YONDU

MARVEL LEGENDS (HASBRO)

“A captain of a Ravager faction, Yondu is a powerful warrior shrouded in mystery.”

Okay, I can get behind the first half of this bio, but the second half is sort of losing me.  Is Yondu’s mysterious past going to be a key piece of GotG Vol 2 or something?  Because he honestly doesn’t seem that much more mysterious than the rest of the cast from the first film.  Here I am critiquing bios again.  I gotta stop with that.  So, if you hadn’t already gathered, today’s focus is Yondu, who, after being left out of Hasbro’s offerings for the first film, has found his way into Legends form for the sequel!  Let’s check him out!

THE FIGURE ITSELF

Yondu is figure 2 in the Titus Series of Marvel Legends.  He’s the last of the three movie-based figures in this particular series.  The figure stands about 6 1/4 inches tall and has 30 points of articulation.  Yondu’s appearance in Vol 2 is largely the same as his Vol 1 appearance, with the only real change being his “mohawk,” which us now an actual head-fin thing, closer to his comics design.  Yondu’s Ravager garb makes him somewhat similar to the first Star-Lord figure in design, so Hasbro’s opted to re-use a number of that figure’s pieces here.  He’s got the same pelvis and upper legs for sure, and he might have the same arms.  I say might because Yondu’s arms definitely have a texture to them that isn’t present on the first Star-Lord.  It’s possible that the first Star-Lord was *supposed* to have the texture and it was just lost in the production process, and Yondu is Hasbro learning from their mistakes.  It’s also possible they slightly tweaked the mold to help Yondu fit in better with the newer figures.  It also appears that Yondu’s torso was built on the Star-Lord torso, given that they share the same neck and basic shaping, but the differences are enough that it’s effectively a new sculpt.  There are still some slight oddities with the proportions of the Star-Lord pieces, especially the gangliness of the arms and the odd flatness of the pelvis.  Thankfully there’s the all-new long coat piece to hide some of that.  The coat is very nicely crafted, and feels a bit sharper than the Star-Lord coat it replaced.  It’s also totally removable, if you so choose; it appears that the long coat section is more of a vest thing, which goes over the base Ravager uniform.  I’d honestly not noticed that before, but it kind of explains the varying length of Quill’s jacket in the first installment.  Yondu’s torso is full detailed, front and back, and does match up with the arms, so you can display him sans coat, in theory anyway.  In practice, I find he looks rather goofy.  He also gets new hands and boots, as well as a pair of heads.  Yes, like Black Widow before him, this Yondu figure is pulling double duty, acting as Yondu from both the first and second films.  He’s packed wearing the head from the first film, which has the shorter mohawk and a spot-on Rooker grin.  The second head is sporting the sequel’s taller head-fin style mohawk, as well as whistling expression meant to go with his arrow accessory.  I generally prefer the taller mohawk, but I do wish there were a way to swap the mohawk length between the two expressions, since my ideal look would really be the tall mohawk with the grin.  Nevertheless, both head’s are really solid sculpts, and both have a pretty dead-on Rooker likeness.  Yondu’s paintwork is fairly solidly done.  I might have liked some more variety in the large sections of red, but Hasbro tends to be of the opinion of “let the sculpt speak for itself” so here it is.  It’s still worth nothing that what paint is there is in line with the much cleaner work we’ve been seeing on this line as of late (it seems that Vance was the single exception to that).  In addition to the two interchangeable heads, Yondu also includes his golden arrow; it’s sculpted with a little trail on it, as seen in the movie.  When used in conjunction with the whistling head, it makes it look like he’s controlling it, which is pretty cool.  I wish we’d also  gotten one sans trail to put in the holster; as it stands, I just have him hover his hand over the empty holster when posing him “relaxed.”  Yondu also includes the right arm of the Build-A-Figure Titus.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

Yondu seems to be one of the more popular figures in this series at the moment, so I didn’t see him the first several times I found the series at retail.  Fortunately, my parents were nice enough to keep an eye out for him, and my dad ended up picking him up from a Walgreens, where he was apparently the only GotG figure in stock (this isn’t a unique phenomenon, either.  About a week late, I saw the same thing at a Walgreens near me).  He was nearer the top of the list of the figures I wanted from this set.  I definitely like him, though I feel there are some minor issues that keep him from being quite on par with the some of the others I’ve looked at.  Still, he’s worth it for those head sculpts alone.  Those are definitely top-notch work.