CYCLOPS — CIVILIAN

X-MEN: THE MOVIE (TOY BIZ)

“Scott Summers, the X-Man code-named Cyclops, has the mutant ability to shoot incredibly powerful optic blasts from his eyes. These beams can destroy virtually anything and can only be contained by a substance known as Ruby Quartz. Cyclops wears a visor made of this substance to control his blasts while fighting in combat which aid in his control and accuracy of the destructive beams. The field leader of the clandestine team of outlaw mutant super heroes wears his visor and black uniform in battle to keep his secret hidden from the general public.”

This year is the 25th anniversary of the first X-Men movie, which also means its the 25th anniversary of the tie-in toyline!  One of the notable things about said toyline was its jump in scale.  Technically, Blade had also done it, but it was a rather small line, and only *sort of* messed with the scale change.  X-Men fully embraced the move to 6-inch, with a complete run of all the movie’s primary players…and then some.  In the wake of the film and initial merchandise’s success, we got a rather hastily thrown together follow-up to the main push, with a bunch of more minor costume variants for the characters.  Our boy Scott Summers was in on that push, getting his second movie based figure, which I’m looking at today!

THE FIGURE ITSELF

Cyclops (Civilian) is part of the third series of Toy Biz’s X-Men: The Movie tie-in line, which, fun fact, is most commonly referred to as the *second* series because 1 and 2 were released simultaneously to promote the movie and feature no actual distinguishing on the back of the packaging.  So, functionally, it’s the second series, but, in my mind, I know it’s the third.  The first Cyclops was based on his main team suited look, but this one is instead based on his more casual attire while he’s searching for Rogue and Logan at the train station.  Why’s he still wearing the visor if he’s trying to blend in?  I don’t know, but it makes for a cooler look, so we’re going with it.  The figure stands right about 6 inches tall and he has 10 points of articulation.  He maintains that closer to the 5-inch style of articulation, which would remain until the Spider-Man lines revamped things in the next two years.  As it stands, he’s still quite posable.  Since they’d moved up the scale, Toy Biz was able to repurpose some parts from their WCW line; Cyclops is using the body from Eric Bischoff, with a new head and jacket piece.  It’s a basic guy with a jacket and jeans, so it’s fine; the most awkward part of the whole thing is that his black undershirt is just the torso’s exposed skin at the neck painted black, but it’s honestly not that noticeable.  The new jacket makes it the more sensible canvas jacket Scott’s got in the movie, and the new head makes its…well, Scott.  It’s clearly based on the same basic sculpt as the standard Cyclops head, but it’s been scaled up a touch, made most evident by the fact that his visor is *just* a bit wider, so it floats on the head of the prior figure.  The hat is a separate, but non-removable piece, which is actually a pretty nice sculpt.  There’s a spot at the top of it that allows for a light piping feature, so he can light up his eyes without any fancy electronics.  His paint work is okay; basic, but not in a bad sense.  It does what it needs to.  Cyclops, like all of the figures from his assortment, included a small set of dog tags…for reasons?  I don’t know why, and they’re not at all to scale, but there they are.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

I got the first Cyclops right away, and I broke his visor a bit shy of right away, so he was without it.  I remember this guy’s announcement in ToyFare, and I remember eagerly awaiting his arrival.  I also remember him being rather tricky to find at first, but I did, on one of my many trips to the local mall’s KB Toys with my Grandmother.  I was non-plussed about the visor not being interchangeable, but I made do, and I ran this one into the ground just like the original.  A replacement was a little easier to find, though, than the standard, so I got a second one about six or seven years ago.  He’s nifty.  Non-essential, but he throws me back to a time where we had fewer super hero movies, and you could get a few non-essential variants of he main characters.  I dig him a lot.