Stealth Iron Man

Oh, if only there were some short, pithy, perhaps two-word phrase we could use to summarily tell you everything you really need to know about this figure. Oh well, maybe next time. The Mark XV suit, codenamed "Sneaky," gives Tony Stark a built-in cloaking system, Dampening Thrusters and Retro-Reflective coating to deliver devastating stealth attacks on opponents. Okay, one, the Stealth Armor was never codenamed "Sneaky" - that's something from the movie armors, because "Stealth" was already the nickname for the Low Observable Armor. And two, it's the movie Stealth Armor that's the Mk.15, the comic armor seen here was the Model 7 (movies number suits by "Mark," comics number them by "Model"). This is the biggest screw-up we've seen since Poison! The Stealth Armor was first introduced in 1981's Invincible Iron Man #152, where the printing limitations of the time meant that what was supposed to be colored black like the B-2 stealth bomber that inspired it (the cover specifically calls it "ebon") was instead colored blue, so that's how people think of it to this day. Since the Stealth Armor was really just a recolor of the suit Tony was already wearing at the time, this release fittingly uses the Marvel 80th Anniversary mold. This is, what, the fifth use of this mold? 80th, 2020, War Machine, Silver Centurion, A.I., Stealth. Sixth. It's a decent sculpt, capturing the old look of the art, with a mostly smooth surface that resembles anatomy more than technology. The legs seems a little too long, proportionally, and the forearms don't look thick enough to have human arms inside them, but overall this is a good representation. This is not the first time Hasbro has done a repaint Stealth Armor, and this one takes the correct cues from the previous: rather than being one solid shade of blue, the arms, legs, and faceplate on the mask are a lighter shade, just barely lighter, so you can almost not see it. It's like the Walgreens Human Torch, but even more subtle. The eyes and mouth on the helmet are dark red, matching the red repulsor in the center of the chest. The figure comes with an alternate unmasked Tony Stark head. The sculpt of the head is the same as the one that came with the 80th Anniversary figure, with minorly different paint, but the hair is different, revealing that it's a separate piece that's glued into the scalp - a pretty neat way of doing things, if a minor difference at most. Stealth Iron Man moves at the ankles, shins, knees, thighs, hips, waist, chest, wrists, elbows, biceps, shoulders, neck, and head - no surprises in the joints, but that's okay. He includes alternate hands flexed back to utilize the warm orange-red repulsor blasts that contrast so beautifully against the dark blue of the suit. They also help identify this as the Model 7, Mark II: the first and third versions didn't have any weapons at all, and the second only had enough juice for three shots. Maybe plug them into his heels and pretend they're booster exhaust. The Build-A-Figure for this series is Ursa Major, and Stealth Iron Man gets the left leg. Hasbro's previous Stealth Iron Man was a fine figure, for its time, but that time was more than a decade ago and it's looking pretty rickety these days. Even if you've been collecting this whole time, this is a better version than the one you already have. -- 09/04/21

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