



Part of the seemingly endless Marvel Legends 80th celebration of the Marvel brand is this new vintage wave, featuring newly styled versions of X-Men characters as well as one brand new character. Today, let's take a look at two of them, that seem to currently be pegwarming, Iceman and Cyclops.





Packaging:

This is a vintage wave, which means that the boxes are retro styled big cards. They're based on the 90's toybiz figures, down to the colors, text, and especially the back of the boxes.





It's a bit tricky to open, but the nostalgic effect is great, and the variety is impressive.





Sculpting:





Cyclops is a repainted and slightly retooled version of the Warlock wave version, based on his Uncanny X-Men look. The sculpt fits him excellently, so I don't mind the recycled body. From the neck down, he's familiar, but his head sculpt is new, and the optic blasts bursting from his visor look great.





He scales the same as the Warlock Cyclops, and if you so desire, the heads can swap easily. I do have one issue, and it's plagued each Scott Summers figure for years, his left hand is stuck in the "visor button press" pose, and there's no alternate hands. Unless you put him in that pose, his left hand looks pretty goofy, and it limits his display options. Good think the upcoming three pack Cyke comes with an alternate fist.









So, cards on the table, Iceman has the same sculpt as Silver Surfer, but with a new head and a belt. It's a good body mold, and it does resemble Bobby's sleek icy form well enough, so I'm okay with it, but I do understand collectors who wanted him to be more unique.





His head sculpt is my favorite part, it's got edges and angles to make it look like sculpted ice, and it looks really cool. (Sorry) The choice to give him fists is a problem, since Iceman almost always has splayed hands to shoot ice from or make his ice slide, and fists don't really gel with that. Many collectors, myself included, are swapping them out for the hands from Astral Dr. Strange. The color match isn't perfect, but the effect is pretty good.





Articulation:

Good old Scott Summers comes packed with plenty of joints. Cyclops has: A ball jointed head, ball shoulders, bicep swivel, double pin elbows, hinge/cut wrists, an ab crunch, cut waist, half ball hips, thigh cuts, double pin knees, boot cuts, and rocker ankles. Everything is tight and holds securely, and he keeps poses very well.









Iceman's frosty sculpt has tons of articulation, including: A ball jointed head, ball/butterfly shoulders, double pin elbows, pin/cut wrists, an ab crunch, cut waist, half ball hips, thigh swivel, double pin knees, boot swivel, and rocker ankles. It's easy to get him into all kinds of ice slide poses, and the butterfly joints are a great addition.





Accessories:





Cyclops comes with two bonus pieces: The first is an alternate head, with gritted teeth, which works in conjunction with his second accessory. The head looks great, and swaps easily. His teeth in particular have excellent detail and paint work.





His second, more action'y inclusion is an optic blast effect. It clips into the opening on the alternate head's visor, and the top of it has some really cool, comic accurate jagged beam effects. It's great to have the effect for posing options, although it's only designed to fit the Uncanny figure, unless you modify it. In any case, I'm very glad to have it.













Iceman doesn't do as well, only coming with one additional piece: his ice slide. It has some nice icicles sculpted onto it, and the paint looks good. I'm glad to have the option, but the slide is really too small to replicate the effect, since the ice slide should be about as long as the Silver Surfer's board, and the fact that it only has one foot peg doesn't help much.





Paint:

The figure does a pretty good job of capturing the Uncanny X-Men costume, and the paint is a big part of the look. The white and metallic blue looks very striking, and the visor is nice and clean. The face looks great, as does the alternate head, and the sparks of energy on the visor are a nice, translucent ruby red. There is one minor issue, the shade of blue on his pants is slightly different than the color on the rest of him. It's not super noticeable, but it does set off my OCD a tad.









Iceman is a double edged sword; his paint, a semi-translucent titanium white, is applied evenly, and there's even a nifty sparkle effect. My issue is, I don't think he looks much like ice. On top of that, Bobby's ice form is usually on the blue/white side of color, so the choice here, although based on the 90's figure, does feel a bit lacking.





Overall:

On a technical level, these are some well made figures. They have collector oriented packaging, great sculpts, amazing articulation, and some decent to great accessories. Their appeal really comes down to preference; if you don't like the Uncanny Cyclops costume, then his figure here probably won't appeal to you. If you want Iceman to be blue and come with a bigger slide, then you might have issue with this vintage offering. They are among the weaker figures in the vintage line I've seen so far, but only compared to some more interesting ones, and they're by no means bad. If these designs and the throwback angle appeal to you, then by all means pick them up. There's a lot of artistry and skill that went into them.





Gallery:



































