YELLOWJACKET

MARVEL LEGENDS — MARVEL STUDIOS: THE FIRST TEN YEARS (HASBRO)

“The new lead of Pym Industries, Darren Cross, threatens to sell his highly weaponized Yellowjacket suit to the criminal organization Hydra.”

The Marvel Cinematic Universe’s second phase was, amongst other things, characterized by a slightly lackluster batch of antagonists.  There are a variety of reasons for this, chief amongst them being that most of them weren’t really designed for long-term use, so they were sort of designed as disposable.  Since there wasn’t much investment into them, they were largely left untapped for toy coverage.  Ant-Man was particularly light on coverage, with only a few different versions of Scott in the main suit (and even then, they were all kind of inaccurate), and nothing barring Minimates for the film’s main antagonist, Darren Cross, aka Yellowjacket.  Fortunately, he was on the short list for the the First Ten Years sub-line of Legends from 2018, so he wasn’t *totally* left out.  I’m looking at that figure today!

THE FIGURE ITSELF

Yellowjacket one half of the Ant-Man-themed two-pack that made up entry 8 in the Marvel Studios: The First Ten Years sub-line of Marvel Legends, with the other half being a slightly updated version of Scott Lang in the Ant-Man suit.  The figure stands about 6 1/2 inches tall and he has 32 points of articulation on the main body, plus an additional 14 points of articulation on the backpack and its arms.  The core figure is a little bit restricted, especially by modern standards, but was fairly average for 2018, I suppose.  Given that Yellowjacket’s not a particularly agile character in the film, he’s pretty workable with what he’s been given.  Yellowjacket sports a sculpt that was all-new to him, and which has not been re-used since this figure.  It’s honestly a pretty strong one.  Yellowjacket’s entire character was completely reworked for the film, and that extended to his costume, which only kept trace elements of Hank Pym’s Yellowjacket costume from the comics, instead building something that’s a far more armored up, and a little bit more menacing.  Since this figure was released a few years after the film, he’s got the benefit of being more accurate than the basic Ant-Man had been at the time of the initial film tie-ins.  Some of the exact line-work of the suit’s design isn’t a 100% exact match, but it’s definitely very close, and the detailing is honestly pretty impressive.  They’ve included all of his hexagonal texturing on the yellow sections, and I particularly like how the helmet and its nested visor design have turned out in figure form.  The paint work on Yellowjacket’s not too terribly involved, since it’s really just doing the two-toned thing.  It generally handles it well, though, as the application’s all pretty clean, there’s no notable missing details, and I do dig the metallic yellow.  There’s a slight discrepancy in the exact shade of the yellow between a few spots, but it’s overall rather minor.  While the Ant-Man in this set got an unmasked head, Yellowjacket went without.  He did, however, get a re-used mini Yellowjacket from the 2015 Ant-Man release, so that was nifty.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

I passed on this figure when it first hit, largely because I just wasn’t feeling the need to pick up another Ant-Man just to get this one.  Given his minor nature in the overall scheme of things, I felt alright about that decision, but I did still *kinda* want one.  Thankfully, I was able to get my hands on a loose one when he came through All Time.  This figure’s a little bit dated compared to more recent releases, but he’s honestly a bit better than I was expecting him to be, and I’m glad I got the chance to grab him!

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.