Tag Archives: Most Wanted

#3850: X-Man

Posted by Ethan Wilson in Reviews and tagged with , , , , ,

X-MAN

MARVEL’S MOST WANTED (TOY BIZ)

“Nate Grey is a stranger in a strange world. He’s a survivor of the Age of Apocalypse – a world like ours, but one where the evil mutant Apocalypse ruled supreme. Now, after that world’s ruin, Nate finds himself on our Earth, struggling to save it from a similar destiny. Genetically engineered to be the most powerful psi-talent ever, Nate’s discovered that the psychic strain may be too much for his body to handle. Nate has also found that he bears a striking resemblance to the future warrior known as X-Man Cable…”

By-and-large, the sweeping changes made by the “Age of Apocalypse” crossover were swept back to other way when the even ended, reverting the main cast of characters back to their mainstream counterparts without much fuss.  But, what of the characters who didn’t have a counterpart?  Well, a small handful of them actually got to stick around, at least for a little bit.  Nate Grey, aka X-Man, was *technically* the equal number to Cable, but with a different backstory and direct lineage, as well as a quite different ultimate outcome in terms of character, he got kept around for a bit past the event’s wrap-up.  That wound up being extra fortunate, because it *also* gave him extra time to get some toy coverage!

THE FIGURE ITSELF

X-Man is the third and final figure in Toy Biz’s 1998 Marvel’s Most Wanted line.  Its an odd line-up for the name it was given.  At the time, Nate was the closest you’d get to a “heavy hitter” since he was headlining his own book (Blink would later headline Exiles, elevating her personal status a bit, at the same time that Nate was on the downswing; Spat pretty much never got time in the spotlight).  In his solo book, Nate was constantly changing out his attire, generally keeping just a general feel of look, so to go with something more directly marketable, this figure goes back to his original AoA look, which, to be fair, he also sported for a bit in the main 616.  The figure stands just over 5 inches tall and he has 14 points of articulation.  He was honestly pretty solid on the movement front, but contains an interesting design oddity.  His shoulder joints consist of a mix of swivel and ball-joint assembly, with the ball joint pegging into a swivel joint on the main torso.  Said swivel is ultimately redundant, since the ball joint can turn just fine on its own.  Why is it like that?  I don’t know.  The sculpt here is one of the more stylized of the Toy Biz run, though that was kind of true in general for this particular set.  He’s a bit pre-posed, with an odd sort of twist to the body, and he ultimately looks quite a bit elongated, especially the head.  It does end up feeling pretty true to the character, though, so I can’t really knock it.  X-Man’s paint work is generally basic; the suit consists of molded blue and painted yellow.  Application’s all pretty clean, so no issues there.  He’s packed with a rather involved display stand, presumably meant to replicate his psychic powers.  It was one Toy Biz liked a lot; it wound up re-used for Astral Doctor Strange and the Marvel Legends Human Torch.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

X-Man is the only one of this set I had as a kid.  I was at Toys “R” Us with my dad, and it was either him or Red Skull.  I only *sort of* knew him from a team-up I’d read with Spider-Man, but I’ve always been more a heroes guy than a villains guy, so X-Man it was.  In retrospect, choosing him over the Nazi does feel like the obvious choice, right?  X-Man actually got a bit of service as some non-X-Man characters, serving as the Rick Jones to my Avengers for a while, and also as a stand-in for Kid Action/Action Boy alongside my Toy Biz M. Bison, who was my go-to for Captain Action.  Look, sometimes my figure options didn’t always match up with the stories my mind needed to tell, okay? Ultimately, he’s still my favorite of the three figures, though it’s certainly nice to have him alongside the other two after all of these years.

#3846: Spat & Grovel

Posted by Ethan Wilson in Reviews and tagged with , , , , , , ,

SPAT & GROVEL

MARVEL’S MOST WANTED (MANUFACTURER)

Last week, I wrapped up my reviews of the Toy Biz X-Men Savage Land series, looking at Joseph, a very dialed into the moment character at the time of his release.  So, today, let’s dial in even further!  In the 1997 storyline that sent a portion of the X-Men to the Savage Land (which I referenced in my Joseph review), Gambit is set upon by Spat, a bounty hunter who has a past with him.  Spat and her bestial partner Grovel are more or less a footnote in the X-Men’s history, but they have the fun little side-bit of being designed by creators Scott Lobdell and Joe Madureira specifically to be too weird to make for a good transition to toy form (something most X-characters where doing at that point).  So, they made them a woman aging in reverse and a weird space lizard.  And, of course, they had their own action figures in less than a year, because of course they did.

THE FIGURE ITSELF

Spat & Grovel were released in the 1998 Marvel’s Most Wanted series from Toy Biz.  It’s…well, it’s certainly a bold name for a series that included Spat & Grovel…or really any of the figure’s from it.  But, there it was.  These two are certainly the most obscure of the three offerings, hence this also being the only time they’ve shown up as action figures.

Spat’s really the main figure here, with Grovel being kind of an accessory, much in the same way as the Savage Land sets handled their figure and creature set-ups.  The figure is about 2 1/2 inches tall and he has 5 points of articulation.  Given her smaller stature, she just moves at the basic five, and even then, the hips are v-hips, so the end result is a figure that really doesn’t move all that much.  She’s really just a stand-er.  The sculpt does an okay job of capturing Madureira’s drawings of the character, with his slightly more cartoonish proportions and stylings all pretty well present.  The head admittedly looks a bit too much like a full-grown woman’s head, on a very small body.  That being said, it’s not a terrible offering.  I do like the flow on the headband, though, as well as the texturing on the fur of her outfit.  Spat’s paint work is pretty solid.  Both the hair and outfit get some accenting work to help sell the sculpted details as well.  Spat is packed with a spear with a chain on the end of it, which she holds nicely in her left hand.

Grovel’s a big space lizard, and that’s what this figure aims to be.  He’s a big, chunky thing, a fair bit larger than Spat.  Exactly *how* much larger than Spat he’s supposed to be varied a bit in the comics, so the figure just goes for demonstrably larger, and makes it work.  He’s got base movement at the top of each leg, and the tail can twist, so there’s some slight variation in play.  He’s also got a mouth opening action feature; pushing down the front-most fins opens the mouth up a fair bit.  He’s got some cool patterning for the paint work, which is pretty fun to look at, and generally sells the whole “giant space lizard” bit rather well.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

As a kid, I had literally no clue who Spat and Grovel were, and they were new, so my dad, who was my primary source of information on “who these guys were,” didn’t know either, so I kind of just missed out on them.  As such, they were the last of this particular set I picked up, actually just a few weeks ago.  I’ve been on a real Toy Biz kick, largely because I’m finally trying to actually put them out on display, and I put the other two from this set out and figured it might be a good time to finally finish the set.  They’re a rather goofy pair of characters, and not so much toy-friendly, but at the same time, I don’t think they’re un-toy-friendly either.  And, it’s not like there’s ever going to be another version of this pair, so they’ve got that particular novelty, if nothing else.

#3050: Blink

Posted by Ethan Wilson in Reviews and tagged with , , , , , ,

BLINK

MARVEL’S MOST WANTED (TOY BIZ)

“In an alternate world where Charles Xavier has died and Apocalypse rules supreme, Clarice Ferguson is a young mutant struggling to stay alive. Fighting alongside the astonishing X-Men, Blink uses her super powers of teleportation for the good of mankind. Her mutant abilities allow her to temporarily “blink” an object out of existence with the aid of a phasing pulse. Few people know that while just a girl, Blink’s life was saved from the forces of Apocalypse by none other than Sabretooth!”

When Toy Biz did their tie-ins for the “Age of Apocalypse” event, they mostly focused on the heavy hitters in their new personas.  This left some of the more underdog characters, whose mainstream counterparts weren’t as developed, out of the picture.  Thankfully, they found some other avenues for a few of them.  Morph found his way out as a ToyFare exclusive, and Holocaust joined the main X-Men line later on, oddly shoehorned into a ninja-themed assortment.  Blink, a breakout character who in the mainstream universe was just a throwaway casualty for the original Generation X line-up, found her first foray into the toy world courtesy of the rather bizarrely named Marvel’s Most Wanted line, a figure whom I’ll be taking a look at today.

THE FIGURE ITSELF

Blink was released in 1998 as part of the three figure line-up for Marvel’s Most Wanted, an assortment that featured Blink, X-Man, and Spat & Grovel.  Not exactly the heaviest of hitters, the most wanted, or even a particularly cohesive set, but they sure were….um…released all at the same time?  Sure, let’s go with that.  The figure stands roughly 5 inches tall and she has 14 points of articulation.  Her articulation scheme marks an improvement over a lot of what Toy Biz was offering at the time…in some ways.  The shoulders are universal joints, and she’s even got wrist movement, but then she’s stuck with v-hips, and no knees.  There’s a swivel on one thigh, but not the other, which is strange to say the least.  Still, she’s capable of a good deal more poses than other figures of the era.  Blink’s sculpt was new to her, and would remain unique for Toy Biz’s run.  Since it was prior to any of her post-AoA appearances, she’s based purely on the design from there.  It’s a fair choice, especially given that it means she works with the other AoA figures Toy Biz had done up to that point.  The sculpt is a decent offering.  She’s rather stylized, as well as being slightly pre-posed.  Both of these are in keeping with the main line’s AoA assortment in terms of style, as well as the overall evolving designs of Toy Biz’s Marvel stuff at the time.  It matches well with Blink’s illustrations from the comics, and is suitably unique.  The dynamic nature of the skirt and hair does a nice job of working with the pose, and just making for quite a visually interesting figure.  Blink’s color work is generally pretty basic, but it does what it needs to.  The application’s all pretty clean, and there’s not any notable bleed over or slop.  Blink is packed with a removable cloak, a quiver with removable javelins, and a base meant to look like one of her portals.  It’s not a bad selection of extras, given that none of them are really dead weight or fillers, both of which had a tendency to crop up with the Toy Biz stuff.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

The only one of this line-up that I had as a kid was X-Man, mostly because he was the only of the characters I actually knew at the time.  I first really encountered Blink in Exiles, and by that point, this figure had kind of dried up in terms of availability.  I always wanted to pick one up, but it took me a while to get around to it.  It was actually Jess who finally got me one.  In 2017, we were driving up and down the coast a lot while in the process of a rather slow move, and one of the places we stopped had a Blink.  I mentioned to Jess that I had never gotten one, and she made a point of fixing that, because that was just how she was.  Blink was actually a favorite of hers as well, so I suppose it was kind of appropriate.  As far as first outings go, Blink was pretty solid.  She’s stylized and all, but it works for the exact nature of the character, and it’s still one of her better figures.  I mean, yeah she only has three, so I guess they’re all kind of high up there, but still…