PROFESSOR X

MARVEL MINIMATES

“Charles Xavier started with a dream, to locate young mutants and enroll them in a school using his ancestral mansion home as a base to train them to use their powers for humanity’s benefit. Prior to his forming the X-Men, Charles encountered the alien scout Lucifer in the Himalayas. To prevent interference in his race’s planned invasion of Earth, Lucifer dropped a massive stone block on Charles, crippling his legs leaving him confined to a wheelchair.”

Though not necessarily the most toyetic character out there, Professor Charles Xavier has had quite a high number of figures.  And more of them than you might expect are totally true to his comic origins.  Seriously, there’s only three figures out there that come up with some wacky excuse to let him not be in a wheel chair.  Today’s figure isn’t even one of those!  (If you’re curious, I’ve actually reviewed all three, here, here, and here).

THE FIGURE ITSELF

Professor X was part of Series 37 of Marvel Minimates.  He was originally packed with X-Force Warpath, who was an odd ball choice.  Of course, they did actually have a common theme between them; they both helped complete (or mostly complete) a particular team line-up.  In Xavier’s case, it was the ‘90s X-Men, which had been a running team for a little while at this point.   It was the third Xavier in the line, but the first to use his fancy ‘90s hover chair look.  He uses the standard ‘mate body, so he’s *theoretically* got the same height of 2 1/4 inches and 14 points of articulation as others built on the body, but that kind of is affected by the use of the chair.  The big focus here is the chair.  It was an all-new piece, and to date, this is the only time its been used.  It’s a pretty awesome piece, at least on it’s own.  It’s got a ton of detailing, especially on the inner lining, and both the arm rests also flip open to show off various gadgets.  On its own, it’s great.  The issue it faces is when you actually put Xavier into it.  It’s still not awful, but keeping the whole thing properly assembled without his legs popping the hatch open is quite a chore.  But, if you get it just right, it’s pretty nifty.  The actual figure re-uses the suit jacket/vest/tie combo that first cropped up on Justin Hammer.  It’s a little on the bulky side, but it gets the job done, I suppose.  Fortunately, if you’re not a fan of the jacket, you can remove it, and underneath is Xavier’s field jacketed look he frequently sported in the ‘90s.  It’s a fun extra, and adds a nice extra layer to the figure, and gives us a prominent look that hasn’t been done anywhere else.  Xavier includes a Cerebro helmet, which is pretty cool (even if it means he has a peg hole in his head), as well as a blanket to go over the top of his legs, and a stand to connect to his chair.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

I grabbed the two pack this guy was included in back when it was new.  At the time, my brother Christian was putting together an X-Force set, so Warpath went to him, and I kept Xavier.  He’s pretty decent, though I have to say, I’ve never found him quite as exciting as I’d hoped.