MOBIUS

MARVEL LEGENDS (HASBRO)

“Mobius M. Mobius is an Agent for the Time Variance Authority who specializes in the investigations of particularly dangerous time criminals.”

While prior MCU entries have had more direct stories to adapt, Loki was sort of a blender full of various ideas rattling around the Marvel Universe.  Among those ideas was the Time Variance Authority, a concept introduced into the comics by Walt Simonson and Sal Buscema, during Simonson’s run on Thor in 1986.  Initially, the staff of the TVA were all clones of real-world Marvel editor Mark Gruenwald, who had been instrumental at mapping out the Marvel multiverse, as well as cataloging its occupants via the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe.  The TVA’s most prominent agent was Mobius M. Mobius, whose character was adapted as a major player in Loki, now played by Owen Wilson.  Wow.  And, despite just being another guy in a suit, he did get an action figure.  Double wow.

THE FIGURE ITSELF

Mobius is a Target-exclusive Marvel Legends offering.  He just started hitting Target shelves across the country in the last few weeks, and he’s already being called a peg warmer, so we’re on track with how these things go, I suppose.  The figure stands 6 1/4 inches tall and he has 30 points of articulation.  I was all ready to write this one off as just being a pretty straight re-use of the Coulson body, but as it turns out, it’s actually not.  The arms and legs are the same, but the torso has been replaced with an all-new one, this time with a ball-joint at the middle, rather than the ab-crunch like before.  I’m not entirely sure why they made this change, but it is a little more posable when taking the jacket into account.  Oddly, despite this new sculpt getting him the proper belt buckle, he still has a standard shirt collar, instead of the one that goes all the way to the shoulders, as was the style for all of the TVA suits.  It’s largely hidden by the jacket, but still.  He does at least get the proper jacket with the inverted collar, so that’s cool.  Also, he gets an all-new head sculpt, of course, which sports a pretty spot-on likeness of Wilson in the role.  Weird broken nose and all.  The figure’s paint work is fairly bland, as is appropriate.  The application on the face is up to the usual standards these days, and looks quite lifelike.  I also quite like the patterning on the tie; it’s a nice extra visual touch for the character.  Mobius is packed with his tablet and pruning wand, both of which are pretty key to the character, and also seem like good choices for potential re-use if we wind up getting more Loki-based figures.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

The fact that Owen Wilson hasn’t gotten an action figure up to this point seems odd, if I’m honest, so the fact that we actually got one here was nifty.  I also really liked Mobius as a character, so I was down for the figure pretty much as soon as it was shown off.  I wasn’t really jamming on it as a Target-exclusive, but it seems this one isn’t going to be quite so impossible to get, which I consider a plus.  I myself was able to snag one through Target.com, so I didn’t even have to leave home to get it.  He’s not breaking the mold or anything, but he’s still a generally fun figure, and it’s nice to have him to go with Loki and Sylvie.