Is is my pleasure to formally open our Marvel Legends MCU 6" archive, dedicated to all the awesome Legends figures from the Marvel Cinematic Universe as produced by Hasbro Toys.
This is our biggest single update to the Website for a while, and quite a considerable decision for my own personal collecting. The MCU archive will also allows us to have some fun and do something different. We are going with shorter (hopefully) reviews and presenting the figures by movie and not waves.
We are also trailing some nice new info headers for the review and a different look to our 5 star rating system. Finally, and this is a wider change, we are dropping the extensive figure galleries and going with better quality images in the collage format. This in itself will speed up our review turnaround and will reduce the site loading times and overall hosting data.
You can check-out our new Marvel Legends archive by clicking through the image above. As we launch we have reviews done for all the pictured figures, and these will be released across the weekend. And we have plenty more figures to review and these will be added in the coming weeks.
The intention is not to make this a full checklist of every MCU figure, but rather an archive of my own figures by movie. At present we are looking a bit sparse and not every movie has a slot, this will be expanded and built over the coming weeks and months as I expand the collection and add more and more reviews to the archive....
Why Now?
Around 2013 my current collecting focus, Doctor Who 5" figures, had come to an end and I was searching for a new focus. The overriding aim was to do something based around my favourite movies and within that I was also getting heavily into the Marvel Cinematic Universe - which at the time had finished Phase 1 and we were about to reach Iron-Man 3.
Knowing I wanted Marvel figures in this wider collection I spent a good few weeks researching. At that time I knew nothing and was presented with Legends and Select figures, and not a lot more to know the differences. Based on looks, and the 7" scale, I went with Select and purchased a Mk42 Iron-Man to kick me off. In the following years I went back and hunted down the earlier figures from Iron-Man 2, Thor, Captain America and Avengers - while also picked up the new releases.
This was great, even if some characters were missed and if I ever threw a glance over to the 6" Legends they were pretty much doing the same thing with only 2 or 3 figures per movie. Select always had the better looking figures though, with Legends only advantage being their articulation.
Roll forward and as this website established I became a lot more aware of the complexities around the Select Marvel licence and also the gaps in figures they weren't doing were more obvious. At the same time Legends were upping their game a little and the first Guardians film saw a full set of the team released - when Select did nothing.
As we hit 2017 Select were doing great things with sculpts (Dr Strange) but were starting to mess around with scale (Daredevil) and also were holding back head sculpts and accessories and the figures were always late vs the movie release. For me not having figures at peak of a movies hype removes some excitement. Getting the Select Guardians figures a year after the movie held little appeal.
Legends of course continued to grow as a line, combining waves of MCU and comic book figures. And while I didn't like the idea of having to buy both comic and MCU figures for an MCU build-a-figure, they were calling to me in terms of the range of characters that was becoming available.
The game changer has come at Toy Fair 2018 with the announcement of the 10 years of MCU figures. With the arrival of figures like Sif, Yellowjacket and Ronan - the MCU Legends suddenly became much more attractive to a universe builder like myself. While Select, under the current agreement, can never go back - Hasbro it seems were looking at the past and filling in gaps they hadn't done at the time.
When I then considered I was already spending money trying (badly) to customise 7" figures - why not shift that into Legends. And here we are...
Select are not going anywhere for now and we will keep up with releases at their end for the Marvel movies. But the Legends is a whole new avenue to play with in the coming year and beyond. I will be picking up the new releases where I can. But more exciting is perhaps the hunt to track down some of the older figures - something I haven't done for a while.
I hope you like the format and I hope you will join me on my Legends adventure