CAPTAIN AMERICA & BUCKY

AMERICAN HEROES (TOY BIZ)

“Taking Part in the U.S. Army’s Super-Soldier program during the World War II, Steve Rogers was transformed into red-white-and-blue shield-throwing Captain America! Fighting against the enemies of freedom, Cap inspired millions of people around the world with his bravery–and one of these people was teenager, Bucky Barnes. Learning the secret of Captain America’s true identity, Bucky became Cap’s friend and sidekick–joining him to fight evil on their many adventures as they became two great American Heroes!”

Fighting Nazis: it never goes out of style!

Captain America and his sidekick Bucky Barnes debuted alongside each other in Captain America Comics #1 in 1941, and remained a pretty fixed pair for their first seven years of existence.  However, when Cap was revived in the “modern” age in the ‘60s, it was revealed that the accident that froze Cap also killed Bucky.  For 40 years, Bucky was on the list of exceptions to the “nobody stays dead in comics” rule, alongside the likes of Jason Todd, Uncle Ben, and Gwen Stacy.  Boy, that’s a shorter list these days, huh?  During his 40 years being dead, Bucky was kind of rare on the toy front.  Cap and his related characters were generally on the rarer side in general during the early Toy Biz days, but Bucky did get one figure during the run, alongside another figure of Cap himself.

THE FIGURES THEMSELVES

Captain America and Bucky make up the “American Heroes” two-pack, released as a one-off two-pack as part of Toy Biz’s wider 5-inch Marvel range in 1998.  They had an edition size of 20,000, at least according to the package.  The pack includes the two figures, as well as a magnetic address book with an illustration of the two on the front.  Why do they come with an address book?  Great question.  No clue.  But there it is, and Toy Biz isn’t taking my calls.

CAPTAIN AMERICA

There were seven Captain Americas in Toy Biz’s 5-inch line, and four of them were variations on the same figure.  This is one of those four.  The figure stands about 5 3/4 inches tall and he has 9 points of articulation.  His mold is a re-use of the Electro Spark release from the Spider-Man line in 1996.  The mold has its ups and its downs.  It was certainly one of Toy Biz’s favorites for the character, but it’s rather big and bulky, and he’s quite angry looking.  All that said, it’s got a sort of quaintness to it, and I find myself always enjoying it whenever I mess with it.  The sculpt remains unchanged here, so this figure has two notable change-ups.  Firstly, there’s the paint work.  The actual paint masks remain the same as the Electro Spark version, but the colors themselves have changed.  The blue is notably a much brighter shade, his skin isn’t quite as pale, and the white sections have a more pearlescent sheen.  On my copy, the general application also seems to be a little cleaner than his earlier release.  It’s just a much better set-up than the prior figure, and really the best this mold got to look.  The other change-up is on the accessories, or rather accessory.  He drops the weird transforming armor bit, and instead of the really thick light-up shield, he gets a more proper version, which is similar to the one with the Marvel vs Capcom figure, but less fragile.

BUCKY

The still very much dead at this time Bucky had never gotten a figure prior to this, making him very definitely the selling point of this set.  He’s seen here in his classic attire, because what else are you going to put Bucky into, I guess?  The figure stands right at 5 inches tall and he has 10 points of articulation.  Bucky is a total parts re-use like Cap, but since this was the first Bucky figure ever, he’s re-using parts from other characters.  He’s mostly re-using parts from the Incredible Hulk line’s Doc Samson figure, topped off with the head of Peter Parker.  Samson’s kind of bulky and muscle-bound for what I’d usually think of for Bucky, but at the same time, when paired off with that really quite large Captain America sculpt, he doesn’t feel too crazy out of place.  If I had to hazard a guess, I’d say Samson was largely chosen because he has the cuffed boots already.  He doesn’t have Bucky’s cuffed gloves or collar, though.  In the case of the gloves, he gets extra wrist cuff pieces made from cloth, while the collar is just ignored by the sculpt all together.  The paint does what it can to transform the re-used parts into something more Bucky-like.  The head’s mask does an okay job of differentiating him from Peter, and most of the costume elements are fine.  As is so often the case, you have to ignore some sculpted details that just get painted over, in this case Samson’s etched-in collar to his shirt.  They do at least use the front of that detail as the top of Bucky’s jacket flap, so it could be worse.  The red collar being painted is probably the weakest element here but ultimately, it all works a bit better than expected.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

As a kid, I spent a lot of time watching my VHS copies of the Ruby-Spears Captain America cartoons, which Bucky figures quite prominently into.  As such, I was always eager to add a Bucky to my collection, and I recall being very excited when this set was announced.  Unfortunately, it never really showed up in stores near me, so I never got one.  Bucky had my animated Nightwing figure as his stand-in, with a story that he had actually been woken up years before Cap and that was why he was older and his hair was longer…did I come up with the Winter Soldier idea in 2000?  Maybe, but also is it really *that* original an idea?  I assure you that 8-year-old me certainly didn’t have a Russian sleeper agent angle…mostly because I didn’t really know what that was.  I’m getting sidetracked.  I’ve had my eye out for this set for a while, and I finally found one for a price I liked over the summer, so here it is.  I like it a lot.  Cap is the best version of this mold they did, and that’s pretty cool.  Bucky feels like he *shouldn’t* work being cobbled together the way he is, and yet, in “whole is better than the sum of the parts” situation, he really just does.