While I’ll admit to a certain amount of fondness for the Hulk, Captain America and Iron Fist, for the most part I’ve never really been a fan of the Marvel Universe in general. So you can imagine my surprise at the number of Marvel toys I purchased over the last week at Walmart. This story actually starts a few weeks ago when I stumbled upon a display of balls. The display promised that each ball opened like one of those plastic eggs you see around Easter time and that within them would be a tiny Marvel figure. The line is called Marvel Heroics and among the photographs on the display were Captain America and Hulk. The balls were priced at just $.97 so I figured I’d buy one. At that price, why not!?

I chose a green ball because I figured green = Hulk. But alas, I opened it and found… Thor. Is there any Marvel character worse than Thor? I’m not sure there is. But I have to say for a figure that’s about the size of the bottom half of my thumb his costume is fairly detailed. That aspect is pretty impressive. As you can see though the tiny face has very little detail. Regardless, I was not satisfied with this stupid Thor figure. So the quest was on to find a Hulk or a Captain America. But the quest hit a major snag… I couldn’t find any other Heroics figures.

For a month and a half I searched and just this past weekend I finally found a display at my local Walmart. This time I figured I wouldn’t press my luck, I’d buy a bunch of them in the hopes of getting at least one of the characters that I actually wanted. I purchased one of each color hoping that increased my chances. To the right you can see the end result. Another $%#*ing Thor, 2 Wolverines and three Spider-men.

I was ok with my first Spider-man figure. He’s a pretty essential character in the Marvel Universe. I also thought it was pretty cool to get the variant black costume Spider-man. That costume is one of the best designs for a Superhero costume I’ve ever seen. But why did they need to include two differently posed Spider-men in a single wave. What a waste of a spot that could have gone to one of the cooler Marvel characters like Iron Fist or the Winter Soldier. Again I think the sculpts on these are pretty great for their size. Their poses are cool and you can see the lines on the costume are part of actual the sculpt. Unfortunately since the black Spider-man is just a repaint, he has the lines on his sculpt too. He ends up looking like a cross between the movie black costume and the comics costume. Again, the faces here lack detail, but what can you really expect out of something so small?

The Wolverines in my opinion are the worst figures of the bunch. His face looks terrible with weird giant poorly painted eyes and his claws are strange and bulky. Overall though the poses are at least decent. Basically what it comes down to is that these Heroics figures are slightly better in quality than what you’d expect to find in one of the red toy vending machines that line the exits of supermarkets. They’re dumb but fun.

In addition to buying a handful of the Marvel Heroics figures, I decided to press my luck and purchase a few of the Marvel themed, mystery bagged Mega Blok figures. The store had displays out for all three waves and I decided I’d buy a few to try to get my hands on a Captain America and a Magneto. Sure enough the first bag I opened from Series 2 was Captain America. Now the figure is in his movie costume which I don’t love. I really dislike his movie mask and nothing I’ve seen of the upcoming Avengers film leads me to believe I’ll like that version any better. But I do love his tiny shield. I’m not sure there’s anything more iconic in comics than the design of Cap’s shield with the possible exceptions of Superman’s S and the concept of the Batmobile. Overall, it’s a cute figure for $2.50, but it’s not as well done as Diamond’s Minimates. Then again Minimates are smaller and more expensive.

When I opened the Mega Blok figure that I purchased from series 3, I was a little confused because many pieces spilled out. For some reason, Series 2 shipped assembled and Series 3 shipped completely disassembled. I have no idea why. However, once I assembled the pieces I was delighted to discover that it was in fact Magneto.

Overall, I like the Magneto figure better than the Captain America one. This might come down preferring his costume to the movie Cap costume. Both Cap and Magneto shipped with a single Mega Block for the figure to use as a stand. I have no idea how they’re allowed to produce Mega Bloks at all though because these pieces are blatantly Legos. Magneto also ships with an accessory which I guess is supposed to be a piece of scrap metal that he can use as a shield. Overall, once again this is definitely worth $2.50.

In addition to the Mega Bloks figures I picked up for myself, I picked up three for MLD’s PTB. I sure hope there are X-men in these bags! (There are! Iceman, Magneto, and Cyclops to be specific. How can I be so sure?) Anyway, I’m not sure how I started down this path of buying a stack of obscure Marvel toys this week, but I certainly had fun with it even though the Heroics turned out to be a complete fail. I guess I’ll just have to buy more unless someone out there wants to trade. I read online there are DC Heroics on the way. That won’t end well for me.

See also:

I Don’t Even Like Marvel vol. 2 – A Guide to DC Heroics figures

I Don’t Even Like Marvel vol. 3 – A Guide to the Avengers Movie Heroics figures

I Don’t Even Like Marvel vol. 4 – A Guide to the New Marvel Fish Tank Ornaments

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