Tag Archives: Scott Lang

#0671: Ant-Man & Ant

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

ANT-MAN & ANT

MARVEL’S ANT-MAN (HASBRO)

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Ant-Man was a pretty fun movie. It really was. Also, seeing as the main character’s whole gimmick is his size changing, toy makers get an excuse to release figures in just about any scale they want. Hasbro’s already pretty big on different scales, so they’ve done a little bit to exploit this, though not as much as you might think. So far, they’ve offered the main character in 3 ¾ inch, 6 inch, and 12 inch sizes. I already took a look at the 6 inch Marvel Legends figure (which was a little inaccurate) and now I’ve gotten the 3 ¾ inch-sized Ant-Man and Ant set, which I’ll be looking at today.

THE FIGURES THEMSELVES

These two are packed as a deluxe boxed item. The packaging is similar in style to Hasbro’s Marvel Legends Infinite Series, but the Marvel Legends brand isn’t mentioned on the packaging. He’s just billed under Marvel’s Ant-Man.

ANT-MAN

AntMan&Ant2Here we have the titular character, who’s kind of responsible for selling the set. The figure is 3 ¾ inches tall with 20 points of articulation. Movement is a little awkward, to be honest. His hip joints are a somewhat limited and he’s definitely held back by the lack of any torso or waist articulation. He has an all-new sculpt, which is based on his movie design. It’s similar in style to the ML figure, just shrunk down a bit. While that figure had a strange open-mouthed mask, this one has a more movie-accurate closed mouth design. It’s still not a perfect match for the movie design, but it’s pretty spot on to a lot of the earlier promotional art from the film, so it’s forgivably off. The sculpt of the body is well proportioned and features a nice bit of texture and detailing. The hands are in the same slightly odd pose as they were on the ML figure. I’m not sure what the deal is there, but they’re well sculpted hands at the very least. The paintwork on Ant-Man is cleanly handled; it’s a bit on the simpler side. It feels a bit lacking, especially when compared to the larger Ant-Man, but it looks decent enough. The red’s too bright, though, and his eyes should be a bit lighter. But, he’s not bad. Ant-Man includes no accessories, but he is packed with…

ANT

AntMan&Ant3…the Ant. One would assume that this is meant to be Ant-Hony, the ant that Scott rides in the movie, but he’s simply referred to as “Ant” in all references to him on the box. The figure is about 5 inches tall and 7 inches long, with 12 points of articulation. He’s a pretty big ant! The articulation is rather rudimentary, and it seems like they could have easily added a bit more movement if they’d wanted to, but it’s serviceable as is. All of the articulation is handled via ball and socket joints, which aren’t the sturdiest things. That means that Ant-Hony has a habit of falling apart on a frequent basis, which is more than a little annoying. From a sculpting standpoint, he’s another all new sculpt. It’s not a super-detailed sculpt or anything, but it does a respectable job of upscaling an ant. The main body has some decent texturing to it and the wings are patterned to match those on Wasp, which is certainly nice for consistency’s sake. The legs are all hollow on one side, which kind of kills a lot of the realism of the sculpt, but you can pose them so that the hollow portions are inward. Ant-Hony’s paintwork is actually pretty decent. There’s not a lot, but there’s more than you might think at first glance. The eyes are, obviously, different, but there’s also some fairly subtle red accents on the front legs and the head, which add a nice bit of variety and pairs him up well with the included Ant-Man. Like Ant-Man, Ant-Hony doesn’t have any accessories of his own.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

It’s Super Awesome Girlfriend’s fault again! We were at my local Toys R Us and they had just put out their shipment of this set. I wasn’t sure I was going to get it, but SAGF saw that Ant-Hony was included and told me I needed to get it. I’ve learned that arguing with her on such things is relatively pointless, so I went ahead and got it. The set isn’t anything out of the ordinary for Hasbro, but it’s entertaining enough, especially given that it’s the same cost as a Marvel Legend.

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#0628: Ant-Man

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

ANT-MAN

MARVEL LEGENDS INFINITE SERIES

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Man, if you’d told me 5 years ago that I’d be sitting here today, with the theatrical release of the Ant-Man movie less than a week away, I’d have laughed in your face. I’d have probably laughed even harder if you’d told me it wasn’t just Ant-Man, but the Scott Lang Ant-Man. That’s just preposterous! I certainly would never have believed that the character would also be headlining his own series of Marvel Legends. And yet, here we are, with all those things totally happening. I couldn’t be happier. Now, I’m gonna review my mass produced action figure of Scott Lang as Ant-Man, based on the upcoming, big-budget film. Just go with it!

THE FIGURE ITSELF

AntManMovie3Ant-Man is the first figure in Hasbro’s Ant-Man Marvel Legends Infinite Series, released to coincide with the Ant-Man movie. The figure stands 6 inches tall and features 30 points of articulation. Ant-Man features an all-new sculpt, modelled, of course, on the design of the character in the film. He’s actually the only figure in the series to be based on the film’s designs, so there’s that. Of course, Scott just got a redesign in the comics that isn’t horribly far removed from the movie look (though it’s got more than a few differences), so you could easily fudge this one as being a comic figure too, if you were so inclined. The sculpt looks to do a pretty decent job of translating the movie look into plastic form. The helmet is configured with just the bottom half of his face showing, much like it looks in the comics, which is a look I haven’t actually seen in any of the film’s promotional material. It’s possible the look just hasn’t been shown, but it’s a little odd to see Hasbro go for a look that isn’t being widely promoted. Regardless, I think I might actually prefer him this way, so I don’t mind. The rest of the sculpt is pretty strong, with good proportions, and nice texturing and detail AntManMovie4work. The hands are posed in a slightly odd way, though, to Hasbro’s credit, it looks as though DST’s Marvel Select figure has pretty much the same hands. They just seem weird, and it would have been nice to get an extra pair of hands at the very least. The hands are still well-sculpted for what they are, and they’ve even got the little button that activates the shrinking. As with just about every figure produced by Hasbro these days, his only real downfall is his paint work. It’s not terrible; the colors are decent, the helmet’s got some nice weathering, and most of the paint stays within the sculpted lines. However, there’s a distracting amount of red slop on his left leg, which is really annoying. Ant-Man makes out pretty well in the accessories department; he includes miniature versions of himself, Yellow Jacket, as well as his pet ant Ant-hony (whom the miniature Ant-Man can ride). The figure also includes the head of the series’ Build-A-Figure Ultron.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

The modern collecting world is very much built on knowing what’s coming and buying as much as you can online. That can kind of take a slight bit of the excitement out of getting new stuff, since there’s not really any victorious moment of finding new stuff. For a change, I actually found almost the entirety of this series at my local Toys R Us, and I didn’t even know they were out yet! Ant-Man is a figure with a few flaws, but he’s overall pretty fun.

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