Considering how successful the Iron Man and Avengers movies have been, I think Hasbro has shown a lot of restraint in Marvel Legends; it seems like Iron Man is showing up only every other wave – the Iron Man armor from the first Return of ML wave was the Extremis armor, and here in wave 3 it’s the Neo-Classic armor. While this figure is hurt a little by the slightly smaller-scaled sculpts that were originally due for release in the 6-inch Iron Man line, there’s still a lot of goodness with this figure.
The best thing for me is that Hasbro has figured out how to do the finish on Iron Man. The first of the resurgence of Hasbro’s Iron Man was the classic armor that came with the two-packs. Great candy apple red, but the yellow plastic was kind of dull. They fixed the gold on the Extremis armor from the start of this year, but it was the red that looked a little flat. With the Neo-Classic armor, both red and gold pop.
There’s no Iron Man planned for the first ML wave in 2013, but Hasbro’s saving it up for an Iron Man wave of Legends to get the boost from the Iron Man 3 movie. I can’t wait to see the comic book version of the Iron Monger.
