NIGHT THRASHER

MARVEL LEGENDS (HASBRO)

“The founder of the New Warriors, Dwayne Taylor is a martial arts master clad in a special combat suit.”

Night Thrasher!  He’s the Thrasher what thrashes at Night! Yeah…that’s all I got.  The New Warriors are a team I can definitely appreciate as a team, made up of characters I definitely won’t turn down as action figures, but I can’t say I know too much about any of them, Night Thrasher included.  As the bio notes, he’s the team founder, and was one of the active members during the team’s ill-fated mission that kicked off the events of Civil War, leading to his death.  But it’s comics, so that didn’t really stick.  Now he’s got an action figure!

THE FIGURE ITSELF

Night Thrasher is figure 4 in the Kingpin Series of Marvel Legends.  He’s not the first New Warrior we’ve gotten, but Nova and Darkhawk were far more modern than he is, so he’s definitely the first one to really commit to it.  The figure stands 6 1/4 inches tall an he has 32 points of articulation.  Night Thrasher’s built on the Bucky Cap body, though like a good number of the recent figures to be built on it, he’s mostly built out of adjacent parts.  The only true Bucky Cap parts are the upper legs and pelvis.  He also makes use of Beetle’s torso, and Taskmaster’s arms and lower legs, as well as a brand-new head sculpt and add-ons for his belt and the bandanna on his leg.  The Beetle and Taskmaster pieces are inspired choices for the figure, and actually end up being quite close to Night Thrasher’s typical comics get-up.  It’s also nice to see them turn up again, since they hadn’t really shown up since their first use.  The new head is a good translation of Night Thrasher’s distinctive helmet from the comics, and is made with a few different parts glued together, allowing for some proper depth to the design.  The belt is interesting, because at first glance it’s identical to the one used on Puma.  However, Puma’s belt has an extra detail stamped on the front that Night Thrasher lacks, meaning they aren’t just the same mold.  I’m genuinely amazed that Hasbro didn’t just use paint to differentiate the two.  Whatever the case, it’s a nice belt.  The one piece I’m not super crazy about is that bandana on his leg, because it never wants to stay in place, and just generally gets to be rather annoying when posing the figure.  Night Thrasher’s paintwork is pretty solid, and not quite as simple as it might look at first glance.  The finish on the black sections of the costume is different depending on if it’s supposed to be armor or cloth, which keeps him from being too one-and-done.  The red sections are suitably eye-catching, and the use of accenting helps to highlight all the nice sculpted details in his belt.  Night Thrasher is the best accessorized figure in the set.  It starts off with the a re-use of those same batons we’ve gotten so many times prior, but they’re made more awesome by the inclusion of a back-pack to mount them on (the back-pack also conveniently covers the wing ports from the Beetle torso).  He’s also got his skateboard, which is a pretty awesome piece in its own right, and can also be stowed on his back when he’s not using it.  I really appreciate his ability to keep all of his accessories on him.  It makes him feel like a more complete package on the shelf.  Lastly, he comes with the left leg of Kingpin.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

Despite not being overly familiar with the character, Night Thrasher was one of the figures I was most looking forward to from this set.  Something about his design just seems so inherently toy-etic.  Hasbro did a really good job on this guy, and wisely balanced new and old parts to make a very unique feeling figure.  I foresee this guy being a real fan-favorite.

Night Thrasher from my friends at All Time Toys.  He’s currently in-stock at their webstore.  If your looking for other Legends or other toys both old and new, please check out All Time’s website and their eBay storefront.