INVISIBLE WOMAN

MARVEL LEGENDS (HASBRO)

“After receiving superpowers, Sue Storm Richards co-founds the Fantastic Four and emerges as the single-most powerful member of the group.”

Is it weird that it’s become so passé to review Fantastic Four Marvel Legends these days?  I mean, it was the astronomically huge deal back in 2017 when the Walgreens-exclusive Sue kicked off that line, and now they’re sort of a yearly thing.  I mean, I’m certainly not complaining.  I love the FF, and my truest love of them comes from the ’90s cartoon and its corresponding toy line, which served to really introduce me to the team.  I get very nostalgic, and Hasbro’s really gaming to tap into my era of nostalgia these days, I suppose.  They’ve been doing the retro-card thing for a bit, and the FF is finally getting in on it.  I’m thrilled you guys.  Thrilled.  So, let’s kick this off with our latest version of Sue Storm, the Invisible Woman!

THE FIGURE ITSELF

Invisible Woman is part of the FF-themed Retro Collection assortment of Hasbro’s Marvel Legends.  They’re all patterned on the packaging for Toy Biz’s own Fantastic Four line from the ’90s, which makes them a little more removed from the other Retro Collection figures, apart from the Fan Channel Dr. Doom from last year, who officially debuted the packaging style.  To match the style of the package, Sue is wearing her John Byne-designed costume from the ’80s/’90s.  These are by far my favorite costumes for the team, so I’m pretty psyched to see them show up.  The figure stands about 6 inches tall and she has 27 points of articulation.  Like the last two Sue figures, she’s built on the Phoenix body.  It’s a good match for how Sue is usually depicted, and is just generally a pretty nice body, so it makes sense to use it again here.  The main change up is that she gets a new head sculpt.  It’s based on earlier in Byrne’s run/the cartoon run, which makes sense, since it’s a far less dated appearance than the mullet.  It’s…well, okay, it’s better than I’d expected.  I’ll say that from the start.  When the first pictures were shown off, it looked pretty bad.  In hand, it looks a lot less bad.  I don’t know that I’d venture into calling it good, but it’s less bad.  It’s not the hair; that actually works well.  It’s definitely the face, which just has to be viewed from exactly the right angle to really work, and it’s very hard to find that sweet spot.  There have been some pretty great customs that have swapped out one of the other two Sue faces under the hair, and it honestly looks pretty good, so I might be trying that myself.  Sue’s paint work is generally pretty good.  Rather basic, as you’d expect, but the application’s pretty clean.  As is usually the case with the Byrne costumes, they’ve gone for a darker blue, rather than an almost black like Byrne intended, but that’s just the name of the game at this point.  I actually quite like the color, so I’m really okay with it.  Sue is packed with two sets of hands, as well as the invisible shield effect we saw on the last release.  As with most Retro releases, it’s a little lighter than the standard, but it’s not terrible.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

Did I mention that these costumes are my favorites for the team?  I don’t know if I’ve brought that up enough yet.  Well, they are, and I’ve been wanting a good set of them since the FF came back into modern Legends.  I was elated by the announcement of this set, and I’ve been eager to get them since.  Sue wound up being the first one I got, since she got traded into All Time loose a couple of weeks before the wholesale stock arrived.  I’m kind of glad it worked out that way, because it allowed me to appreciate her on her own before the rest of them arrived, which was to her benefit.  She’s the weakest figure in the set, there’s no doubt of that, but that’s less because she’s a bad figure, and more because she just doesn’t quite stick the landing the way the others do.  I’m still very happy to have her, and I still think she’s a good figure.  Sue’s certainly had worse.

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.