Loki

These days, Hasbro has their Marvel Legends game down pat. A movie comes out, they release a series of Legends that ties in with it (whether directly or not). But it definitely took them a while to get to that point - it used to be that all we'd get in the way of 6" figures would be a small assortment of repaints, maybe with one or two new figures. For instance, when the first Thor movie came out, Walmart had a series of three figures: movie Thor, a superior repaint of ML2 Thor, and this Loki. Odin adopted Loki, the son of a fallen archenemy, out of pity. He attempted to raise the young Frost Giant as one of his own. But as Loki grew up frustrated by the exploits of his brother Thor, he developed a sinister personality bent on destroying the world in which he was raised. Loki is one of the only villains to seriously challenge the might of Thor. A master sorcerer, he is well equipped to counter the lightning bolts, thunder claps and hammer swings of his heroic relative! At first glance, this figure appears to be a new sculpt. It's not one of the standard bodies they use for everything, and it's not like anyone else had fur on their boots and shoulders like this. He has a geometric belt with a short loincloth hanging from it and three golden rings on each side. Two small brown straps are around his left thigh. The cloth covering his arms is noticably far more wrinkled than his chest or legs, which is weird, but he has fancy black gloves that seem to have have four thick leather strips each held in place by two golden rivets or snaps. His right hand is curled to hold an accessory that doesn't exist, while his left hand is doing a clawing motion. Maybe he could hold the Cosmic Cube or something. But once you open the toy and start playing around with him, you'll notice some oddities in the articulation. The ankles are swivel/hinge joints, but the peg goes into the shin, rather than the foot, so there's no rocker motion. He has no thigh joints, so his swivel/hinge hips (which go into the body at the hated 45° angle) serve only to twist the legs into useless positions. That's weird. But it seems familiar. Where have we seen that before? Loki is a repaint of Doc Samson! The arms are new, and all his extra bits of clothing, but underneath is the mediocre Hulk Legends figure. What an unexpected choice. His helmet comes in just over 6⅞, but the horns take him all the way up to 7½". The body may be mostly reused, but the head is new. This was clearly designed back when Loki was still a sour old man, rather than young and attractive, because that's movie influence. No idea who sculpted this figure, but this face is better than the one on the ML13 Loki. He has a giant frown, and a long ponytail spills out of his horned helmet. But why are his eyes blank white? That seems more like a paint mistake than an actual design choice. At his original retail price ($15.77), Loki wasn't a bad figure. His articulation has some pre-existing flaws, and he gets no accessories, but the design is nice and his new head is pretty impressive. But he doesn't hold a candle to ToyBiz's Loki, so if you already have that one, you don't need to double up. -- 01/26/15

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