Hasbro Marvel Legends Nemesis Series Review
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There are a lot of terms that you could use to describe toy collectors. But patient is not one of them. We are known for being willing to
go to great lengths to get our latest fix of plastic. So the last six months of waiting for the release of the latest series of Marvel Legends
figures to finally be released here in the United States has been extremely annoying. And while many collectors have already grown impatient and
ordered them from Canada. But for those of us who were willing to wait, or just to cheap to pay international shipping, they have finally begun to
arrive here in the US. With the likes of Tigra, Beast, Black Bolt and Nova, people had high expectation for these figures. It is going to be tough for
them to prove to be worth the wait.
Packaging - 9/10The packaging for the Nemesis series is more of the standard fare from Hasbro. But that is a good thing. Their design is attractive and makes good use of comic images and shows off the figures well. The cards stand up well to normal wear and tear. Or at least they probably would if the line stayed on the pegs long enough to take any wear and tear. The back of each card has a brief biography of the character, photos of the entire series of figures and the completed build a figure: Nemesis
Sculpting - Nova 5/10, Tigra 6/10, Black Bolt 7/10, others 8/10The sculpts for most of the figures turned out quite well. A considerable amount of work had to be put into Daredevil, Beast and Black Bolt. They really had little choice for Beast. But I was pleasantly surprised to see that the details of Daredevil's outfit were actually included as part of the sculpt rather than just painting them on. Black Bolt has a few annoying faults such as knee caps which stick out from the knee joint and small plastic tabs sticking out from the elbow joints where the under arm wings are attached. I also keep debating to myself whether the tuning fork on his head should be larger or not. It seems a bit small. But if it was any larger, it would likely be prone to warping which isn't the case now. This version of the Punisher is mostly made of parts recycled from Ultimate Nick Fury. But for the Punisher, the reused parts are quite fitting. Tigra has new molds for much of her body as well. But her head sculpt just doesn't seem to fit the character. Perhaps it is just because I only know her from her more recent appearances in the Avengers Initiative title, but it just doesn't look like Tigra. Finally there is Nova who once again uses the same body that Hasbro has used for Quicksilver, Guardian, Union Jack and others. It works alright here. I'd say that the head sculpt is out of scale with it, but that is just because of the bulk that the helmet adds. Really, Nova's greatest fault is simply that they didn't both to put in as much effort on this figure as they did for most of the others.
Paint - Nova 5/10 others 6/10The paint work on my set of figures turned out quite well. Though I must admit that I did scan through a few figures to avoid any obvious problems. Nova has a tiny amount of sloppiness around his belt line. None of the other figures have any quality control issue worth mentioning. Of course, there is also little there to truly impress anyone either.It is also worth noting that there are two figures in this series with paint variants available. The yellow costume that I have is the normal version of the figure for this series. But there is the obvious repaint with his all red color scheme. In the case of the Punisher, the normal version features his traditional black shirt with a thin skull emblem. The variant figure which I picked up has camouflage pants with a matching olive green shirt and face paint. I don't know how useful camouflage war paint would be when facing predominantly urban based criminals, but at least it adds a bit of variety to all of the Punisher variants I already have.
Articulation - Nova & Daredevil 8/10, Punisher & Tigra 6/10 Beast & Black Bolt 5/10Since Nova reuses the standard Hasbro body, he has the full amount of articulation including double jointed knees and elbows and even an extra joint in the torso for each shoulder. Daredevil is missing a few joints such as the hinged toes or fingers. But that isn't any real lose. It is actually better that he doesn't have hinged fingers so he can better hold his weapon. Punisher and Tigra both make due with the newer style combination joints for their elbows instead of the full articulation of past figures. Beast actually has the same articulation as the Punisher, but the range of motion for his elbows is even more limited because of the sculpt. Black Bolt has the same issues. There is still a lot of articulation there, but it isn't capable of emulating the range of motion of a real person or even matching that of previous Marvel Legends figures. In addition, many of the joints are now designed with ratcheting groves which do help them to hold poses. But they also make fine adjustments almost impossible.
Accessories - Punisher & Daredevil 6/10, others 0/10Of the six figures in the Nemesis series, only two come with any accessories for the figures. The Punisher has a large rifle and a hand gun. And Daredevil has a pair of nunchuks. The guns included with the Punisher are nice. I particularly like that the hand gun fits snugly into the holster on his hip. But only having two guns still doesn't seem like enough for the Punisher. The nunchuks included with Daredevil are pretty basic, two plain white sticks attached with a string. They don't even fit very deeply into the holster on his leg.
Build-A-Figure - NemesisThe build a figure for this series is Nemesis who from what I can gather (or at least what I can read on Wikipedia) is an X-men villain from the Age of Apocalypse and the son of Apocalypse. The figure itself is a decent choice for a build a figure. At just over seven inches in height, it is unlikely that he would have been made as a single figure. He does lack the heft of some past build a figures since the body is hollow. (The arms and legs are solid though.) But that also means that the figure is less prone to falling/sagging under his own weight. The sculpt is decent, though it isn't all that easy to see the details given the limited use of paint and the semi-translucent plastic. Its biggest fault is that the combination of the opening cover and the shoulder armor which isn't attached in the front gives the upper body an impression of being fairly cheap and flimsy when the actual figure under those parts isn't. They did do some paint work beyond the obvious spots all over the figure. The groves on his should pads are painted as well and the bones inside are fully painted. Technically they got the eye color wrong. According to Marvel website they should be red. But the yellow stands out better. Nemesis is fairly well articulated with roughly thirty points of articulation. I was particularly surprised to find that they bothered to include a double jointed neck on the skeleton. Unfortunately, as is the case with many of the build a figures, the joints which separate the figure into the six BAF pieces are not as secure as a factory assembled figure would have been. They are not as bad as some of the BAF in the past. But my figure has popped apart at the torso joint at least once already while testing the articulation.
Value - Punisher, Tigra & Nova 6/10, others 7/10(Add a point if completing Nemesis)The retail price for these figures at Walmart is $10.44. And since this series is exclusive to Walmart here in the United States, that's as cheap as you are likely to find them unless they eventually hit clearance. While these are decent figures, this price point is enough to make me seriously reconsider buying all the figures in a wave, particularly in cases like the Punisher where there have been multiple other versions of the character in the past. And while Nemesis certainly isn't as impressive as some of the early Toy Biz Build A Figures, as a bonus or an incentive for those that might have only bought part of the series, he works well. Now let's hope we won't have to wait another six months for the next series.
Happy Hunting:As I mentioned earlier, the Nemesis series figures are exclusive to Walmart with the United States. So of course, if you want to find them you will either have to check your local Walmart stores, import them from overseas or look for someone reselling them. At this point, Walmart is probably you best of three the options. The series shipped elsewhere so long ago that they are either sold out or only available for insane prices. The problem will be finding them. After many months they are finally showing up domestically. Though at this point, the distribution seems to be mostly to Walmart Supercenters. And when they do show up, it may be in limited numbers with questionable hopes for additional deliveries. And to make matters worse, the cases which are shipping also contain a number of figures from the previous Ares series. So a complete case will only have one set of Nemesis series figures plus the variants. In short, if you see them don't wait to buy them later.
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