Review: Hasbro Marvel Legends Wave 1 Klaw, Constrictor and Terrax
I already took a look at the three heroes I actually own from Hasbro’s new Marvel Legends; I really liked all of them, especially Thor and Hope, but I wasn’t looking forward to any of them nearly as much as I was the three villains in the wave: Klaw, the Constrictor, and Terrax.
I hate to sound like I’m biased in what I want to see in Marvel Legends but, as much as I enjoy seeing new costumes for old characters or better sculpted versions, I always get the biggest thrills from having new villains see release.
Though only one-third of the actual carded figures in this wave are bad guys, Constrictor and Klaw are two characters I’ve been dying to have. Klaw’s appearance in the Marvel Universe line was one of the most compelling reasons for me to start over a Marvel collection in a new scale, though the promise of the Wrecking Crew helped a lot.
These three were easily the figures I was the most interested in getting from the wave; I even voted for Constrictor back in the Hasbro SDCC poll, where they had an all-white Fantomex, the Hood, Terror from Terror Inc. and Madrox among others. I accurately predicted Deadpool would be the number one choice by over half votes received by the other two winners though I wonder how much characters like Dark Ms. Marvel and Brother Voodoo split the vote. For the record, my other two choices were Black Widow and Valkyrie and actually got made though I never ended up buying them at retail as I figured they’d be around forever. Whoops. Anyway, do these guys live up to the mostly really good figures I reviewed last time? I guess I should actually talk about that. 
Sculpt: Looking at how this wave has been received by other collectors, people seem oddly unenthusiastic about Klaw; I’m not sure why he seems he’s apparently the only exclusion to the “Kirby effect”, where people go absolutely nuts over anything that can, even in the loosest way, be associated with The King, but whatever. I’ve been a fan of Klaw ever since he appeared in the new Crimson Cowl’s Masters of Evil in Thunderbolts and the fact that Songbird took her sound technology from Klaw’s designs actually encouraged me to look up the character’s past appearances through buying an Essential volume of Fantastic Four. Despite being Black Panther’s most identifiable nemesis (this side of the Man-Ape anyway) Klaw’s not really appeared a ton; in fact, he’s considered obscure enough to get his own page at The Appendix to the Handbook of the Marvel Universe. The whole gimmick of being made out of solid sound seemed really cool Klaw really surprised me as he uses one of Hasbro’s bucks that I didn’t have an overwhelming fondness for. You may recognize it from the Ronan wave Silver Surfer or the Ares wave Vision. I always thought it was a little too slight for the Surfer, though the Silver Savage figure fared better with it; for Klaw, its slim build and lack of detailing is actually a strength. He’s only sporting two new pieces: his head and lower right arm. Klaw’s headsculpt is striking, though I do have a few issues with its accuracy; the character is typically shown as having black irises with tiny red pupils, but this figure translates that as silver eyes with heavy guy-liner around them. Klaw’s also got a raised “nose” underneath the bar between his eyes, whereas it’s normally a flat surface.
Klaw from his first appearance as a villain in Fantastic Four #56
I’m less picky about the mechanical aspects of the mouth though. While he’s been shown with teeth and an actual mouth in some instances, Jack Kirby drew him with the “grill” thing like what people normally use with Doctor Doom. That panel above does give me a reference point for my major issue with the figure: the sonic projector. It’s little longer than I would like but I understand that’s more personal preference than anything else; since Klaw’s a character literally made out of sonic energy, the character has had numerous takes on his outward appearance. If they can combine the different looks Klaw’s face has had, I suppose it’s fine to have a more dynamic interpretation of the projector as well. 
More anticipated than Klaw is, we finally get the Constrictor. Initially a Hulk villain, the character would team up with Sabertooth to annoy Iron Fist a few times before Dan Slott adopted him as a featured character in his The Thing series before making him a full-time supporting character in Avengers: The Initiative. Frank Payne, a.k.a. Frank Schlicting started out as double agent for SHIELD who went AWOL while undercover, but it’s his appearances under Slott as a reformed Initiative member that made the character truly popular. He’s since gone back on the run post-Dark Reign, playing into a minor annoyance I have with Marvel where reformed bad guys don’t stay that way, but his flight from the law is a little more logical and tragic than these things normally are.
There's a surprisingly large number of images available where Constrictor is gritting his teeth
I normally don't put Toy Biz figures next to these for pictures but I had to do this since 1.) FA Sabertooth finally has someone to hang out with and 2.) I'm amazed no one else seems to have done this yet
Sadly, while Klaw’s sound projector looks great, and doesn’t tip the figure over like I’m afraid it would, Constrictor’s coils are one of the figure’s biggest problems: they’re long and immobile to a degree that they’re going to look awkward in a lot of poses. They’re meant to function like a rope or whips so the lack of movement they have ends up giving you a figure with an accurate representation of a gimmick without actually having it. The fact that the packaging illustration shows the coils as being more dynamic an element than the toy can replicate doesn’t help.
I’ll own up to how I’m a real sucker for build-a-figures: I have 3 Sentinels as a result of KB having various sales/bargain bin prices on Toybiz Wave 10, and I’m one leg short of a second complete Galactus since Wave 9 was mostly made up of figures I wanted doubles of or had interesting enough variants for me to get both. I don’t even really like Mojo very much yet I built him with a Zemo variant to spare. Hasbro never disappointed on that end, though their Annihilus is a little small and both him and Blob are in desperate need of some paint details.
Hasbro’s taking a page out of Mattel’s book for Terrax, as he features a buck-style torso which his red tunic slides over. I’ve seen a few people say he’s on the larger side but his official height in the OHOTMU has never really matched his physical depictions in the comic; the last time I remember him having a notable appearance was in Loeb’s Hulk, as part of the Offenders, where he was about half the size of Red Hulk.
I'll admit that the ax here is very tiny in comparison to Terrax himself
I don’t mind if he’s a little oversized as he’s still an alien running around with the power cosmic that is more famous for his outrageous power level than his cerebral skills; in fact, for a while, beating up Terrax was basically a way to demonstrate how powerful a new character or power was.
Bendis was about 15 years too late for this to seem like a huge deal. That look of disinterested detachment perfectly encapsulates the comics audience's feelings about the Sentry though!
That even extended to his last appearance in Marvel Point One where he was incinerated, along with his entire home planet, to show how totally dangerous the return of the Phoenix Force is.
Anyway, Terrax is sporting a pretty extreme expression but I think it works for the character; up until Morg, the “earth” to Air-Walker and Firelord’s “wind” and “fire” was the most intense of Galactus’ heralds. The helmet/beard thing is clearly rendered and the costume over the figure looks great. It’s an interesting way to get around sculpting a torso you’d probably never use again and I appreciate Hasbro’s forward thinking. I do wish the shoulder pads lacked the mold line on the left side I will say there’s one thing about Terrax’s sculpt that bugs me: his closed fist. Reading other reviews for him I thought people were making too big a deal out him being forced into one-handed grips for his ax but it’s so big it basically demands it, as it droops or spins in the relatively loose fingers of the right hand. You can work around it but severely limits his posing options in a few instances; I really did struggle to find some interesting things for him to do even with his great articulation.
I’d like to note that Terrax is designed a little differently than some Build-a-figures in that parts of his body don’t attach permanently. Once his arms and legs are in, they’re not going anywhere but you have the option of seperating him at the waist or removing his head if you so desire. The remarkable thing about the head is that even with the detachable aspect, it’s still very posable, using a modified version of the “stump” neck that past Hasbro figures have had.
Red Hulk and Terrax's neck pegs
On that note, let’s break down each figures POA.
All three of them have:
-Ball jointed shoulders and hips
-Bicep twists
-Cut waist and ab crunch
Klaw also features: -Ball jointed ankles, neck and a ball jointed wrist
-Double jointed elbows and knees
Constrictor’s sporting: -Cut wrists
-Double jointed elbows and knees
-Ball jointed ankles and neck
-Forward shoulder pivot
-Cut calves
Terrax has:
-Cut elbows and double jointed knees
-Calf cuts at the tops of his boots
-Ball jointed ankles with the angular pivot and ball jointed neck
I have to call attention to the last of those as the ball joints in Terrax’s ankles, as you’ve heard, are pretty awesome. They let him strike some really deep poses with his legs while remaining stable and looking natural about 90% of the time. I love them and can’t wait to see Hasbro work them into other figures in the future, especially since they’re getting nothing but positive press in reviews. They really are the kind of special “new” thing that can get collector’s excited about a line rather than worrying about if a certain wave will have working neck articulation in the future. Terrax is overall a much more posable figure than I originally thought he could be, with the ankles and wrists giving him a lot of possibilities.
This about as deep a crouch as you can get with him but I ended up using a stand anyway
Constrictor ends up making a less favorable impression; I can’t tell if it’s because of the way his legs were originally tooled or if there was just an error in production but he’s less mobile than the amount of articulation implies. Despite having ball hips and ankles, as well as double knees and calf twists, his legs are surprisingly hard to pose. The static nature of his coils limit the number of poses you can make with his arms, so the pressure is on the legs to make up for it and they’re not up to the task. His ankles don’t have deep enough cuts to balance any sort of extreme crouches so he ends up unable to put both of his feet flat on the ground. The extra movement provided by those double jointed knees are about 80% useless because of this and limits Frank to standing in mostly upright positions.
Klaw benefits from being such a simple design; you can get a ton of poses with him as he has no costume elements restricting movement. I was worried the “dish” arm would throw off his balance but he’s very sturdy and all his joints are functional. I’m not a huge fan of the oddly angled hip joints but you can work around them with enough effort and he remains solid in most stances without a lot of fiddling. I do wish he had more lateral neck movement but that’s a casualty of his buck usage.
Terrax is easily the winner in this category as most build-a-figures get a little extra love spent on them to entice people into buying those figures they don’t want to get pieces. That’s a good thing too because Hasbro opted to paint his gloves on as a result of his buck-based construction. The lines on mine are even and do an excellent job of matching the red of his upper tunic; his lower tunic has its red painted on, and is a little more matte, but it’s not extremely noticeable. The red of his boots is somewhere between the two effects but look great. There is a little slop in the lines between his head and his chinstrap/half-helmet thing but they’re mostly in the crevices of his cheeks so that they’re barely noticable. The biggest problem I had was the gold on his belt as I initially had one with a big red nick in it, something I was able to remedy with a donation of parts from a friend; I’d keep an eye out for the rims of his boots as well as the gold parts, as well as the red on his lower tunic, seem to be the problem areas. Terrax is finished off with a nice wash on his grey parts that sell the “stony” aspects of his appearance.
Klaw’s paint is pretty nice though there isn’t much of it. He’s most cast in red but the painted details are the only real suggestion of costume that he has and they do a good job. The zigzag lines on his thighs could line up across each leg better and the transition from black to purple on his head could be sharper but there’s nothing glaring. The sound projector has an excellent looking wash on it, which is another demonstration of Hasbro improving on past efforts; if this had been one of their old releases, the projector would just be cast in a flat grey.
Constrictor has great color choices and the lines across the different parts of his costume are very even. Mine has a stray fleck of orange on his left knuckles and his right calf has some blue showing through the orange on his left calf. The pieces cast in orange match up with the painted parts well though I’ll note that the figure overall has more issues than Klaw and Terrax in the paint department. The few tiny orange spots don’t bug me as much as the black lines on his left gauntlet not actually being painted on top of the sculpted grooves meant for them.
Unlike most of the heroic characters, accessories are sparse as only Terrax has one. The character just wouldn’t be the same without his “cosmic scythe” which Hasbro has rendered in a truly striking fashion; the thing’s so big it had to come in two pieces to fit in Hope’s packaging. Unfortunately, that plays into the major problem the figure has, as I mentioned earlier, where Terrax can have trouble holding it. The handle is in this weird place where it’s too short to rest on the ground but too long to stop from looking awkward when held in only one hand. If the blade was a little smaller or the rear “point” wasn’t as long, I don’t think this would be an issue but it is basically the same dimensions as typically shown in the comic. Another solution would have been to add more heft to the base of the ax to act as a counterweight for the blade but that’d complicate the manufacturing process for Hasbro. Taken by itself, the ax is a great reproduction of the weapon we’ve seen in the comics with a relatively conservative blade to how some have depicted it. It’s got plenty of sculpted details and I don’t even mind it being cast entirely in the same color throughout. I could deal without the mold lines but they’re much fainter than the one on Terrax’s shoulderpad, which is the one glaring issue with the figure that bugs me, especially since the back part of the tunic is totally smooth.
I hate to say this but Klaw is probably the weakest figure in the first wave. It’s not his fault though as he’s a good interpretation of the character; he just doesn’t have the extra “oomph” that someone like Hope does. I’m fine with this figure but that’s mostly because I love Klaw. If you don’t like the character, or don’t know much about him, then this is basically a blank buck with a funky arm to discourage a possible custom. He’s more in line with the best Legends that Hasbro originally produced a few years ago but I can say that, if I didn’t like him, I wouldn’t feel bad spending $11 for a BAF piece the way I did with the awful Reed, Sue and Johnny in the Ronan wave.
Somewhat more successful is Constrictor; the belt and slightly oversized pelvis is the kind of thing you have to avoid when using the buck system and the mostly immobile coils limit what you can do with him. I wish this figure had made it out in one of the TRU 2-packs as he might have gotten interchangeable hands without the coils. The lack of range in his ankles really harms the figure in combination with the coils, giving you a Constrictor that can strike only a few decent poses that won’t result in him falling over. Still, belt issue aside, the look is mostly there and I think that this is a figure that would benefit greatly from just a little customizing. He’s a solid figure that suffers from a practical design choice; it’d be amazing if Hasbro had given him hands with unextended coils. As it is, that’ll just be a possible bonus for a future variant Constrictor with his cybernetic arms from The Initiative (I can dream). I’m giving him the edge over Klaw because most are going to find him more interesting despite the issues with the coils; besides, Klaw is dangerously close to being a blank buck.
Admittedly, I dreamed and schemed my way into Terrax; if not for Fakeeyes22’s generous donation of his Iron Man’s extra leg and a clerk at my LCS buying Ghost Rider from me minus the Terrax arms, I wouldn’t have my 4th-or-so favorite Herald. Still, as a build-a-figure, he feels like a better value than some of Hasbro’s past attempts. You need only 6 figures to build him and there’s no ridiculous division of parts like Ares and Ronan had. I’m a little surprised at some other collector’s saying they had no interest in him but I’ll take almost any FF villain over another X-baddie (unless that baddie was Henry Peter Gyrich). If you have an interest in more than three of the non-Thor figures in the wave, it’s worth looking into the extra legwork to finish Terrax. Even then, I wouldn’t have hated having to buy Iron Man and Ghost Rider, if I ever saw the normal versions of them, but free parts are something I’d never turn down from anyone as I can always find a home for them, even if they’re not with me.
This first wave of Hasbro’s new Legends is a pretty strong start; it’s overall stronger than any single wave they put out before and is closer to what Toy Biz was doing at the height of the line’s popularity. There are a few issues, like functionality of Terrax’s ax with his articulation/grip, potential scale issues, or the lack of options with Constrictor, but those aren’t any worse than some of the issues we saw with Toybiz releases. There aren’t any rubbery joints or brittle plastic and the paint is pretty nice overall. The headsculpts are universally better than the occaisonally bland or overdone ones (look at White Queen and Banshee for reference respectively) Hasbro’s put out in the past and there aren’t any absolutely terrible figures in the wave you’re buying for the sake of the BAF (I’m looking at you Ronan Wave Invisible Woman and Human Torch). Terrax himself is just about the nicest figure of the character you could want, excusing the grip issues; Hasbro usually made up for their uneven assortments with the BAF but Terrax is one of their best.
The second wave of Hasbro’s Legends are already showing up in force, so I’m not sure what that means for this wave at retail. There were tons of them at C2E2 this weekend and online retailers seem to have them in good supply so they’re not what I would consider scarce though I’d probably look into them sooner than later if you’re interested.
If you want more opinions before you seek them out though, you can check out other reviews. Italltrue.net has Klaw, Constrictor and Terrax, while Toy Review Daily covers all three as well here, here, and here. Michael Crawford reviewed the entire wave in two parts as well.
If you’re curious about the two figures I didn’t review, Ghost Rider and Iron Man, you can find reviews for them at MTV Geek (GR and Iron Man), itsalltrue.net (GR and Iron Man), and Toy Review Daily (GR and Iron Man).
That just about covers it; I will say that if you’re looking for these, try Target as that’s where I had my best luck. Wal-Mart seems to have skipped the first wave entirely in favor of the second wave which is showing up more frequently all the time. My local TRU doesn’t have any ML in stock at all but when they do, they’re $20 which is about $4 more than everyone else; one store a city over had enough Klaws, Constrictors, and Stealth Iron Men to be picky over. I’ve still never seen the normal versions of Ghost Rider and Iron Man but we’ll see how Hasbro’s distribution is going to work when we get final details on Wave 3’s release.
Planned Banter 