Iron Man Mk.VII (Fusion Armor)

July 30, 2012 | By More


 

Well, after getting the Shield Launcher Captain America from the Avengers line and seeing it was not as bad as I feared, I convinced myself to go ahead and buy another figure, this time the Iron Man Mk.VII armor from the Movie Series sub-line.

Right off the bat, I must say that I’m not familiar enough with the Iron Man suit designs to differentiate them at a glance, unless they have really obvious visual cues, like triangular chest pieces and such.

That said, the Mk.VII suit was sculpted with a pretty good amount of detail. As usual, the body proportions make it dubious that a regular human would fit inside the suit, but that’s something that I have come to accept with these toys.

Surprisingly, Hasbro decided to give this Iron Man figure a slightly different articulation model from what they gave Captain America, consisting of:

• Ball jointed neck.

• Pegged hinge shoulders.

• Pegged hinge elbows.

• Pegged hinge hips.

• Upper thigh swivels.

• Pegged hinge knees.

 

The difference is the knee articulation, which in Cap was a double hinge similar to what we see in the Marvel Universe line.

Since this is meant to be an armored character, maybe he doesn’t really need the extra range at the knees, but it struck me as odd they didn’t go for consistency in this regard.

Given the character design, Iron Man is one of those characters that doesn’t really benefit from the ultra articulation, since even the figures from the Iron Man 2 line had some trouble adopting really dynamic stances because pieces of armor getting in the way, but I still feel they should have included wrist joints.

After a whole line devoted to Iron Man and several inclusions in the Marvel Universe line, Hasbro still needs to tighten up their paint operations on these figures. The colors selected are very rich, with a dark candy apple red and a burnished gold accented with bright silver applications. The figure was given a high-gloss finish that looks really nice and the paint applications are generally neat and clean, but unfortunately some mishaps do still show up on my figure.

On the hips and shoulders there were some scratches, but since the underlying plastic color is silver, they can pass off as regular wear or slight battle damage. However, at the back there is a spot where the red paint seemed to pool and left a noticeably darker stain. None of these are really serious issues, as the overall appearance is still way better than it was on the Iron Man 2 figure line.

One aspect where the old IM2 line excelled was the finish they gave to the chest reactors, with the subtle white to blue gradient. On this Avengers Iron Man the reactor is painted plain beige, of all available colors.

The Mk.VII comes with a “saw” accessory. It is fundamentally a shield –like piece with a rotating blue energy saw blade that clips onto the figure’s wrist. It is not entirely horrible, but I don’t really see it’s attractive either. I guess it could be handy to spruce up a diorama.

In the end, I like this Iron Man Mk.VII figure although I am not blown away by it. I have to admit that it looks good on the shelf and the articulation isn’t far worse than that on the light-up Mk.VI armor from a few years back.

 

Errex Score: 75/100

 

 

 

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Category: Featured, Iron Man, Marvel, Toy Reviews

About the Author ()

I've been collecting action figures since the original Kenner Star Wars days. Nowadays, I still collect pretty much anything that catches my eye.

Comments (1)

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  1. Engineernerd says:

    I just don’t understand why the Iron Man armor keeps getting chunkier. I would expect it to get sleeker like a sports car.

    Also, not a big fan of the silver “pads” on the thighs.