GAMBIT & ROGUE

MARVEL’S FAMOUS COUPLES (TOY BIZ)

“Even though they’ve only kissed once, Gambit and Rogue are one of the X-Men’s greatest couples. Kept apart by Rogues mutant ability to absorb the memories and powers of whoever she touches, this couple still finds themselves inevitably drawn together. Whether they’re battling the Sentinels or walking side-by-side in the part, Gambit and Rogue know that there is nowhere they’d rather be than together.”

Hey, that’s not a bad bio…for the mainstream Gambit and Rogue…who these aren’t.  Confused?  Allow me to explain.  In 1996, Toy Biz dedicated a single series of their X-Men line to the “Age of Apocalypse” storyline.  It wasn’t really much coverage, but did its best to hit some of the heavy hitters.  It was originally a six figure line-up, but was cut down to five prior to release (something faced by the Iron Man and Fantastic Four lines at the same time, which led to US Agent and Adam Warlock getting cut), with the alternate universe version of Gambit winding up on the chopping block.  Not wanting to let a wholly new sculpt go to waste, Gambit was ultimately salvaged for use in a Famous Couples two-pack, alongside a similarly themed Rogue figure.  All well and good, apart from the two not *actually* being a proper couple in the alternate universe, and certainly not a “famous” one.  Ah, we’ll give them a pass on this one.

THE FIGURES THEMSELVES

Gambit and Rogue are another of the three two-packs from the Toys “R” Us-exclusive Marvel’s Famous Couples line.  Each pair was released separately, with this pair hitting in 1997, during the run’s second year.  The set includes the two figures, their relevant accessories, and a metal pin depicting the two of them.  At least it’s got more direct purpose than the weird metal thing from the Cyclops and Jean set.

GAMBIT

Gambit is really the whole reason this set exists in the first place, as a means to release the unused AoA Gambit from the main X-Men line.  The AoA Gambit design is…well, it’s something.  Of all the designs, his feels the most like it delves into different for different, and it ultimately suffers from not being nearly as striking as the mainstream equivalent.  But, it’s certainly *different* so I’ll give it that.  The figure stands just over 5 inches tall and he has 8 points of articulation. The left shoulder is spring-loaded, so he’s got sort of a flinging action.  It also robs him of his elbow movement.  The sculpt is decent enough.  Rather on the pre-posed side, but pretty much on par with the other AoA figures.  He does wind up rather contorted, especially when it comes to the neck, which looks pretty strange in most poses.  He’s also a little tricky to keep standing.  His cape is a separate piece, and it’s kind of floaty and never seems to quite sit right.  His color work does alright.  This design is a bit slapdash in its color choices, kind of like they just picked at random, but they replicate them well here.  The application’s generally okay, though the skin tone on his face is quite thick, obscuring the sculpted details quite a bit.  Gambit is packed with his staff piece, as well as an energy piece for him to throw, which is, for some reason, cast in opaque blue.

ROGUE

Rogue’s a pretty notable character in AoA, and honestly more noteworthy than Gambit, so the fact that she wasn’t even planned at all for the line-up does seem kind of odd.  There are, notably, no women in the AoA series from ’96, so it might have been a retailer thing.  At least she didn’t ultimately have to wait too long.  The figure stands a little over 5 inches tall and she has 5 points of articulation.  Since Rogue didn’t have a pre-existing mold sitting around to use, Toy Biz had to sort of improvise a bit.  They opted to re-use the mold from the Generation X White Queen figure, which isn’t a bad sculpt, but also isn’t exceedingly much like Rogue’s design from the cross-over.  I guess the head’s not too far off, and they decided to just make the rest of it work as best they could?  Honestly, it does work out a bit better than I’d expected, so I’ll give them some credit on their inventiveness there.  There’s a cloth robe/vest piece, which replaces the jacket of the original mold, and largely serves to hide a little bit more of what’s going on, which it’s ultimately okay at.  Otherwise, it’s paint work doing the heavy lifting.  It’s very much takes Toy Biz’s patented “just completely ignore the sculpted elements” approach, which is what it is.  I do like the colors, though, especially with the metallic sheen the whole thing gets.  Rogue gets a stand, which is the Generation X stand, but in gold instead of red.  Since she’s a bit iffy on her feet, the stand is certainly nice.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

Back in the early days of collecting for me, it was less immediately clear what figures actually got released.  As such, it was a little while before I learned that there was never *actually* a single release for the AoA Gambit on the back of all the boxes.  I made do at the time with the light-up release, and didn’t know of this one’s release for a few more years.  I ended up getting this one at the same time as last week’s Cyclops and Jean.  It’s nice that they were able to get the Gambit figure out in some way, and also that they found a means to release a Rogue from the story, resulting in a pretty nice selection of the AoA cast in the longer run.

Shoutout to my friends at All Time Toys, from whom I purchased these figures for review!  If you’re looking for cool toys both old and new, please check out their website and their eBay storefront.