GIANT-MAN

MARVEL LEGENDS (HASBRO)

Hey, guess what time of year it is!  It’s time to review a Haslab!  Man, it’s crazy how I do this *every* year with no breaks.  What’s that? There was a break?  I missed a year?  Oh, man, how did that happen?  Oh, yeah, Engine of Vengeance.  Boy was that a whole thing.  But also, it seems so quaint nowadays, doesn’t it?  Ah, well, at least we got back on the horse…or Giant-Man, as it may be.  Yes, continuing the trend of updating Build-A-Figures from the Toy Biz days, Hasbro provided an update for was probably the hardest to complete of all the Toy Biz Build-A-Figures, Giant-Man.  First appearing in Tales To Astonish #49, Hank Pym’s second identity, Giant-Man, was an inversion of his previous shrinking powers, adding an important switch-up that would remain key to his identities going forward.  The identity also debuted alongside one of the greatest Marvel villains of all time that no one remembers, the Living Eraser, which I think is pretty noice.

THE FIGURE ITSELF

Giant-Man is the fourth Marvel Legends HasLab project, and the third to successfully meet its funding goal.  The campaign for Giant-Man ran last year from September 9 to October 23, needing 10,000 backers to go into production.  It ultimately ended with 13,889 backers, putting it at just 111 shy of the third stretch goal.  It’s the lowest backer count of the successful Haslab projects, but it’s not a huge shock given that it’s Giant-Man, and he’s got more limited appeal than the other two, and also isn’t getting caught up in all the pandemic speculation buying.  This guy started shipping out to backers at the end of last month.  The figure stands 24 inches tall and he has 90 points of articulation.  While he’s the shortest of the three HasLabs, he’s also the most articulated, which feels like a good trade off.  In general, he does just feel a but more mobile than the other two, which is honestly pretty nice.   The only thing I’m not crazy about is how sticky the finger articulation is.  I’m very concerned about breakage, because they just don’t seem as solidly constructed as prior offerings.  Where Galactus and the Sentinel both used more modernized versions of their designs for the purposes of the HasLabs, Giant-Man is based more specifically on his classic look, specifically the second iteration with the “suspenders.”  Giant-Man is sporting an all-new sculpt, courtesy of sculptor Rene Aldrete.  It’s generally a pretty strong one, taking the classic design and adding enough additional “real-world” details to fill in the larger canvas a bit more.  It also generally maintains consistency with the smaller Giant-Man we got in the two-pack earlier this year.  Giant-Man’s color work is largely reliant on molded colors fitted together, which looks appropriately striking, and just generally works well.  There’s some smaller accent work that works okay, and, much like the sculpted details, fills in some of the larger canvas a bit.  At the start of the campaign, Giant-Man had three swappable face plates, and three sets of eyes.  The faces are standard, smiling, and angry, and the eyes are *supposed* to be straight ahead, off to the left, and looking down.  Unfortunately, on the eyes, it seems a rather sizable portion of the figures are actually shipping out without the correct selection of eyes.  In my case, there are no straight ahead, just two looking off to the side, which is more than a little annoying.  It seems Hasbro is planning to get replacements back out to people, but it seems things are still in the early stages there.  So, for right now, I guess he’s got a bit of Todd McFarlane syndrome going on.  Ultimately, it feels like it might have been a few too many moving parts for what’s ultimately a minimal adjustment.  The three faceplates also offer up some variety, but ultimately, I don’t see myself using anything but the standard for actual display.  Partway into the campaign, Hasbro also offered up interchangeable antenna, so that he can have either black or white.  I thought I’d prefer white, but I actually think black works a bit better at this scale. There were two possible stretch goals, both pertaining to extra looks on the head.  The one we got was the zombie one, which provides an extra faceplate, eye set, and antenna set.  Honestly, I wasn’t much sold on it, but it works surprisingly well.  It’s too bad we don’t have any other “classic” zombies to go with him, but he still looks nice with the What If…? Cap we got.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

Just when I was out, they pulled me back in!  After Galactus, I really thought I was done with HasLabs.  The Engine of Vengeance came along and seemed to confirm that for me (not that I was rooting for its failure or anything; I thought it was a decent product, I just didn’t have the space for it), but then this one showed up, and how could I say no?  I never did get to finish the Toy Biz one, so this was a cool opportunity.  He’s definitely fun.  Does he top the Sentinel and Galactus?  No, but also I didn’t expect him to.  He’s a more basic style of figure, and, apart from some slight hiccups, it works.