Marvel Legends Retro Invisible Woman figure review

The Retro Fantastic Four line is one that’s really hitting a sweet spot for me. When Toy Biz originally released this wave of figures based on the Fantastic Four cartoon, I’d just stumbled onto the excellent second season. I was in college and getting to the “too cool for action figure collecting” phase of life. And then Kay-Bee Toys had a killer Buy 3 for $10 sale for the FF figures and the rest was history. The one chance for me to be done collecting figures was over and way too many dollars later, I’m still at it.

Invisible Woman might be the most controversial member of the wave thanks to an attempt at a more action-oriented head sculpt. Let’s see if she truly deserves all the outrage.

Package:  I love this packaging despite its size and arguably massive waste of plastic with the oversized — yet accurate — circle.

It features the logo from the original package with the team on the Fantasticar and a dark blue fading into a lighter blue. The yellow and red take on the logo was also nice. We also get a little bonus with a drawing of Sue in action.

Sue has a remarkably comprehensive bio for a sentence covering her team affiliation and status within the group. No real need to explain her powers since it’s self-explanatory. And I still love seeing the rest of the figures in the wave posed out instead of pictures.

Likeness: Let’s address the elephant in the room right away. This head sculpt is not great.

That was a way of life for most Toy Biz female figures and apparently Hasbro decided to go a little too retro in that sense.

I get what they were trying here with a focused, determined mid-fight expression for Sue and in fairness it works for action shots, but it’s not ideal for the one and only head sculpt.

A lot of collectors have swapped the head for other Sue figures or cobbling together parts from other blonde females.

In every case they’re an improvement over what Hasbro delivered. I think my preference is the modern headsculpt although she’d benefit from using the hair from this one to avoid the windswept look.

Sue uses a basic blank body, which is fine since she’s not statuesque or Amazonian.

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Paint: Sue’s paint job is tremendous and that’s not just my biased toward the blue and white color scheme. The shade of blue pops and the white is nice and stark making this iteration of the FF really stand out among their fellow Marvel counterparts.

I’ve read some earlier Sue figures had some weird paint around her teeth. Mine doesn’t seem to have that issue or any problem with the logo/collar placement.

Scale:  In the FF scale, Reed is typically portrayed as the tallest with Thing next followed by Johnny and then Sue. Artists as early as Mike Zeck with Secret Wars started bumping Ben’s height up so The Thing is more associated as the Hulk-like height member. Sue should still be the shortest though.

Her hair makes her look a bit closer to Reed’s height than she should, but she still matches up properly with the team.

Articulation: Sue came out just a bit too soon to take advantage of the new mold for standard females in the line. That means she’s lacking both the bicep swivel and double-jointed elbows, which would help for showing off her powers — that you can’t see anyway.

There’s also better range with the torso joint so he can hit more convincing flying poses.

Invisible Woman has:

• neck
• ball-jointed shoulders
• elbow
• wrist
• wrist hinge
• waist
• hip
• knee (double jointed)
• ankle

Accessories:  Sue came with a set of swappable fists as well as the shield barrier piece that debuted with the BAF Super Skrull version.

This is definitely a case where Hasbro should have gone with an alternate head sculpt as an additional accessory. A smiling happy one would have made the focused, straining head sculpt an easier sell.

Worth it? This wave is in general from the lack of a Build-A-Figure piece and the price hike to $22.99. Effectively we’re paying more for less here and the snazzy card isn’t enough to justify the cost. Thankfully, Target had a killer spend $100 get $25 off deal so I got Sue for a very reasonable price. That definitely impacts my final score as $23 bucks is a lot for a flawed figure.

Rating: 9 out of 10

It’s great to get the FF in their blue attire, but this rough head sculpt and now outdated articulation diminishes some excitement for this version of Sue.

Where to get it? Invisible Woman is still available at Target. Or you can get her from Amazon or pre-order from Entertainment Earth.

As an Amazon and Target/Entertainment Earth Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.