Guardians of the Galaxy Marvel Legends Nova Review

With Groot out-of-the-way, I now must take on the task of reviewing each individual figure in Hasbro’s latest Marvel Legends wave. I was torn on who I should start with. Star-Lord seemed like the obvious choice, but I just haven’t completely put all my feelings together on that one. I figured if I wasn’t going start with the leader of the team it may be better to branch out into the comic based figures. This made my search easy because there is no way my first review is going to be Iron Man, so Nova wins by default.

Nova (or should we say MARVEL’S Nova) is a very popular character who has only had one Marvel Legends release prior to this. This was also during the time where Hasbro had a different approach to Marvel Legends, so the figure ended up being pretty awful. He was also part of a Wal-Mart exclusive series that was fairly hard to find at the time, and then rose fast in value.

So now we have a new version of Nova being used to pad out a six character build-a-figure wave. This version is from Annihilation. I’d love to give you a back story, but unfortunately I never actually read Annihilation. Regardless you can at least trust I know where this costume came from, just don’t ask me any specific questions about the storyline.

Nova is a nice looking figure from afar, but when you start taking a closer look the polish starts to peel away. First thing is the eyes on mine look terrible. His eyes should either be glowing blue, or I should be able to see actual human eyes. This figure doesn’t do either. Instead the eyes are straight white with some blue slop at the top of the eyelids bleeding into the helmet. Looking at mine straight on makes him look cross-eyed. Of all the things that could go wrong this is probably the easiest to fix with a marker or a tiny bit of paint. I shouldn’t have to, but if this year has tought me anything it’s that quality control on eye paint has gone to hell.

The other problem I have with Nova is that his plastic is really soft. I’m not sure if Hasbro is using a new cheaper plastic, but this wouldn’t surprise me at all if they were. The arms and legs are very rubbery so getting him to stand can be a little tricky, and this also causes the joints to flop around. But the legs and arms aren’t the only rubbery part, his helmet and the star on his helmet are as well. You can actually pull the helmet flaps up on his head and there is something underneath. The star in the middle of his helmet is also soft plastic so mine is warped to one side.

Looking past some of the problems he does have a very nice paint job everywhere but the eyes.

Last time we got Nova he was pretty lackluster, but I justified it by saying “this is better than nothing.” It was barely better than nothing. This version of Nova still has quite a few problems, but proudly gets the title of “better than the last one.” Which is an upgrade; a fair upgrade but he still has ways to go to be a really good figure. If you are dying for a Nova figure then pick this up. If you want to complete Groot you will have to pick this up as well. He’s not a bad figure like the previous release, but he just doesn’t live up to his potential as a great figure.