Lets hope Hasbro knows we need a 3 pack of Ninjas with alternate heads and accessories and soon.

Geez Hasbro you're killing my wallet!!!!!

Thanks again for all the positive comments on my wife's cosplay - I've been passing along the praise to her, and being the first cosplay she's done in years, she's been very happy to hear the kind words!

@Riddick, can't say for certain if it's the same as the electronic prop version, but it's roughly the same size, from what I was able to tell. Again, the line was too long to get much close-up time with it.

@VashTS, the Hydra two-pack includes three heads for each soldier, four guns (large bazooka-type gun, fancy future rifle, tactical shotgun, and drum-fed gun of some sort), large combat knife, and alternate 'classic Hydra' web gear for the smaller soldier (he comes packed in a vest).

So I figured I'd give you guys a quick rundown of the A-Force set, now that I've had a couple days to evaluate it. First off, let me say that we bought it at a premium ($145 rather than $120), but mostly because it saved us the stress of wondering if we'd be able to get one, and because we like to support ToyAddicts (our local toy store) as much as possible (and $25 is a small finder's fee, especially since we paid cash, which meant no tax out the door). Second, I will say that, on Sunday, the EE booth still had a goodly amount of stock left, so hopefully they'll restock online after counting up the remaining inventory. So stay vigilant, fellow Arkers!

http://i64.tinypic.com/2d6wj92.jpg

Monica Rambeau is a fantastic toy, though I feel she could have been improved by including some effects pieces for her light powers (which is why I stole Dazzler's for this shot). Paint is sharp, and the white they used for her costume is a nice opalescent plastic. Face paint is fantastic, and the sculpt is pretty damn perfect. I love her hair.

http://i65.tinypic.com/2cwjxw9.jpg

Elsa Bloodstone is easily my absolute favorite figure in the set. Two shotguns and a sidearm (reused from Misty Knight) are a proper loadout of accessories, though ideally she'd also have her micro-uzis. Her paint work and face sculpt are amazing, making her a striking figure on display. My only complaints are her feet (chunky heeled boots are hard to pose well), and the lack of bicep swivel or double-elbow, which affect her much more than Monica, who shares her arms (both use the arms and jacket piece from MCU Scarlet Witch). Aside from that, though, she's fantastic and brings us one step closer to having the NextWave cast.

http://i67.tinypic.com/2dtdcvs.jpg

For being a repaint of Angela with a new head, sword, skirt, and cape, Sif definitely stands out from her mold-mate. She makes the most of yet another striking paint job, with sharp white apps against the red majority of the outfit. Her cape doesn't like it when you move her arms at the shoulders, but it doesn't look awful, just noticeable.

http://i67.tinypic.com/2555ow3.jpg

Loki's paint job is one of my favorites from the set, due to the liberal use of a dark metallic green for the body, and clean 'scale male' paint apps across her torso and legs. The head has some excellent sculpting and paint work, though there's a bit of bleed from her golden hair adornments into the hair. Despite having the same cape as Sif, it looks a bit more unique due to the colors and the figure herself. The unique hands and bicep swivels really help her get into nice spellcasting poses, which would've been helped, again, by some energy effects.

http://i68.tinypic.com/j7ruch.jpg

She-Hulk is... a letdown. I remember Triv making some comments about her when we first saw in-hand images, and having her myself, I'm finding that they ring true. Using the same body as Valkyrie was a good idea in concept, but the body has some major problems that need addressing, and Hasbro failed to do so with Shulkie. The hip peg's location, the length of the arms, her head sculpt and the size of her head... they all work against her here. Having a differently-tooled upper torso makes things worse - her shoulders are a little higher, making her arms seem even shorter. I am glad we got a new She-Hulk, but the end result is a let-down. It's too bad, because the deco, like mostly everything else in the set, is great, with a nice metallic purple and deep green.

http://i63.tinypic.com/11ay9ed.jpg

Singularity is easily my wife's favorite of the set, and I'm also very happy with her. The translucent plastic and glitter mixed in are very nice, and I love the paint apps - they appear to be using the same 'dot matrix' printing that the MCU figures have been getting for their faces, but it works for making the colors blend on her.

http://i67.tinypic.com/21exqoj.jpghttp://i64.tinypic.com/x3xv02.jpg

The face sculpt, however, misses one of Singularity's most memorable aspects - her ever-present smile. She has a slight smile to her lips that's visible from certain angles, but in the comics, she almost always has a big, cheerful grin. Would've been a better choice, to help her stand out among all the stoic-faced figures. Additionally, giving her two open hands rather than an open hand and a fist would've fit the character better, as Singularity is a cosmic force and doesn't really do direct physical combat. Other than all that, it's amazing that she even got a figure, and she's another great in a set of great figures.

http://i68.tinypic.com/103tunt.jpg

And here we have (almost) all of A-Force, barring Medusa (thank goodness for the upcoming Walgreens one). Taken together, they make a great and diverse display set.

Aside from Shulkie, I'm extremely happy with the set, and I do hope everyone else who wants this set (or figures from it) is able to get their hands on them.

Jean is such a solid figure, I hope to see mine come in the mail soon...Beautifully set backdrop and silhouette to enchant the translucent side of Dark Phoenix...

Note: Thank for the info on Thor (JF), I will be getting one of them for sure...

Great shots Boy Blunder.

Someone needs to make a Dirk Diggler to go with rollergirl....i mean a longshot for dazzler...yah thats it. Haha

I hope to get that afor e set....some how. Or at least elsa bloodstone and sif.

Thanks for the review, Boy Blunder. This is just such a cool set. I missed the initial sale, so I'm one of the ones waiting for it to possibly pop back up. I really hope Hasbro can work their magic again next year and build up a set that is as versatile and complimentary as this one.
Thanks for the kind words, mate! Yeah, Jean is one of my absolute favorite Marvel characters. Glad the pics did her Dark Phoenix persona justice.:D

As for Foster Thor, I keep teetering back and forth between getting one or both. I'll probably wait a bit and see how the retail version affects the price of the SDCC one. If I can snag both for about retail, that'll be a win.

Oh my stars and garters. ALready got a shipping confirmation from Dorkside on my Thor wave. Goodness that was fast!! Thank you Dorkside!!!

Oh and my netflix wave came today. In hand I think I'm going to keep Jessica and Punisher, if nothing else I have a civilian now and maybe an AU Punisher.

Man Thing is HUGE. Hee hee. Too easy not to sink into the gutters with that kind of name. And I don't have to worry about him breaking like my first one. :p Okay I need to stop with the awful puns now. Although it's true, TB Man Thing is the only LEgend that has broken on me.

To be honest I just put them in the drawer with A-Force and DP, I guess I will just wait til I get the Thor wave to box all these up, but overall there's a ton of accessories which is great. Love the Alternate blade head which I didn't even realize he came with one. I did know about the rest just didn't realize that one had one.

There's sooo much stuff recently and yet at the same time it's weird, because it's only the tail end of July and yet it feels like the year's product is swiftly coming to a close...only the possibility of getting the SDCC yet and the for sure purchase for the Thor two pack remain....and like I said, July isn't even over. Very much a lopsided year.

Ah cool. Thanks for the info Nash.

Aint that the truth. I've decided to just cherry-pick from the Marvel Knights and Ragnarok waves now, and get the rest a bit later at retail. That'll help fight the plastic crack withdrawals in the cold months. lol

Also, don't forget the Vintage wave coming soon this fall. Despite being pretty much re-packs of the A-listers, some are gonna be really nice to get again. Black Widow, Pizza Spidey, and Wolverine are all bought on sight.

You're welcome! Also, I had it shipped USPS this time, you'll have them in a couple of days:)

I guess you are part of the very small minority that don't like army builders. Hydra wouldn't exist w/o it's legion of Hydra grunts. Same for AIM and the HAND/SHIELD. The original 2 packs featuring HAND ninjas & SHIELD agent Dum Dum Slogan cost an arm & a leg on ebay due to their popularity. So Hasbro re-doing these on newer better bucks will hurt the high priced scalper's deeply where it counts; their pockets.

Is anyone else a bit discouraged by all of the reused headsculpts being used for different characters? The Captain Britain, Shield, Nuke and Ares (I don't think that is a light skinned Cage) for the Hydra troops, the Silk head for Jewel, and now if you look closely at the Vintage Widow, it's MJ with slightly different hair and almost no difference in paint. If they were masked villians like Eel or Blizzard, I wouldn't mind too much, but these are characters whose faces are not hidden behind a mask, and honestly, the whole thing looks off and reeks of cheapness on Hasbro's part.

@Boy Blunder: Does the reused Nuke head have a painted on scar, or is it plain? If there is no scar, I'm using that for an unmasked Eddie Brock.

Only Silk/Jewel bothers me personally. If we get more army builders through the re-use of parts I'm all for that. Vintage Widow looks perfect with that headsculpt, I didn't notice it was MJ. I think it is a bit sad that they could re-use the head of a Korean-American character for a white character though (I'm not implying anything about racism here, no one get excited) but generally if re-using parts means more characters we might otherwise miss out on I'm all for it.
Having said that, you're not wrong, it would be better if Hasbro would minimize the reuse of headsculpts when it comes to unique characters. I'd just rather get the character with a reused head than not at all.

TRU Australia aren't certain they are getting the A-Force set, which has me worried. I want that damn set.

Good eye on it not being Luke Cage. After a closer look, the Luke Cage mold appears to have a sculpted goatee and the Ares mold has a sculpted hairline, canceling both out as re-uses here. Looking in a Legends database for a moment got me to notice that head in the Hydra 2-pack belongs to Drax the Destroyer from the exclusive team pack. After looking past the skin color, you'll notice the shape of the features, lines, and cleft chin on the face to be nearly identical.

http://marvellegends.net/Faces/InfiniteE15-08Drax.jpg

They are making too many figures. I've been saying this for a while now, but too much of a good thing becomes a bad thing before long. Especially if they are pushing out twice the number of figs while keeping their manufacturing expenditures relatively the same as companies are known to do. I'd prefer quality over quantity. Many of the figs revealed at sdcc simply do not look good when one revisits the photos. Maybe the proto just came out a bit funky, but that Daredevil paint is horrible IMO and Luke's left arm (bicep) was assembled backwards, yet they still had it displayed at the show...nearly everything felt pretty sloppy and mailed in.

That Singularity figure is rad. I dont know anything about those female characters, but she is the coolest looking imo. Wasnt a fan of Iceman or Astral Strange, but something about the blue, and glitter, with purple mixed in looks rad.

I think that head originated on Radioactive Man from the 2014 Target 3-pack. I know the lighting w/ the translucency makes it harder to make the features out as clearly as it does for the other figures, but I think this picture shows them well enough (do note, Radioactive Man's head seems to be tilted slightly more downward than Drax's, so take that into consideration when comparing the two):

http://marvellegends.net/Faces/Infin...oactiveMan.jpg

Hasbro are the kings of repaints. By far my biggest gripe about Hasbro. They reuse everything 1000x's over yet continue to charge $20 a figure.

I'm some cases I don't mind it but yeah seeing the Silk head is kind of weird since she's supposed to be Asian anyway lmao. And the main reason I'm not interested in the mass release Odinson (I'll probably sell it) is the terrible use of the Sentry head.

Thanks, I really appreciate that!

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Regarding the discussion of the quantity of things being produced and the repaints, I definitely feel like we've had this discussion before, maybe last year, when we also got 7 full waves and various exclusives.

Back then I said I would be perfectly happy with 5-6 really great waves, instead of 7 waves that have varying degrees of quality. That has not changed for me. Not only is it pretty tough on the wallet but we end up getting a lot of repeat figures in order to pad out those lines. I'm not just talking about various versions of Spider-Man either. Sadly I'm seeing the 7 waves being a likely trend next year too (at minimum: X-Men wave, Deadpool Wave, BP wave, 2 Avengers waves and 2 Spider-Man waves, and that's if we don't get a Netflix wave until 2019, otherwise it bumps it up even more.) 2019 is likely going to be a similar scenario, I can see it now: NetFlix wave, Captain Marvel wave, 2 Spider-Man, 2 Avengers and 1 X-Men...and so forth. The increase in production of movies has led to an increase in associated waves, in addition to the pretty much required Spider-Man wave and now a dedicated X-Men wave too.

I found it hard to keep up with it this year, and I feel like next year I can't keep up anymore, especially when so much of what is coming is lackluster or repetition. Starting next year I'm probably going to pull away focus on waves and just get the individual figures I want, unless the BAF completely blows me away (and Dorkside has a way to cover for that, bless them!) This obviously doesn't pertain to X-waves as they could put that line out for a good 2-3 years without getting any further than second tier characters, and much more than that if they want to go deeper. And as I've said, even though I love so much of Marvel, the X-Men corner is truly where my heart is.

As far and repainting and reuse of molds, I think it's a necessary evil. I think they've done mostly fairly well so far with it. Could some figures be better and be more comic accurate? Sure, but I'm generally fairly happy with what we get in that respect. It's also why we maybe haven't gotten some figures yet that would require some extra beyond the normal retooling, outside of obvious ones like Sauron of course. I don't want to lower my expectations to character availability but I guess it may be something we have to do.

I was just discussing that with a friend of mine, he said it's all just repaints and reused parts. which really it is.... almost all the new figures introduced were parts used from a previous figure, someway some how.


So anyways, what's everyone's thoughts on the gladiator hulk BAF? to be honest he doesn't do it for me. he doesnt look mean enough with this figure, same goes with the select version too. the one that caught my eye was one of the photos from SDCC, it was either from mondo or mezco toys. the only problem is how out of scale would theirs be compared to legends?

It almost is all reused parts now, but the good thing on that is they have a really large set of parts to choose from. Little bit of remolding and retooling here and there and most figures can be done. Unique BAF like Man-Thing or Lizard seem like they take up most of their new sculpt, which is understandable in a way, BAF should be special. And even though, we've seen the main bucks be reused again and again (Abomination, Rhino, Absorbing Man, Sandman). My only hope is that now that we have Lizard coming that opens the door for Sauron (sorry to keep bringing him up but I really want him made lol!)

As for as G.H. he looked okay to me from the pictures, enough I went ahead and got the wave to get him. In hand it may be a different story of course. Maybe if he's not angry looking enough it's because he just smashed someone or is having a good day. :p

As someone who doesn't really buy movie figures, I think the gladiator Hulk figure looks awesome! I think it will be a great addition to anybody's collection.
In other news, I scored a build a figure Man Thing on a Facebook group. I didn't really want the whole wave just Bullseye and Blade. I'm pretty excited to have gotten him for a good price

As opposed to Mattel who charged $30+ for a reuse of everything and barely even included accessories?

Hasbro works to make the figure look different at least.

Anyway, did they ever show what Ghost Rider's bike looks without the skull shield? I'm trying to figure out if I'm going to use it as his Champions bike or his Flame bike.

Oh yeah, and it sounds like TRU over sold the A-Force set and are canceling orders in no order.