SUPER ADAPTOID

MARVEL LEGENDS (HASBRO)

“Originally developed by Advanced Idea Mechanics (AIM) to combat Captain America, the Super-Adaptoid can duplicate the powers and abilities of heroes nearby allowing it to contend with the entire Avengers team”

Look, all the cool super hero teams have a green guy that copies their powers.  It’s just what’s done.  The Avengers are just part of the quota.  First debuting as simply “The Adaptoid” in 1966, after copying the powers and traits of the whole active roster of the Avengers, the robotic creation of AIM took on the monicker “Super Adaptoid,” which has pretty much stuck ever since.  He’s fought more than just the Avengers, including facing off against the X-Men (where he tussled with their *orange* guy that copied their powers, Mimic), and even got to be a regular on Hulu’s MODOK series, shortlived though it may have been.  And now he’s getting some actual proper action figure treatment that’s not just a tie-in to a weird toys to life game.  Yay!

THE FIGURE ITSELF

Super Adaptoid is part of Hasbro’s “Beyond Earth’s Mightiest” sub-line of Marvel Legends, celebrating the Avengers 60th Anniversary.  He occupies the same spot in this line that Surtur did in the “Infinity Saga” set, as an above deluxe-sized price point all his own.  This guy is ostensibly using the classic Adaptoid look, which is the best Adaptoid look.  There are some slight tweaks, and some reasons for those tweaks that I’ll get into later down in the review.  The figure stands just shy of 12 inches tall and he has 32 points of articulation.  At his core, Super Adaptoid is using a large chunk of the molds from the 12-inch Captain America that they put out back in 2016.  It’s not the craziest idea, since a lot of his elements are borrowed from Cap, and it allows him to be at that slightly larger scale that he tended to settle into after absorbing Goliath’s powers.  It does result in him leaning a bit more into the modern Cap vibe than the classic, since that’s what the molds are geared towards.  Adaptoid gets a new head, forearms, hands, and boots, as well as modified shoulders to remove the extra shoulder pads from the Cap, and an extra piece over the star to change it to the Iron Man-looking reactor.  The new head gives him that classic Adaptoid appearance, and is a nice, clean sculpt.  The new gloves and boots do move him a little more into his classic appearance, which is honestly a nice touch; they make me kind of want to see the body get adapted to a more Classic Cap in general, honestly.  He’s missing the wings that were usually present with this look, but at this point, I’m taking what I can get.  His color work is a lot of green, as it should be.  It’s not a ton of paint, but what’s there works well, and it’s cleanly applied.  Super Adaptoid is packed with an imitation Cap shield and an imitation Mjolnir, both of which are just recolored from the 12-inch releases for those two figures.  They work alright, but the Cap shield runs into some issues having to do with the changes they’ve made for this release.  The original version had removable straps, since it was able to be mounted on the back of the figure.  They’ve removed the mounting function from the core figure, and also glued the straps in place, while also giving the figure only one set of hands: gripping right and fist left.  Unfortunately, this all adds up to the figure not being to really properly get the shield in place, since the smaller strap is meant to be gripped, but there’s no left gripping hand, so you have to try and fit it over the first, which it’s not designed to go over.  The new gloves are also too large for the forearms to fit through the larger strap, which means it’s all around an awkward experience, especially without the option to take off either of the straps.  Ultimately, I popped the glove off at the fore-arm cut joint, which it’s not *supposed* to do, but it can, so it *works* but only just barely.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

I’ve been wanting a classic style Adaptoid figure of some sort for a good long while, so I was definitely excited when his name got leaked, albeit with the knowledge that he was *probably* going to be a re-tool like this.  So, I wasn’t shocked when he was shown off this way.  In hand, he’s got some issues to be sure, but I’m honestly just happy to have gotten him at all.

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.