JUBILEE

X-MEN (TOY BIZ)

“As a member of the teenage group of X-Men known as Generation X, Jubilee continues to utilize the X-Mansion’s Danger Room. Joining Storm and Gambit in a futuristic scenario, Jubilee faces the threat of a dozen mutant-hunting Sentinel robots. Caught in a Sentinel’s grappling cable, Jubilee is cut loose by Gambit, leaving her free to finish off the giant robot!”

Oh no!  Is that a girl action figure on my website?  It can’t be!   That wouldn’t be right!  What if some boy saw a girl action figure on my action figure website that’s only supposed to be for boys, and then they spontaneously turned into a serial killer?  That’s a totally reasonable and totally plausible line of logic, right?  It’s not horribly behind the times and in support of a long disproven misconception about toy sales, right?  Hang on, I’m getting an update here: everything I just said appears to an utter garbage opinion.  Well, okay, glad I have that cleared up.  Here I was thinking that the ramblings of a man that calls himself “the Toddfather” were word of law, or something.  Well, without fear of creating any serial killers or anything, I guess I’ll go ahead and review today’s intended focus.  I’m jumping back into the Toy Biz Marvel game for a little bit today, and taking a look at Robot Fighter Jubilee!  She’s like the regular Jubilee, but she fights robots.  I mean, regular Jubilee fights a lot of robots already.  Well, more robots, I guess?  Let’s go with that!

THE FIGURE ITSELF

Jubilee was released in the 19th series of Toy Biz’s X-Men line, which was dubbed “Robot Fighters,” and themed accordingly.  This marked the second of Toy Biz’s two Jubilee figures, and the only one to be in the X-Men line proper (the other was part of their Generation X line).  It’s a bit crazy that, at the height of her popularity, Jubilee only got two figures, and neither one was her main X-Men appearance, but that was ’90s toy ideals for you, I guess.  The figure stands about 4 1/2 inches tall (thanks to the crouching that befell all of the Robot Fighters figures) and she has 7 points of articulation.  The Robot Fighters saw elbow and knee joints dropped, but Jubilee does at leas get extra mobility on her shoulders.  It doesn’t do a ton for her in terms of the poses she can pull, but it’s not terrible.  Jubilee’s sculpt was an all-new piece and…well, it’s an interesting approach.  She’s sporting a look that’s not really drawn from anything in the comics, though it’s not as thought it looks particularly out of place amongst the designs of the time.  The sculpt ages up Jubilee a little bit, something they were kind of starting to do a little bit in the comics, and the longer hair does line-up with her slight redesign from The Animated Series‘ final batch of episodes.  As with the rest of this particular assortment, Jubilee is quite pre-posed, though she does make out a little better than the male figures from the line-up.  Perhaps the oddest part of the figure is the random Spidey-pose hand on the left side.  She’s definitely not repurposing any molds or anything, so I guess she’s just doing the pose because she’s a fan?  It’s definitely goofy, but why start taking issue with that now, right?  Jubilee’s color scheme isn’t really classic Jubilee, but does seem to at least take some cues from her AoA design.  It’s not too hideous, and she stands out from the rest of the team at least.  The paint application is generally pretty good. There are few odd spots where there shouldn’t be, but I’ve certainly seen worse.  Jubilee is packed with a giant Sentinel hand, by far the most sensible of the Robot Fighters extras.  There’s part of the tendril, and the fingers are all posable, so you can have the hand trying the capture her, which is kinda cool.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

I didn’t have this figure as a kid, presumably because my parents were trying to avoid turning me into a serial killer.  Nah, that’s not really it.  It was actually because I already had the Generation X version, so I didn’t need this one.  I do remember seeing her in stores at the time, though, and kind of vaguely wanting one.  That said, I wasn’t yet into variant hunting, at least not quite so much.  So, instead, I wound up holding off on this one until relatively recently.  I got her a few years back, during one of my trips to House of Fun in New Jersey.  She’s a kind of goofy variant, with no comics basis, but I actually really like her, and she’s currently my main Jubilee on my 5-inch X-Men shelf, so she can’t be that bad.  And I promise, I’m not a serial killer.