DAREDEVIL

AVENGERS INFINITE (HASBRO)

“With an armored suit and steel billy clubs, Daredevil vanishes into the night to defend the city!”

Though he’s more or less stuck with the same look since switching to the all-red number early in the ’60s, Daredevil has still managed to pick up a few different designs over the years.  In the ’90s, when everything was getting more “x-treme”, Daredevil combated the X-treme-ness with an extra armored design, dubbed Armored Daredevil, for originality’s sake.  Despite being around in the ’90s, at peak “we’re making toys of these” time, Armored DD is a slightly rarer entry in the toy world.  Toy Biz did one quick and dirty repaint version, and there’s been a Minimate, and there’s also today’s figure, courtesy of Hasbro.

THE FIGURE ITSELF

Daredevil was released in 2015 as part of the line that initially started as the Avengers Infinite line, but after losing the Avengers focus had transitioned to just Marvel Infinite.  It was, for all intents and purposes, just a continuation of the Marvel Universe line, since it was the same scale and general style.  The figure stands 4 1/4 inches tall and he has 19 points of articulation.  By this point, the line was pretty quickly cutting down on the articulation on the figures in order to keep the cost of figures down, so DD is definitely more on the restricted side of things.  This has its pluses and minuses, as it makes him a slightly sturdier figure than a lot of the MU-style figures were, but it also means there’s just not a lot of posing to be done with him.  The lack of any sort of mid torso joint is definitely the biggest limitation, but as a whole, he’s just kinda stiff.  The figure did at least have a good number of new parts.  Only the torso is a standard piece, with all of the others being new parts, which do a really nice job of capturing the armored plates of the comics design.  In this costume, Matt had ditched the holster on his leg for his clubs, and instead kept one mounted on each forearm.  This figure permanently attaches one to his left arm, just to demonstrate the concept, I guess.  It’s odd that the one with the club attached is also the same arm with a closed fist, since you would assume that he would grab each club with the opposite hand, but maybe he likes passing them between hands?  DD’s paintwork is pretty cleanly handled for the most part.  Nothing amazing, but the color work matches the comics, and it’s fairly cleanly applied.  DD was originally packed with a loose club to match the one on his arm.  Mine doesn’t have that, but he does have a billy club piece that’s not actually his, because I didn’t realize that until after taking the main photo.  Silly me.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

I was sort of interested in this figure when he was first shown off, because I have something of a soft spot for this design, but by the time he actually hit, I just never brought myself around to picking him up.  Like the Colossus figure I reviewed two weeks ago, he’s part of a collection that Cosmic Comix bought, which allowed me to get him for fairly cheap.  He’s a cool figure, and I’m glad I finally picked him up, but I can’t say I regret not buying him at full retail.  He’s just okay.