Hasbro Marvel Legends Mandroid Build-A-Figure Review

This is a damn hard build-a-figure to complete!  The first half was fairly easy, and ended up leaving me with a whole mess of extra arms.  The second half made me go on a wild hunt for that one-per-case Black Widow.  Mind you I didn’t particularly even want Black Widow (when I got her I softened up to her quite a bit), but she comes with the chest so every part connects with it.  I’m not sure where exactly to blame the disconnect.  We’re often times told that females don’t sell well causing retailers to order short case packs.  I won’t get into the “girls don’t sell” argument today, but they could have gone about building Mandroid a different way.

Hasbro Marvel Legends Mandroid BAF Review Captain America

The wave was littered with variants that could have easily also held a Mandroid chest.  Or they could have done the unspeakable and packed more than one Widow in a case.  Whatever the case the end result is a shortage of chests and an overabundance of extra arms.  A little better planning of the assortment could have benefited both collectors and Hasbro.  Hasbro would have had more sales and collectors would have ended up with more Mandroid armies.

Hasbro Marvel Legends Mandroid BAF Review Captain America

Mandroid doesn’t appear to be comic based.  I’ll assume since they wanted to reuse parts from the Iron Monger build-a-figure they ended up using the design from the Avengers Initiative iOS game.  From the waist down he is a complete reuse of Iron Monger in silver.  The arms seem to be based on Iron Monger, but there are a lot of new parts.  The body and head are all new.

Hasbro Marvel Legends Mandroid BAF Review Captain America

All of the new parts they slapped onto the arms did take a toll on the articulation.  His elbow joint barely has any range of motion.  I also feel like the arms are a little short.  Mandroid’s upper body is slightly larger than Iron Monger’s, and since his arms were proportioned to the previous release they end up looking short.  It doesn’t help that I also own two extra sets of arms from the variants, so I ended up with a whole load of extra short arms that just lay around and taunt me.  It is a shame that the arms’ articulation is so limited because I love the gun and blade attachments.  He can strike a few nice action poses, but they are usually to one side of the other.

Hasbro Marvel Legends Mandroid BAF Review Captain America

For posing purposes I find it is best to let the head rest on the peg instead of plugging it all the way in, similar to what I did with my MOTUC Blade figure.  When the head is put fully on the peg he has a very limited range of neck motion.  However, when you rest the head on the top of the peg he looks much more natural.  His head isn’t as sunken into his neck and he can actually look around.  I also noticed when pulling the head on and off that the inside of the torso cracked a bit.  The upper body is pretty hollow which makes the figure feel a bit fragile.

Hasbro Marvel Legends Mandroid BAF Review Captain America

The Mandroid is certainly not the greatest Marvel build-a-figure ever made, but he’s also far from the worst.  He’s a middle of the road entry.  Where he suffers is the customer’s inability to actually assemble him since his upper body is so hard to find.  Once you find a Widow, however, everything else is fairly easy to come by.

 

1 thought on “Hasbro Marvel Legends Mandroid Build-A-Figure Review”

  1. I’ve never been a big Cap fan, but the movies have definitely sold me on him. Looking at the whole series lined up here is very cool, and almost makes me want to order all of them!

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