HAWKEYE

AVENGERS: UNITED THEY STAND (TOY BIZ)

“Clint Barton is the heroic marksman known as Hawkeye. A master acrobat and hand-to-hand combatant, Barton has honed his bow-and-arrow skills to near superhuman accuracy. Drawing the high-tech weapon from his back, and locking it with chest piece, this ace archer utilizes his custom-built arsenal of arrows, and laser sighting to trounce all evil powers. As one of Earth’s mightiest heroes he answers the call, ‘Avengers Assemble!'”

At the end of next month Hawkeye premiers on Disney+, finally giving Jeremy Renner’s live action version of the character a proper focus after being purely an ensemble player for five films.  Hawkeye’s got a pretty rich comics history to draw from, so it’s great to see them finally take a little more note of Clint Barton.  As a quintessential Avenger, he’s almost always included in Avengers projects, of course, including 1999’s Avengers: United They Stand, where he served as one of the show’s focal characters.  Since he was a team member not named “Scarlet Witch” he got a toy out of it, which I’ll be taking a look at today!

THE FIGURE ITSELF

Hawkeye was part of the second assortment of the United They Stand tie-in line from Toy Biz.  It was, as noted before, a purely clerical division, as they all shipped at the same time.  This marked Hawkeye’s third figure from Toy Biz, and would be one of four released during their tenure with the property.  The figure was somewhat oddly on the taller side, standing a little over 5 1/2 inches tall and sporting 10 points of articulation.  Hawkeye was a slight step down from the rest of the line on the movement front.  The legs are up to the same base level as others (though the hips are a bit more restricted by the costume design), but his arms don’t get elbow joints.  His right is already bent, and has a bicep cut joint to add some extra movement.  Maybe they though elbow joints would make the arms too weak to hold the bow properly?  Hawkeye’s sculpt was an all-new one, based on his much maligned design from the show.  Generally, I didn’t hate any of the looks the way other people did, and I don’t really hate Hawkeye’s look either, but I will say he’s probably the weakest of the main team in terms of design.  I’m very much a classic Hawkeye fan, so I hesitate when it comes to anything that doesn’t have at least the old mask design.  Also, the armor looks a little goofier on him than the others.  All that said, it fits the general aesthetic they built with the show, and I don’t hate it.  The figure’s sculpt is a reasonable match for his design as seen in the show.  Like the others, he’s been slightly tweaked in terms of stylizing in order to fit better with the rest of Toy Biz’s Marvel output at the time.  The one notable thing here is that his head was clearly sculpted based on the initial design for Hawkeye (seen in most of the show’s promotional material), which had a headband, rather than the proper mask.  Fortunately, it was an easy enough thing to change convincingly with just some paint.  Speaking of paint, his was generally okay.  Nothing amazing or anything, but he follows the show’s look pretty well, and there were no glaring issues.  Mine has taken a little bit of wear over the years, but not too much.  Hawkeye was packed with his bow, which is absolutely huge, by the way, as well as six different styles of arrows.  I’ve only got two of them left from my stock, but they’re pretty cool, and even had metal at the ends so that you could use the magnet in Hawkeye’s right hand to draw them back and fire them.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

Hawkeye was nearer the end of my purchases for the line, I believe.  He was never quite as hard to find as the others.  He was one of the few I actually found in the store myself, as opposed to having someone else just get it for me.  I already had the Iron Man Hawkeye, which was really always my go-to version, even after getting this one, so this guy really just tended to be auxiliary.  He’s not bad, all things considered, but he’s probably one of the weaker ones from this particular set.