Marvel Legends Puff Adder review – BAF Puff Adder wave
For my grievances with Hasbro bailing on completing some teams, the Serpent Society is being represented pretty well in Marvel Legends. They’d gone through a membership lull, but with the Avengers theme wave for 2023 we get another member in the Build-A-Figure Puff Adder.
Puff Adder is one of the team’s heavy hitters giving Captain America major fits. Let’s see if the Serpent Society’s heavyweight was worth building.
Packaging: It’s a Build-A-Figure. There’s no packaging here, player.
Likeness: It’s been since 2019 when Hasbro introduced the Caliban BAF buck. It’s one they don’t use nearly as often as they could considering the number of beefy dudes running around in Marvel. Ironclad of the U-Foes wouldn’t need much more beyond this mold.
Puff Adder looks great. He’s a simple character to pull off in this format without destroying the wave budget. And he’s a character that is totally legitimate as a bonus “free” figure if you were getting all or most of the figures in the wave anyway.
All of the work here is done with the head sculpt. I love the work done with the snake head mask. It looks decidedly snake-like without coming off goofy. Puff Adder’s face is great with a quiet intensity that suggests he’s not someone to cross. Unless you’re an Avenger. There’s a lot of character in the creases of his face giving him more personality than I was expecting.
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Paint: Given the tricky lighter color combinations, I was expecting some problems, but all the work was nice and clean. The white in the eyes in both the mask and regular head are crisp and there’s no color bleed anywhere.
It can’t all be perfect though, can it? Puff Adder’s accent color is more of a light seafoam (yes, I looked through shades of green to figure it out), which is more of a white-green shade. The color Hasbro went with is too similar to the sea green hue for the torso, gloves and boots. That would have created a starker contrast. It’s not awful, but something that would have helped give him a bit more pop.
Scale: Puff Adder’s not gonna intimidate Hulk, but he will look nice and menacing next to Captain America and go basically eye to eye with Thor.
Articulation: While limited to single-joint elbows, Puff Adder has about all the movement I’d want from a big beefy guy. Ideally, he’d have butterfly shoulders for wider punches and bear hub abilities, but he’s solid articulation-wise.
I also appreciate his steady center of balance allowing him to support more extreme poses.
Puff Adder has:
- neck
- ball-jointed shoulders
- bicep
- elbow
- wrist
- wrist hinge
- torso
- waist
- hips
- thighs
- knees (double jointed)
- ankles
Accessories: I appreciate Hasbro making more of an effort with the BAFs on this category. He gets a swappable set of clutching/grasping hands, which is just fine for him.
Worth it? To build Puff Adder, at most you would have spent $150. With various clearance deals for this wave, I spent closer to $100. That’s not bad at all making the value for the BAF very solid. This wave also had some terrific figures like Wonder Man, Baron Von Strucker and Ultimate Captain America so I’m pretty happy with that price.
Rating: 9 out of 10
I’m knocking him down a point because of the inaccurate paint choice for the accent colors. They really would have helped the costume details pop better. Otherwise, this is my favorite BAF of 2023.
Where to get it? This was one of my favorite waves of 2019 and if you haven’t already started getting the figures I’d recommend just getting the entire wave from Amazon or Entertainment Earth.
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