Marvel Toys: Hasbro vs. Toy Biz

[GoktimusPrime]

I picked up Comic Series Iron Man yesterday - it was only the 3rd Hasbro Marvel figure I've picked up the other two being Spiderman 3's Green Goblin and symbiote Spiderman. Iron Man is the first time I've purchased a Marvel figure since Hasbro started making them in the 10cm scale. I thought Goblin was okay (not fantastic), symbiote Spiderman was disappointing, and this Iron Man is quite disappointing. When I saw the toy on pegs half of them had paint issues with the chest Arc reactor - I picked one that looked the best of the lot. But there are other QA problems. One fingertip is chipped, part of the right gauntlet and part of the helmet aren't painted properly. There's also a fleck of red paint on the back of one upper leg, and a black smudge on the other.

Then there's the design. The double jointed knees are really nice, but otherwise I find the articulation design to be... limited. He can't look up, and in fact is sculpted so that he's looking down, it's like Universe Ironhide/Ratchet and Silverbolt all over again. :( So it means that Iron Man can't look up when he's flying! :( :( There's no wrist articulation which means that his hands can't flip up to aim his palm mounted repulsor blasters... arguably Iron Man's most iconic weapons. So it's tricky to pose him to make him 'shoot.' Oh, the toy also comes with rather lame accessories. There's the "blast off" flame column which only clips into one foot. The back of the card has a photo which shows both legs together, but I can't seem to pose mine with both feet together. The end result is that it looks like the flames are shooting out of _one_ foot. There's another column that is supposed to fit over Iron Man's hand as a repulsor blast... I can't make it fit. :( Then there's the stand... it comes with three cards that assemble to form a picture of Iron Man. The cards are meant to clip into three slots on the stand. The slots are too big so the cards don't align properly. It's an incredibly lame gimmick.

Suddenly Animated Prowl's traffic light weapon doesn't look so bad.

I wish Hasbro would've skipped these lame accessories and spent more money on giving this toy better articulation. We know that Hasbro _can_ engineer decent articulation into 10cm action figures, 'cos a lot of their Star Wars Clone Troopers have absolutely fantastic articulation. Why wouldn't you give this same level of articulation to an action super hero like Iron Man?? Heck, they don't even do it for the Jedi... I hate how the Jedi are bricks compared to Clone Troopers - it should be the other way around. :( But instead toys like Jedi come with rather pointless gimmicks (like missile launchers... cos ya know, Jedi use those).

I was hoping that Hasbro would be giving us Marvel toys as cool as Toy Biz's, but at the same scale as other 10cm figures like G.I. Joes, Star Wars, Mutt Williams etc. But alas... Iron Man has made me rather skeptical and I'm not keen on getting any more. :( Considering that they sold for about the same price point ($15) I find that Toy Biz's Marvel figures - I have Toy Biz's 'classic' and Ultimate Iron Man figures) were much better value for money compared to Hasbro's.

Hasbro has given me a smaller Iron Man toy that isn't as good as Toy Biz's but costs the same (actually marginally more expensive).

http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y227/goktimusprime/avatars/jaam_shoulders.gif

[Sky Shadow]

Suddenly Animated Prowl's traffic light weapon doesn't look so bad.

No, really, it still does. :p

[Lord_Zed]

Then there's the design. The double jointed knees are really nice, but otherwise I find the articulation design to be... limited. He can't look up, and in fact is sculpted so that he's looking down, it's like Universe Ironhide/Ratchet and Silverbolt all over again. :( So it means that Iron Man can't look up when he's flying! :( :( There's no wrist articulation which means that his hands can't flip up to aim his palm mounted repulsor blasters... arguably Iron Man's most iconic weapons. So it's tricky to pose him to make him 'shoot.' Oh, the toy also comes with rather lame accessories. There's the "blast off" flame column which only clips into one foot. The back of the card has a photo which shows both legs together, but I can't seem to pose mine with both feet together. The end result is that it looks like the flames are shooting out of _one_ foot. There's another column that is supposed to fit over Iron Man's hand as a repulsor blast... I can't make it fit. :( Then there's the stand... it comes with three cards that assemble to form a picture of Iron Man. The cards are meant to clip into three slots on the stand. The slots are too big so the cards don't align properly. It's an incredibly lame gimmick.

Suddenly Animated Prowl's traffic light weapon doesn't look so bad.

I wish Hasbro would've skipped these lame accessories and spent more money on giving this toy better articulation. We know that Hasbro _can_ engineer decent articulation into 10cm action figures, 'cos a lot of their Star Wars Clone Troopers have absolutely fantastic articulation. Why wouldn't you give this same level of articulation to an action super hero like Iron Man?? Heck, they don't even do it for the Jedi... I hate how the Jedi are bricks compared to Clone Troopers - it should be the other way around. :( But instead toys like Jedi come with rather pointless gimmicks (like missile launchers... cos ya know, Jedi use those).



Can we have a pic? I picked up Warmachine from the same series and found him to be pretty good. Ok he can't look up either, but aside from that he has the standard amount of articulation for a modern Hasbro 10cm figure. Also he's tall and chunky. His shoulder pads are oddly articulated though but he's far above the previous Marvel Universe 10cm Iron Man figure.

The cards are lame, but the stand is appreciated, considering the lack of stands with previous releases. I may get Crimson Dynamo and one or two other figures, I was impressed by the paint job on the Movie Iron Man MK1 as well as the way they actually painted a lighting effect on the Aqua suit Ironman, even if it is a silly concept I give them a point for that. I will probably avoid the Iron Man figure your speaking about now though.

Anyway Hasbro is all about giving us less for more these days, just look at Voyager, Ultra and Leader class.:(

Anyway I'm not sure what to vote, From what I've seen Toybiz probably did a better job, but on the other hand they didn't appeal to me, as they were more space consumptive and I prefer collecting (some) smaller figures.

[Tetsuwan Convoy]

I much prefer toybiz.

I only have one, it is the original Hulk, but I would ALWAYS look at all the other legends figures on the shelf and go, "hmmm $15 bucks hey? Not Bad at all" and be very tempted to buy.

Since they have been shrunk down I now go "Humph." and put it straight back on the shelf.

I was tempted by War Machine from Ironman 2 line, but then saw that the price was $18 WTF?!?!?!?!?!?!???!?!?!?!??????? What a major friggin ripoff! There is no way in hell I would pay that much money for such a small toy.

[Meangreen]

My vote goes to Hasbro. Mostly because they decided to put Marvel into my favoured (1:18th) scale.

Toybiz, in my opinion, had very ugly sculpts for most of their figures. That, combined with the large size, has always put me off of them.

As for your comparisons Goktimus, I think you're being a little too hard on Hasbro's 1:18th stuff if you're trying to compare it to Toybiz's ML scale figures. Of course the larger figures are going to have room for much better articulation and more room for paint detail.

Toybiz, however, did make a line of 1:18th Marvel figures as well. They'd probably make for better comparisons.

http://www.cooltoyreview.com/TB_Showdown_Stands.asp

[kup]

I think that the root of the problem here is that no one in Hasbro's executive management really cares about the product itself and more about selling it to the stores.

A kid is not going to give a crap that a Jedi has a missile launcher because kids are smarter than that and actually watch the movies/cartoons and know that Jedi don't generally use them. However a Walmart guy who barely knows what Star Wars is beyond the toy line would think that the launcher is very attractive to kids.

That's the problem. Hasbro is making toys for the Walmart official to buy not kids. Once the Walmart guy buys them, that's it for Hasbro - they have done their job. That's why they don't care if little Billy is satisfied with his toy or not as that's Walmart's concern. Plus they know that even if Billy is dissatisfied with the toy, he will come back for more because he liked the movie. He will also come for he next round too because kids forget quickly and is more likely to 'play and discard' rather than keep since that is what they are taught to do by modern culture.

To me this also explains why there is such a huge emphasis on this 'gimmicky' colorful accessories that most kids are more likely to put aside than to play with as seen in Iron Man and the movie GI Joe toy line. It also explains why we had two rounds of shelf warming Bumper battlers and other super crap toys that refuse to sell. As far as Hasbro is concerned, those toys were huge successes because the stores bought them and even come back for more after Hasbro added some stupid gimmick to it.

The paint defects, joints and odd omissions to the articulation are of no concern to Hasbro since they are irrelevant to Walmart and other stores. Walmart only cares about how the toy looks in the package not out of it and in turn this is really Hasbro's main concern. The Walmart corporate buyer is not going to care if Ironman can't look up so neither does Hasbro.

The above is my opinion on the matter based on my observation of Hasbro's general business practices in the last couple of years.

[Lord_Zed]

Well I wouldn't call it a problem exactly, regardless of how Hasbro's new figures compare to Toy Biz's It's clear Hasbro have been improving their small scale figures. I can't speak for the Star Wars as I don't collect them, but the GI Joe Line that began with 25th Anniversary and continued into the movie line is a MAJOR improvement compared to the preceding GI Joe Lines. Like wise I think the current Marvel lines are much better than some of Hasbro's previous attempts which were as large as toybiz but had less articulation.

For that matter I can't speak for the missile launching Jedi toy, but I don't mind the GI Joe Missile launchers, there a cheap crappy gimmick, but in the case of GI Joe they don't actually detract from the toy, all the missile launcher toys have full articulation. And an external gimmick is preferable to some sort of built in spring loaded punch, or light action which will limit articulation, such as I've seen recently in Hasbro's new Spiderman series.

So while Hasbro may indeed be pandering to Wallmart and not the end consumer as there focal point, they are still manging to produce some of the best 10cm figures around.

[1orion2many]

:)Microman for the win:D

[Lord_Zed]

:)Microman for the win:D

Microman (men?) are excellent on the poseability front, but I'm not a big fan of most of the sculpts, majority use only one standardized body too.

[1orion2many]

Microman (men?) are excellent on the poseability front, but I'm not a big fan of most of the sculpts, majority use only one standardized body too.

:)Different heads and accs and how can you go past the rainbow colours. I think they have about 4-6 standard bodies between the Male and females.

[twincobra]

Hasbro do not know how to make a 6 inch hero action figure,they tried with the take over from marvel legends(the early waves where not even sculpted by hasbro in house) they doubled the price and cut out paint almost all together so they failed! I dont know what kindergarten they hired to sculpt the human heads on there star wars figures, there the most hidious things i have ever seen:eek: Its only going to go backwards when it comes to marvel figures and hasbro.