ERIC THE RED

X-MEN (TOY BIZ)

It’s Friday, and that means we’re flashing back into another figure addendum!  I get to dive back into the world of Toy Biz Marvel, which is of course one of my very favorite things.  Specifically, I’m going back to my own personal earliest days, and revisiting the one and only ever action figure of X-Men antagonist Eric the Red!

Eric the Red was a famous Viking, known for being the father of—wait, sorry. That’s not the right Eric the Red. Right. Umm… Eric the Red was an alias used by X-Man Cyclops in order to infiltrate a group of villains so he could rescue the rest of the X-Men. What? Still not right? Hang on….

Here it is: Eric the Red was a member of the Shi’ar Empire, the alien race most notable for really hating the Phoenix. He actually stole the identity from Cyclops, for reasons unknown, and used Shi’ar tech to mind control Havok and Polaris into battling the current team of X-Men. Mostly, he’s known for his appearances in the 90s X-Men cartoon during the show’s version of The Phoenix Saga, which is what earned him this figure.

THE FIGURE ITSELF

Eric the Red was released in the “Invasion Series” of ToyBiz’s X-Men line. In all honesty, I’m a bit surprised he wasn’t part of the wave meant to tie-in to The Phoenix Saga, but I guess ToyBiz was just making everything X-Men related at the time. The figure stands a little over 5 inches tall and has 7 points of articulation. That’s a bit less than the norm, mostly due to his lack of knee joints. I’m not really sure why he’s missing them, but they do cause him to be a little difficult to get to stand properly. From a sculpting standpoint, the figure’s amazing. The 90s X-Men line could be a bit odd or overly simplistic at times (doesn’t mean I don’t still love them), but this one is genuinely great. He pretty much looks dead on to Dave Cockrum’s interpretation of the character, which is really cool to see. There’s an amazing amount of sculpted detail, and I especially love how well the head’s been handled. It just looks perfect. The paint work isn’t quite as astounding as the sculpting, but it’s all well applied, and I do really like that all the red parts have been molded in metallic red. Eric included a crazy space blaster, which fit very nicely in his hand.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

Eric was a Christmas gift from my parents. I received him, along with Havok, I believe. He was a very early addition to my action figure collection, and as such, I have a lot of nostalgia for this guy. It also helps that he was in The Phoenix Saga, which I owned on VHS, and that he is also just a pretty great figure. He also made for a really great bad guy for just about anyone to fight, which is always cool. 

This review came from roughly the middle of the first year, and was a very early review for Toy Biz X-Men.  He’s only the second mainline figure I looked at here on the site, which is honestly a pretty deep pull, but also feels very appropriate for me.  I think my review’s generally not bad.  It helps that he’s a figure I genuinely like a lot, and I think that comes through pretty well.  I do still have a few notes.  Firstly, my figure was missing his “crazy space blaster” as I dubbed in my review, which I have subsequently replaced.  It’s a pretty basic piece, and he does hold it well.  Something I glossed over in Eric’s review, but talked more about in my year-end wrap-up review for Havok, is that Eric and Havok are my first two X-Men figures, purchased for me by my father for Christmas the year they came out.  Allegedly, my mother raised some concern that I wouldn’t know the characters, but that was pretty well squashed when I opened them Christmas morning.  Eric doesn’t maintain quite the same significance for me that Havok does, but he’s still pretty up there, and I do still really love this figure.