar Man.
Dark Beast in Marvel Legends is a gift, and getting Age of Apocalypse in this line so long overdue that we never expected this day to be now. Hasbro’s team has been hitting X-Men pretty hard as well as 90’s Marvel lately, and right now we’re experiencing the best Legends figures ever offered.
Dark Beast uses the recent sculpt used for Beast, and includes shared parts of the chest, arms, hands, calves and feet. The new parts include the head and pants that are painted in a metallic dark blue paint. The Beast sculpt looks great on him and he keeps all that sculpted fur and attention to detail. In the comics, Dark Beast’s fur was depicted as black as opposed to grey, with some variance to add depth and shading. The few new parts do go a long way on capturing the likeness of the character and make him look and feel different compared to other variations of the character releases so far.
His head sculpt really captures his likeness and immediately catches your attention. The proportions are better and the braided hair is a nice touch. The facial details are really good including the attention to detail in the fangs, eyes, pointy ears and mouth, and the sculpted details on the hair really define the character.
Dark Beast includes a set of interchangeable hands, including the hammer for Sugar Man. Getting the figure to pose in some of the movements that Beast is known for was a bit challenging especially getting him to stand on one hand. He comes with the same four hands that previous figures were given, which works great for this figure as well. His articulation is the same and we highlighted that in the video.
Overall, Dark Beast is a great figure that fans will absolutely will be happy with. The attention to detail and character likeness is great to the source material, so make sure to grab him and others in the wave and build that Sugar Man figure!
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