TONY STARK — A.I.

MARVEL LEGENDS (HASBRO)

NOTE: This review was written before June 6th.

“After a tragic battle, Tony Stark lives on in digital form as a hologram at the helm of a high-powered robotic suit of armor.”

It’s time to bring back Tony Stark to life!  …yuck, okay, sorry guys, I can’t let that grammatical monstrosity stand.  It’s just…wrong.  Sure is a good thing that it’s only here on my website, and no one’s spent serious money on placing it on a billboard or something.  That would be super embarrassing.  Moving on.  So, following his body going comatose, Tony Stark’s consciousness continued on as an A.I. for a bit, mostly serving as an assistant to Riri Williams’ Iron Heart, but occasionally “suiting up” on his own and occupying a more classic Iron Man armor.  One of things is more inherently toy-etic than the other, which is why we’re looking at an armored up A.I. Tony figure today!

THE FIGURE ITSELF

Tony Stark (A.I.) is figure 6 in the Mr. Hyde Series of Marvel Legends.  He’s the second non-Shang-Chi figure in the line-up, and the last single-packed figure in the set.  While Iron Man classically doesn’t have much to do with Shang-Chi, he *is* the Mandarin’s usual nemesis, so there’s at least a little bit of a tie there.  Certainly more of one than there was for Civil Warrior, and honestly, it’s more sensible than the other Iron Men we’ve gotten shoved into unrelated movie assortments.  The figure stands 6 1/2 inches tall and he has 32 points of articulation.  From a structural stand-point, this guy’s mostly a parts re-use from the 80th Iron Man, which is fairly sensible, given that the A.I. occupied a replica of Tony’s classic armor.  It’s honestly the best sculpt Hasbro’s produced for an Iron Man, and the definitive take on the classic armor, so it’s a solid choice.  Right out of the box, he’s not sporting the helmeted head, since they want to show off the hologram set-up.  So, he’s got an all-new unmasked head, designed to replicate the slightly more modern Tony that the A.I. was patterned after.  It’s a nice piece, and is quite distinctly different from other unmasked Tonys.  It’s not really my brand of Tony, personally, but it’s accurate to the source material.  He’s also got the standard classic helmeted head from the 80th figure, which was certainly the best head from that set.  The major change-up for this release is color scheme.  While the 80th figure was going for more of an Alex Ross-inspired, darker colored and metallic scheme, this one is done in flat colors.  It gives us a nice, more comic-styled red and yellow color scheme.  There’s a slightly more modernized aspect to it, with the blue for the eyes, mouth, and arc reactor, but otherwise, it feels very classic 70s.  I really like the new color scheme, and it does the sculpt a lot of justice.  In addition to having the two heads I mentioned previously, Tony also includes the two sets of hands from the 80th release, as well as a pair of repulser effects, done up in blue to match the holo head.  Also included is the right leg of the Mr. Hyde Build-A-Figure.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

As much as I loved the three 80th Avengers (and believe me, I did love them), the one thing I did notice about all three was how subdued the colors were.  I’ve been hoping to see some slightly more classically colored repaints.  Iron Man’s a good proof of concept on that, without being a straight re-release.  The colors really pop on this figure, and add a new life to him.  I genuinely don’t know which of the two I prefer, and that’s kind of a dilemma for me…

Thanks to my sponsors over at All Time Toys for setting me up with this figure to review.  If you’re looking for cool toys both old and new, please check out their website and their eBay storefront.