HAWKEYE WITH SKY-CYCLE

MARVEL LEGENDS (HASBRO)

“Ex-circus performer Clint Barton renounced a life of crime to join the Avengers as Hawkeye. Using his archery skills atop his Sky-Cycle he leads the fight against the foes no single hero could withstand”

There’s a short list of Avengers members that the team just doesn’t feel like “the Avengers” without, and very prominently placed on that list is Clint Barton, aka Hawkeye.  He joined the team just over a year into their run, and remained a member in some fashion pretty consistently. So, if you’re planning a celebration of the team’s 60th anniversary, you’d be kind of hard-pressed to leave him out of the running.  Thankfully, Hasbro avoided doing just that, and gave him the deluxe treatment, even.  How about that?

THE FIGURE ITSELF

Hawkeye with the Sky-Cycle is part of the “Beyond Earth’s Mightiest” sub-line of Hasbro’s Marvel Legends. He’s a wide release item that hit with the rest of the set towards the end of the summer. Everything is it’s own separate item and price point, much like the Spidey anniversary stuff from last year, but Hawkeye is clearly meant to be continuing the Legendary Riders pricing and set-up. This Hawkeye is clearly meant to be a classic Hawkeye, which we haven’t seen in the line since the retro card one in 2018. But, where that was a redeco of the Allfather Series release, this one’s an all-new figure. He stands about 6 1/4 inches tall and he has 34 points of articulation. Hawkeye gets one major improvement over prior Hawkeyes: butterfly shoulders. Very helpful when it comes to archery poses, so it’s about time. He’s also pinless at the elbows and knees, which looks extra slick. The last handful of comic Hawkeyes have all gone for the Bucky Cap base, but with that (allegedly) retired, this one instead gets a body that appears to be entirely new, and is courtesy of sculptor Rene Aldrete. It takes what worked about prior comic Hawkeyes and really just expands on that. The head is a little sharper and less boxy, which feels truer to the character. His whole set-up on his torso is also sculpted into the chest, rather than being an overlay piece, which slims the look down a lot and also makes him far easier to pose. The skirt piece is cloth this time, rather than plastic or rubber, which makes for a far better range of motion on the hips as well. The only down points for me are the upper arm bands, which suffer a bit from the Jim-Lee-Cyclops-always-popping-out-of-place syndrome, and the knee joints, which really stick on my figure. Otherwise, I really love it. Hawkeye’s paint scheme is actually pretty solid. There’s far more accent work than we usually see on comics figures, and a nice mix of differing shades and finishes on the purples. Hawkeye is packed with two sets of hands (fists and gripping) a bow, an arrow, his quiver, and, of course, the Sky-Cycle mentioned in the title.  I like getting extra hands, but I do feel like the simple grip hands are a bit limiting.  He really struggles to hold the arrow in any convincing fashion.  Also, if they’re going to go with cloth for the skirt, it’s a shame we couldn’t also get a proper string on the bow; this one being plastic makes it very difficult to do any convincing drawback poses.  The Sky-Cycle is the bigger focus here; it’s cool and all, and even has the adjustable flight stand thingy, but I’m personally not gonna use it much.  It’s a nice way of padding the cost so that Hawkeye could get a slightly more deluxe treatment, though, I suppose.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

I liked my Toy Biz Hawkeye well enough back in the day.  Then I liked my Allfather Series one well enough after that.  I even picked up the Retro one in the interim, and I liked that one too.  So, I suppose I didn’t *need* this one.  Hawkeye’s a character that’s always been served pretty well by Legends, so the changes from figure to figure are very incremental.  That doesn’t mean this one’s not fantastic, of course.  He’s very definitely the best Hawkeye Legend, and will be very hard to top.  Heck, I like him about equally to my Marvel Universe one, and I’ve thought for quite some time that he’s the best Hawkeye ever made, so that’s pretty high praise.  I’m not sure about the whole riders thing and bumping up the price, but damn if this isn’t a really, really nice figure.

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.