[Boy Blunder]

ToyAddicts got their second shipment of the X-Wave in, so we picked up our preorder yesterday. They also got a couple cases of just All-New Wolverine, so we grabbed her as well. (We would've also grabbed the Logan w/ Motorcycle, but we're hanging on to some money to try and nab an SDCC Optimus Primal when they go up on HTS) Some quick thoughts:

- Wave has some issues with paint cleanliness across the board. Multiple Man, Psylocke, Sabretooth, and Gladiator all have some issues with fuzzy lines, with Psylocke having a bit of bleedthrough on the back of one of her arms. The fuzziness wasn't dealbreaking (the worst of it is on Gladiator, who was the 'yeah, he's here too' figure of the wave, so it's NBD), but if I had been able to pick-and-choose, I probably would've been a little more selective.
- The Lauras they had ran the gamut from pretty decent paint (a little fuzziness here and there, as you can see with ours) to a couple downright sloppy ones (one had a blue smear across her stomach, like someone's thumb got into the blue paint before they put her in the package), so keep that in mind if you're going for her at retail.
- Thankfully, we got a Sabretooth that had his jaw set flush with his head, so no gapping there.
- Purple-haired Psylocke FTW! Wife still wants to pick up a black-haired one too, if we see her at retail.
- Those fins on Magneto's cape are killing me. Might end up trimming them back just to get it to set properly.
- I'm actually really happy that Laura's toe claws are a different mold from the hand-claws, and look more like talons/raptor claws. The whole 'we extracted two of her claws from her arms and inserted them into her feet' thing is friggin' dumb - not only would you have to essentially add in new muscles in order for her to pop and retract the claw, it would be too long to fit inside her foot if it was the same length as the ones in her arms. From a design and engineering standpoint, it fails on so many levels. So I'm glad they made it look more natural for this figure, more akin to her foot claws in Logan.
- Magneto's helmet fins (the ones framing his face) had a bit of warping inside the package, so I'm gonna need to hit it with some water treatment before using it for display/photos.
- Despite the issues and nitpicks, this wave is much better than the last X-Wave, in my opinion. Psylocke, Sabretooth, and Wolverine were vital updates, Multiple Man has been in-demand for a while, and while some people are still clamoring for Jim Lee and/or First Appearance Storm, Punk Storm was the surprise winner of the wave, having minor paint issues (if any) and fantastic sculpting (god, that facial expression is key). Sabretooth comes in a close second, just barely beating out my previous favorite use of the Sentry mold (sorry, Tombstone, you've been dethroned). And while I know Tallpocalypse from the Toy Biz days has a bunch of fans, this is the Apocalypse I've always wanted - not too small, not too big, massive proportions, and a fantastic deco. He'll look great facing off against the upcoming Archangel re-release.

As for All-New Wolverine, she's well-worth scouring through to find the best paint, because her sculpt work is great, and her deco is striking once you find a good one. The only major gripe is that something about her unmasked head looks a little... big, at least on her own body. Swapped onto X-Force Laura, it looks a bit better IMO.



Incidentally, the day before yesterday I ran into the entire X-Wave at our local Target, so that's another retail sighting for y'all.