THE BEAST — SPACE RIDERS

X-MEN (TOY BIZ)

Fun FiQ Fact #0105: The Beast’s real name is Henry McCoy, and he’s a doctor, which can get real confusing if you call him Dr. McCoy while he’s on a space mission.

Spaaaaaaaaaaaaace Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiders!!!!!!  Oh, yeah, gonna look at some more Space Riders.  You know, cuz it’s a set of five and I’ve looked at four of them, so, like, let’s wrap that up, I guess.  Now, the undeniable heavy hitters of the set are Wolverine, Cyclops, and Jean Grey, so they’re a lock.  Xavier does a lot with the space side of things, and he’s rarer with action figure coverage, so he’s decent.  But, if you’re doing five of them?  Who else do you do?  There’s got to be some degree of playing favorites, I suppose.  Whatever the chase, the choice was Beast, whose scientifically-inclined mind certainly sets him up for success in a space-faring environment.  So, here he is, I guess.

THE FIGURE ITSELF

Beast is the fifth and final figure from the “Space Riders” set that Toy Biz released in 1997 as part of their X-Men line.  The figure stands about 5 1/2 inches tall and he has 8 points of articulation.  The articulation scheme is fine.  Restricted a bit, since he doesn’t have any elbow or wrist movement.  Also, he lacks any ankle movement, which was kind of a standard for Beast, to help with his crouching poses.  This one has to rely on some slightly more awkward posing to accomplish it.  The figure’s design goes for the “add some armor to the character’s usual look” angle, which we saw with both Jean and Logan.  In Beast’s case, that means a good portion of his body is just completely uncovered, which doesn’t really seem ideal for space, but, you know, maybe there’s a good scientific explanation for it?  Hank would probably know, I guess.  Beast’s sculpt is all-new, like the rest of the set.  It’s a rather unique one, not really following in the footsteps of any of the other Beast figures Toy Biz put out.  It’s…interesting.  The head keeps the hair more tame and refined, more in line with his earlier furred appearances.  The face isn’t quite right for that, though, and feels kind of, I don’t know, un-Hank McCoy-like.  The body sculpt has a good variety of textures, which at least keeps things visually interesting.  The fur texturing in particular is quite impressive.  The color work on this figure is a lot of blue and yellow, consistent with the others in the set.  The paint application is notably cleaner on this guy than the other four, at least for my set, which I certainly like.  As with the others in the set, Hank is packed with a face mask and a big space sled thing.  His sled is, understandably, much larger than the others.  It’s got a lot more vertical play, and there’s a large cannon thing…I don’t know that it works as well as a vehicle on its own as some of the others, but it works well as part of the larger interlocking vehicle assembly.

THE ME REMAINDER OF THE EQUATION

After passing on the whole set many times when they were new, I finally managed to snag a whole set of them this past fall, courtesy of Factory Antique Mall.  Beast, much like the figure proper, was just along for the ride.  If I was getting the whole set, I was getting him.  He’s not as phoned in as Jean, but he’s definitely not the strongest entry in the set either.  But, I have the whole set, and they do look pretty fun together.