Marvel Legends X-Force – Rictor, Domino and Cannonball review
Hasbro has made a few mistakes with its Marvel Legends line — an unavoidable reality for a line that’s gone as long as this one — but its team tends to make good on the most egregious. One of the biggest was releasing a Cannonball figure without legs.
It was a baffling decision at the time made worse by members of the ML team appearing to laugh it off as not that big a deal. Maybe because the team always knew they had an X-Force three-pack coming?
While I’m still not thrilled with the notion of buying the Cannonball figure we should have gotten all along (depriving us of a three-pack that could have included Feral to complete the original squad) this is definitely a must-get set for X-Force fans. There’s still some attire continuity errors, but baby steps.
Packaging: This is basically the same presentation of the X-Men Love Triangle and Family Matters set. I do miss the obnoxiously neon color theme of the other 90s sets though, which fits with X-Force’s ghastly and glorious colors.
The sides are a little boring with just trading card art reprinted and zero stats and bios on the back. I miss the artwork of John Tyler Christopher or David Nakayama.
Likeness: This set is based on a vague post-Rob Liefeld period where Greg Capullo took over the artistic reins through various iterations. Rictor is based on the second version of the team where Cable was out and Cannonball was the leader.
Rictor had an approximation of this outfit before Cable bounced, though this is a more refined and better costume. And this one matches up era-wise with Sunspot’s attire.
Rictor’s head sculpt is fantastic. I really like the flowing hair to the side. He’s got a terrific heroic portrait with a sturdy chin. Maybe the only thing is it makes him look a little too old? His outfit is also nicely done. The scarf/shoulder pad combo looks good. Rictor’s shoulder pads look thick to give that leather impression. His bicep fringes are thinner than I expected and turned out great for this scale.
He’s also spouting a well detailed pouch heavy belt. My set is missing the left side glove cuff. Hasbro customer service wasn’t especially helpful in replacing it, but they did send me a Retro Black Panther figure… The boots, with their unique tops, look good with all the folds typically shown in the comics.
Domino’s outfit is largely based on her early X-Force days under Liefeld. Since Liefeld didn’t seem too focused on consistency from one issue to the next with regards to character costumes, I’ll give Hasbro more leniency here.
Seriously, go down the rabbit hole of trying to find any X-Force members besides Feral and Shatterstar whose outfits doesn’t see some minor changes. It can’t be done.
This is a quintessential Domino outfit with her headgear, shoulder pads, utility belt and random thigh pouch. At least her top piece is new with the Nehru collar and button-down flap.
Her head sculpt is good and this is an instance where I don’t mind the open mouth expression since it’s easy to read as her aiding in strategies through her headset. The only thing that’s throwing me off is her hair is too close to the sides. It should flare out further and higher so it’s more prominent than the headgear.
Cannonball is also from the early era X-Force and matches up well with Domino. He’s mainly a reuse of the first Cannonball figure with two notable exceptions. This time he’s got a neutral head sculpt.
I like this a lot since Sam wasn’t the intense, angry member of the team. The new sculpt softens him up while allowing him to look more youthful.
It’s interesting that Hasbro created another error as his goggles are more like glasses. This is a weird mistake since it required new sculpting and really should have been caught at some point in the design process.
The big improvement though is the inclusion of legs. Yep, that sounded ridiculous to write out. For all the controversy, they’re actually consistent with the source material with the two cylinders on either side of his belt and the big, oversized panels boots.
So, every so often a little healthy amount of complaining leads to actual positive results.
Paint: Rictor has the wildest color scheme with bright greens, a little silver and patterned blue pants just because. For all the various combinations, Rictor’s paintwork is pretty clean.
The red X came out strong and the silver belt buckle was well applied. I’m not sure where the design team came up with the silver shoulder pads. Everything I saw, including the package art, shows them as brown as well as the boot tops. Chalk up another confusing design choice.
Domino is fine. Her midnight blue attire is accurate as are the inner white portions along her legs.
I actually found a picture of Domino’s shoulder pads colored metallic purple that Liefeld drew so that works for me.
Cannonball is not just a simple reuse of the original figure. His shirt is painted greyish purple now instead of white. This is accurate from different issues of X-Force. I only found one instance where his gloves and boots weren’t painted brown though the norm is typically brown.
Maybe Hasbro’s paint crew was all out of brown when it was X-Force’s turn? The double T on his shirt needed one more paint application and there’s some sloppiness around the boot lining.
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Scale: Rictor was portrayed as the second tallest of the team besides Warpath, so his height is right. It gets tricky when you put X-Force up next to other mutants who are older than them.
Most 90s artists tended to still portray the X-Force members as older teenagers compared to X-Factor and the X-Men. It won’t be a deal if you separate them. For Rictor it doesn’t help that he’s using a thicker base body and his head is slightly oversized anyway.
Domino and Cannonball seem dead-on scale wise.
Articulation: These guys sport the usual articulation you’d expect.
Domino breaks through with both bicep swivels and double-jointed elbow articulation. I can’t oversell how excited that discovery made me as this has been a major deficit for most female figures in this line. That’s especially helpful for a character known for toting around big guns.
Rictor, Domino and Cannonball have:
- neck
- ball-jointed shoulders
- bicep
- elbow (double-jointed)
- wrist
- wrist hinge
- torso
- waist
- hip
- thigh
- knee (double-jointed)
- ankle
Accessories: Rictor has swappable flat palms, which are a nice inclusion to help show him gesturing when using his powers.
While that seems obvious, it’s not something including with every figure with similar aiming powers (Iceman, Pyro).
He’s also got the power effect piece that comes with seemingly every remotely energy/force projection character including his teammate Sunspot.
Domino also gets swappable fists. They’re tiny so I’m a little concerned about breaking the peg. Additionally, she has the pulse rifle that originally came with the first modern era Deadpool figure from the BAF Juggernaut wave. It’s repainted here with a silver top and all black base.
Finally, she’s got a smaller blaster, which I assumed was just a repainted Star-Lord blaster, it actually seems like an original piece. It’s got some nice detail and looks like an appropriately far future blaster like every gun-toting character in X-Force used.
Cannonball is the big winner here with the swappable blast effect base. It’s not a simple reuse of the original base and features a better, less translucent paint job.
The original figure’s base was so transparent it gave the impression that his legs disappeared while he blasted. That wasn’t the case so this paint fix with darker oranges and reds preserves the illusion much better.
And to avoid people having to have a headless original Cannonball to try and sell, Hasbro also included the angry, gritted teeth head sculpt.
Worth it? The set is $62.99 so that breaks down to a bit over $21 per figure. Hasbro doesn’t pack much added value in these sets, which doesn’t account for the lack of a Build-A-Figure part. Ideally this set would be more in the $55 range for some added savings.
Rating: 8.5 out of 10
Paint choices and a few weird design elements aside, I’m glad Hasbro cranked out this set and look forward to adding Siryn and hopefully Feral next year.
Where to get it? This was a shared Hasbro Pulse and Shop Disney exclusive. Unlike some other sets this one is still available. This is likely a by-product of the flood of Marvel Legends figures to hit shelves and online retailers right at the holiday season.
If you want them, I wouldn’t recommend waiting too long or hoping for some great discount later on.
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