Who Did Marvel Legends Better?
 

I'm just curious which company did a better job with Marvel Legends.

Toybiz had some good figs and their bafs were better in size but hasbro thankfully did away with variants ( the bane of many an old school marvel legends collectors ) and made some characters i never woulda thought would get made so as much as i currently have cut back on my hasbro purchases they tend to have done a better job with legends.

Oh yeah, the Toybiz era was made in the era when the conventional wisdom was that overdesigned variants would be cool to have. Some of the figures were cool, I think the Toybiz Ultimate Captain America looks better than Hasbro's, but I think Hasbro made the better Ultimate Iron Man.

Toybiz were amazing at the time, but most have aged really poorly alongside their Hasbro counterparts- wonky immersion-breaking articulation, needless articulation (fingers), funky anatomical proportions (especially on female figures). The Hasbro line has it's flaws too, but usually those are minor nitpicks, like a missed detail, the "wrong" buck being used, etc. Some of the Toybiz figures were pretty great from a sculpting standpoint, though.

I don't know how so many people bought so many Toybiz Legends when a lot of the sculpts were so ugly. I mean the presentation of the packaging and the comic is nice, but IMO if you ever intended to open up the figure and actually play with it or put it on the shelf then the figure did not pass the "good enough" test visually speaking.

IMO for Legends somewhere around 2012/2013-ish is when they started to become "good enough" visually.

For me, it always depended on the characters. I only ever got characters I thought looked good. My parents typically got me the ugly-looking ones, that I have since sold. I got the impression they tried to replicate an artist's particular art style but never did as good of a job as DC Direct did.

Finger articulation was particularly annoying because it made it hard to have characters hold objects. Getting the objects in a character's hand was easy, but it's a chore to get them to keep them in their hands. GI Joe Classified and Hasbro's Marvel Legends have the opposite problem where getting the object in someone's hand is difficult, but it actually stays there when placed into the hand. However, I do enjoy how I can make characters flip each other off when I can articulate their four main fingers individually.

In my case, it was because literally the only other Marvel figures produced up to that point were the Toybiz lines from the 90's (barring even more rudimentary lines like Secret Wars and whatever Mego did, because they were before my time). I mean, hold up Spidey from the pre-legends "Classics" line next to one from TAS and there's your answer. At the time, they were the best there ever was. I wouldn't want them for free now, but I can only say they're ugly or whatever because I have the benefit of hindsight.

Also, to add a bit to my comment from earlier in the evening: Hasbro also took quite a while to get the figures right. Some of those early Hasbro offerings are WAY worse than most of what Toybiz had put out. Kind of a bummer, too, because there are a few characters released during that period that have yet to be revisited, and I'm just not willing to have them on my shelves simply to fill holes. Basically, if it has ball-hips, no thanks.

^ I'd also imagine price was a big factor too. I mean I don't know how much Legends cost back then, but must have been way cheaper than now... cheap enough to buy a bunch of stuff and not stress too much over it.

Nowadays... I stress over every Legends purchase it feels like... and for 30-ish dollars the fig better be damn near perfect.

Hasbro, no contest. Toy Biz's figures have awkward proportions (some figures look like gorillas like Magneto), the posseable fingers make fists look weird, and the figures are just butt ass ugly.

Yeah, I don't remember exactly, but I know I could get one for close to if not exactly what the Joe two-packs were selling for at the time, so they had to be less than $10. I don't really stress the new prices, mostly because I've come to modern toy collecting pretty recently after some 15 years of so of exclusively buying toys on eBay- no matter how high they climb at retail, they will always be less than what I've become accustomed to spending. I still don't love it, though. Even so, thinking back, I was probably more stressed over the less than $10; I was in my early 20's with very little disposable income, struggling to keep a roof and food, and making shitty financial decisions at that (like buying toys in the first place ;) ). Nowadays, I'm fairly comfortable with little overhead and much more disposable income. I'm spending more, sure. But I feel it less, I guess.

I'd also add that they were fucking fragile. Your comment about Magneto reminded me of my own Mag's abdomen breaking just from posing him. In fact, it kinda scarred me a bit- I'm super gentle with my Legends these days as a result, and whenever I see Shartimus go through a POA demo I cringe a bit, waiting for the sound of snapping plastic. I know it's an unfounded fear, but it's there, all the same.

I have a Carnage that's just broken beyond repair from the Toybiz era. A handles Doctor Octopus with broken tentacle arms. A couple of headless Spider-Men. Surprisingly not more of my Toybiz figures ended up like that aside from Deathlock.

Can't curl up the fingers to make a fist. Yeah, I prefer just having the hands be fists like the Hasbro Marvel Legends and the various DC Universe/Multiverse lines have it. Though it does bum me out not to be able to stick up a character's middle finger. It's a worthy sacrifice for an all-around better figure.

Hasbro by far. Wasnt a fan of the gangly, marrionette-like proportions a lot of toybiz figures had. And thought their idea of detail, washes and overly sculpted wrinkles everywhere, was quite ugly at times. I've noticed too that the few figures I actually really liked at the time (bullseye and moonknight for example) havent really aged well.

Oh. Yeah. Bullseye has not aged well at all. I think the figure that has aged the best of that era is the Punisher, his face isn't over-designed as other figures and I love the tactical design on his legs. His hands are the only thing that I don't like about the figure, the moving fingers make it dificult to hold weapons.

How is this even a question? Hasbro by a mile.

Now, I did get annoyed at times when Toy Biz had done a character and people were saying it had never been done before, like it didn't exist. In cases like those, yes, they stand out badly from the Hasbro figures, but to just act as if they didn't exist at all was a bit irksome.

There are a few figures that TB has done that are real quality, like the BAF Sentinel and BAF Apocalypse, and Toy Biz got the Abomination down perfectly in one go while Hasbro still has fallen short every time they'd done him. A few figures are pretty much on par with Hasbro. But over all the quality was bad, we just didn't know better because there was nothing to compare it to, and even with that there were a handful we knew were crap but it was either that or not have the character at all (TB Lady Deathstrike I'm looking squarely at you on this one)

Hasbro. This didn't need its own thread.

Hasbro all the way for Marvel Legends.


But Toy Biz killed it before that line. Their 90's runs on lines were incredible.

I went with Toybiz. I hated Hasbro early attempts at figures. I hated the return of marvel legend figures as well. I bought very few of what was offered though some gems didnshone through. If I had to compare between hasbro weird small under design or toybiz I'll go with toybiz. If it's about female characters hasbro did those better save for Emma.

That said after winter soldier and the modern hasbro legends flowed Hasbro is the solid winner. The men and women look like they belong in the line. Its truly great for me to see how deep they gone but man that start was ugly.

The thing about Toybiz Legends was they were usually one and done right? I remember those toybiz Deadpools being pretty expensive loose at collector shows. For better or worse Hasbro released like a bazillion Deadpools... so if you wanted Deadpool you definitely had your chance to get one. I like that Hasbro often re-releases figures either as repaints or straight up re-releases or figure upgrades.

No joke there. That Deadpool/Doop set was expensive AF and nearly impossible to find in the wild. I remember looking for it forever before finding one at WM.

You mean the pre-Legends stuff? If so, I agree. I went hard on the X-Men line. I still consider going back and collecting those again, especially since most of them are cheap AF.

Yep. And like you said, fairly cheap.

Where else are you going to get Century from Force Works or StarJammers characters? lol. Thinking back, it was crazy the characters they made.