[eisen]

a month or so back i mentioned that the marvel universe Iron Man Extremis armor was my favorite 1:18 iteration of the shellhead... well i just got these guys at Toys 'R' us and boy, they're giving him a run for his money:



fresh comic series armors have come to shore and these guys are the first ones i nab from the shelves. now i don't normally buy remolds unless they're A. twins or B. different enough from each other. the best example of this personal dogma is my TF classics Sunstreaker and sideswipe. i had to have them, since they are in fiction twins and they looked different enough. but why buy the arctic armor of this mold when the Advanced (IE: the Tin Man) armor is rockin enough on it's own?




well that's because the arctic armor is outwardly Extremis.



i'm not kidding. there are enough design clues to show. from the lines of the face, to the shoulder armor to the hands, all of them have similar qualities that constitute the Extremis motif.



i really would not mind seeing him in red and gold. in fact i may consider repainting a spare into just that.

now moving on to the quality of the mold, the sculpting is just excellent, kudos to whoever is in charge with this line, you've done nothing but please the fanboy in me with your comic offerings.


the Advanced armor is just so accurate it's crazy. while yes this armor has varied in look depending on the artist, this figure is a fairly good meshing of all the designs, drawing heavily on the Marvel legends counterpart and surpassing it in execution:


but here's the kicker, articulation-wise the mold has it's good points and somewhat meh moments.
the head is on a swivel/ball joint and hinged neck which means it can look straight up no problem and can even move sideways. the arms though are on a swivel-hinge like the rest of the line but once you come to the elbow it's just a hinge. you can't move it sideways which kinda bums me out as it limits the arm poses he can do convincingly. the wrists are on a swivel. the chest pivot is unobstructed on both molds and the thighs have this new, bigger ball-swivel/hinge joints like what you see on Titanium man, which would be cool had not the thighs be so tightened with paint. i had to subject both figures to hot water to loosen it up a bit, but that's all. it seems to be common in the mold. from the thigh down it's the same as the rest of the line: double hinged knees and swivel/hinge feet.
paintwise i had to go through for of the Advanced armor to find a fairly good one that didn't need too much retouching. the colors on the Arctic armor though makes the flaws less noticeable so i just snatched the first one i saw with no fuss.




bottomline: the sculpts are great for comic armors and very good interpretations of the contemporary hardware Tony sported a few years back, and the arctic armor, while sorta left-field has potential for an extremis repaint. while there are some subtractions in articulation and problems with the joints, these two are recommended additions to any fan's mini-armory.
7 out of 10 for both.