FUTURE APOCALYPSE

X-MEN (TOY BIZ)

The X-Men were kinda big in the ‘90s.  Not sure if you guys knew that.  They were big enough to serve as a pretty good kick-off for the still fairly new to the market Toy Biz, who made quite an empire out of those merry mutants.  Early on, the figures were pretty straight-forward translations of the comics designs (with one or two Animated designs, such as Morph, thrown in for good measure), but as the decade progressed, they started running out of characters to scrape from the bottom of the X-Men barrel, and headed towards some slightly more gimmicky concepts, which allowed them to rehash some of the previously released characters in different and exciting ways.  One such gimmick was “Missile Flyers,” a series of four wing-ed variants released in 1997.  Today, I’ll be looking at Apocalypse from that series!

THE FIGURE ITSELF

As noted in the intro, Apocalypse (or “Future Apocalypse” as the box refers to him) is one of the four figures in the “Missile Flyers” series of Toy Biz’s X-Men line.  The figure is about 7 inches tall and he has 11 points of articulation.  His design is a bit removed from the usual Apocalypse look.  He’s far more exaggerated and mechanized than usual.  I think it’s still a comic-based design, but I honestly don’t know exactly where it hails from.  It’s certainly an interesting look for him, though it does make him look more like a Spawn villain than an X-Men character.  It’s probably all that crazy exaggeration on the proportions.  The actual quality of the sculpt is pretty top notch.  There’s a lot of great detail work throughout, especially on the mechanics of the neck.  That looks pretty darn cool!  He does have a little trouble standing, mostly due to the sheer size of his upper arms, but you can get him to remain fairly sturdy with some careful posing.  While most of the Missile Flyers figures had separate, removable pieces for their missile-firing wings that earned them their name,  Apocalypse actually had his wings worked into the main figure.  Each of the wings is on a rotating hinge, allowing them to either be deployed over his shoulders or brought down over his front to form a sort of a robe type thing.  The two halves even form a cool A symbol, like Apocalypse is prone to sport, which  is a cool touch.  The paintwork on Apocalypse is decent enough.  It’s a lot of blues, greys, and silvers, which is right for the character.  My figure’s a little worse for wear, but still pretty good.  He’s not the most colorful figure ever, but it works for him (and was a good contrast to the other figures in the set).  Apocalypse was packed with a large missile, which can be fired from the hole in the middle of his torso (that’s gotta hurt!).

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

Apocalypse isn’t one of my actual ‘90s purchases.  As a matter of fact, I never got any of the Missile Flyers when they were initially released, despite quite liking them.  I ultimately ended up finding Future Apocalypse at a Goodwill this past Father’s Day (along with the bunch of Masters of the Universe figures I reviewed about a month or two back).  I’ve never been the biggest Apocalypse fan, but I like him well enough that I was urged to pick up this figure, and I have to say, he’s actually pretty cool!