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).