TALOS

MARVEL LEGENDS (HASBRO)

“Talos, a celebrated Skrull warrior, grapples with what it means to be a leader as he finds himself at odds with those closest to him.”

2008’s “Secret Invasion” storyline, which ran through most of the Marvel line for that year, isn’t a favorite of mine.  Coming from an era of moving from one sweeping status quo shift to the next, with no room to breath between, it represents a middle point of me growing very tired with the direction of the Marvel universe.  The MCU’s plan to adapt the crossover into a television miniseries wasn’t one that initially *thrilled* me, but they’ve made me enjoy other stories I didn’t much care for in the comics, so I was hopeful.  Unfortunately, the end results the first time I’ve truly, thoroughly disliked an MCU project from start to…well, technically not finish because I stopped watching after episode 4.  One of the things I was honestly looking forward to the most was lead Skrull Talos, who was my favorite part of Captain Marvel, getting more focus.  While Ben Mendelsohn does the best he can with the material he’s been given, and Talos’s character arc is at least one of the show’s least compromised, it’s still a little bit disappointing.  At the very least, he got an action figure out of the whole thing, so I guess that’s a consolation prize.

THE FIGURE ITSELF

Talos is figure 2 in the Hydra Stomper Series of Marvel Legends, which serves as the fourth Disney+ centered assortment of figures.  The line-up is a grab bag of characters from different shows, and Talos is one of two figures from Secret Invasion.  This is Talos’ second Legends figure, after his figure from Captain Marvel.  This one depicts him in his more relaxed civilian garb.  The figure stands 6 1/4 inches tall and he has 29 points of articulation.  He’s using a pretty basic set-up for articulation, overall, but he does notably get a ball-joint at the base of the neck, rather than one of the more typical set-ups for the line.  It’s not a bad set-up, mind you, just different.  Talos is using the jacket and arms from Jimmy Woo, but it appears that everything else is new.  It’s honestly a bit surprising.  Obviously, the head I expected to be new, but the legs are kind of the sort of thing I would have expected to see re-use on.  Not that I’m complaining.  The new head is a marked improvement on the old one; the prior figure was working from preliminary designs, while this one gets the finalized ones, including a really solid likeness of Mendelsohn under all of the prosthesis.  The figure has a second head, based on Talos’ human guise, portrayed by Mendelsohn sans make-up.  It’s another really solid likeness, putting Hasbro’s previous attempts of the actor as Krennic to shame.  The other new parts are more standardized in appearance, but work well in terms of quality.  Talos’ color work is a lot of molded colors, which works well enough.  He gets a ton of detailing on both heads, however, and they look really nice, and very lifelike.  In addition to the aforementioned alternate head, Talos also gets the same hands as the standard, but in peach to match his alternate head, as well as the right leg of the Hydra Stomper Build-A-Figure.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

Like I said in the intro, I really liked Talos in Captain Marvel, and while his figure from that movie was passable at the time, it’s not aged incredibly well.  While I didn’t care for the source material, there’s no denying that this Talos is a real improvement to the original, and just a really strong figure in his own right.  The only downside to him is that the new neck connection means that I can’t swap his heads onto the old Talos or Krennic figures to let them benefit from the improved likenesses.

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.