Marvel Legends The West Coast Avengers review
We’re getting to the point where we can rely on Hasbro to deliver a few quality multi-packs every year. For 2023, there was the X-Men Villains pack and today’s feature, the West Coast Avengers pack. This reveal had me pretty hyped up as it featured two overdue figures to help flesh out the Wackos roster and some fixes to previously released figures.
I had high expectations for this set. Let’s see how they measured up or if I’m gonna need to call the Great Lakes Avengers to clean up this mess.
Packaging: I love the packaging as it’s an homage — right down to the character poses — of West Coast Avengers #1. There’s some adjustments to the roster of course, but it’s very cool to see this shout out to the inspiration for the set.
The sides feature rendered art of the figures with the Beyond Earth’s Mightiest branding. This Avengers’ theme has been one of my favorite ML focuses in several years.
While we’re still missing a bio, the back features a similar set up as the other BEM with the white accents and the blue backdrop Avengers collage and accessory breakdown.
Likeness: Hasbro likes to use these multi-packs as it allows for easy tweaks via repaints and minimal new sculpting. That’s largely the case here, but it was nice to see that every figure in the set has some newly sculpted parts to make them more than simple repaints to stay within budget.
Let’s start with the Silver Centurion Iron Man. Again, this uses the 80th armor Iron Man as the base. Hasbro’s first crack at this armor was ok-ish. The biggest problem is the SC armor is Iron Man’s broadest main armors and the figure was too slight.
Clearly, since Hasbro wasn’t going to design an entirely new suit of armor for a boxset they did the next best thing. They sculpted new wider shoulder pads. It helps to bulk him up some more and gives the illusion that he’s bigger.
That absolutely was in response to collector complaints about the slight visual of the previous figure. And it goes a long way to making SC Iron Man look wider and thicker. Tip of the hat to the ML design team for correcting that problem and not waiting years to fix it.
I wish they would have done the same with the head/neck piece. The armor is unique in that setup and this feels like Hasbro’s attempt to maintain the integrity of the design, but it gets screwy when you pose the head.
Tigra is mostly a reuse of the 2022 figure. Short of adding a new upper torso that more accurately reflects her chest, this was a very strong sculpt. There’s even little tufts of fur throughout.
The big fix here is Tigra has higher, wider and lush hair. With the first figure it looked like she got out of the shower, which didn’t reflect Tigra’s 80s high hair. It’s a minor fix, but really makes a big difference.
I assumed Spider-Woman was just a repaint of the original figure. Instead, it’s a new hybrid of Julia Carpenter’s SW.
Hasbro reused her lower torso and combined that with the upper torso of Dagger and gave her the Shriek arms and legs, which features bicep articulation with double-jointed elbows.
Additionally, she’s got a new head sculpt featuring a more Secret Wars/West Coast Avengers era hairstyle. That’s a lot of effort for what I assumed would be the throwaway addition in this set.
Now for the newbies.
Hank Pym reuses the Red Skull/Wonder Man mold with a new torso and head sculpt.
The former was appreciated so we could get the hint of the black T-shirt underneath and the signature collar, which at times would be flared up. Different artists drew the various ways, but I was partial to the slightly pushed up sleeves-look for the red jumpsuit.
Hank is more of a slighter guy though at times some artists drew his WCA red jumpsuit as baggier than his normal attire. I love the head sculpt, which captures his determination and focus nicely.
Mockingbird is done in her second West Coast Avengers attire with the bare legs.
This is more of her signature WCA look so I’m glad Hasbro went with this attire as opposed to the short-lived long pants outfit.
Her head sculpt is fantastic. Bobbi’s mask is done as a separate sculpted piece giving it that extra three-dimensional look as opposed to a flatter style if it was sculpted directly onto her face.
Another signature element of the costume are the long, flared sleeves.
Hasbro kinda tried it but didn’t fully commit giving her a partial flare around the elbows. Ideally, they would have been an overlay piece so we could still see the wrist guards. She’s got slanted buccaneer boots, which turned out great.
Paint: Iron Man’s armor is known as the Silver Centurion armor so it made sense for Hasbro to go with a silver sheen look for their first crack at it. In the comics, it’s colored white with some silver shading so this time Hasbro went with a bright white color scheme. It’s probably an optical trick, but going with the white over the darker silver makes the figure seem wider as well.
The original figure had an odd white outline in the eye slots. This time it’s all black like it mostly appeared in the comics. That’s another win for this one.
It seems like the candy apple red is brighter as well, but that might just be a result of the combination with white instead of silver.
Tigra gets a massive upgrade in this category. She’s no longer Cheetos orange and given a far more subdued shade of orange. This matches up with how she was colored in the comics most of the time. Some colorists went with an even lighter yellow orange combination.
I like this look and the enhancements of the face printing, which makes her eyes and the subtle makeup work pop.
Tigra is still lacking the stripes inside her legs however. I was hoping that would get fixed here.
Spider Woman’s paintwork is clean with a nice bold shade of white. There’s not much bleeding through of the black underneath, which is commendable with these stark opposites.
Her hair lacks the wash the previous version got although the orange is muted to more closely resemble the shade of orange(red) from the comics.
Hank’s paintjob is minimal but applied properly. Hasbro didn’t go for a bright red hue for the jumpsuit. It’s less vibrant and fits Hank’s more assured demeanor at this time period. The face printing with Pym is also masterfully done.
Mockingbird has some minor fuzziness along the lining of the white in her outfit. Again, there’s not a lot of the midnight blue bleeding through the white.
The work on her face printing is outstanding with stellar detail on the eyes. No issues with the mask linework as well. She seems to have some faint traces of a brown wash in her hair.
MORE:
- DC Comics reviews 10/13/20 – Dark Nights Death Metal #4, Rorschach #1
- Batman: Death in the Family movie review
- Monster Force Zero review
- Welcome to Sudden Death movie review
Scale: Silver Centurion Iron Man stands taller than the others staying consistent with the whole dude in an armor suit. Hank should be a little shorter so if nothing else he wasn’t the same height as Wonder Man, who granted is too short.
Mockingbird is the tallest of the women since she’s wearing heeled boots. Tigra stands a little taller than Spider Woman, creating a fun 5-pack where no two figures are the exact same height.
Articulation: SC Iron Man has the same flow as the other figures on the 80th IM buck. The wacky neck setup is the only thing holding it back as it floats away from the rest of the body giving it a somewhat disembodied visual.
Tigra has fantastic articulation though I’d love if she could hit deeper crouches.
Spider-Woman has superb movement and her hair is sculpted in a way that it doesn’t impair any movement besides the head cocked back to the sky.
Like Tigra she’s sporting double jointed elbows and bicep articulation on a pinless mold.
Pym’s elbows and knees can look a little janky with the mold breakdown. He can hit all the necessary poses for a guy reaching into his pockets to enlarge his gadgets.
Mockingbird is mostly solid. She can hit great high kicks and deep impact strikes with the range in her torso.
The bicep and double-jointed elbow articulation points are definitely missed with this melee fighter.
The West Coast Avengers have:
- neck
- ball-jointed shoulders
- biceps
- elbow (double-jointed) — besides Mockingbird
- wrist
- wrist hinge
- torso
- waist* — besides Tigra, Mockingbird and Spider-Woman
- hip
- thigh
- knee (double-jointed)
- ankle
Accessories: This set would have been even better with a few different accessory choices.
Silver Centurion Iron Man gobbles up four with the blue repulsor blasts and swappable fists.
Spider Woman gets swappable fists as well. I wouldn’t have been upset with more of an action-ready intense head sculpt.
Tigra gets swappable slashing hands and the alternate angry head sculpt from the original release.
Pym gets shortchanged with just swappable hands.
Mockingbird makes out alright with her extended bo-staff, the segmented staff, a chopping right hand a left fist. I wasn’t expecting the heft of the staff pieces and they’ve got some nice weight to them.
I wish Mockingbird also had another head sculpt with her hair relaxed and resting past her shoulders. That way we don’t have her at all times like she’s operating in her own wind tunnel.
Worth it? This set started out at $125, the same price you’d pay for these figures separately. I was able to snag it for $87 taking the figures down to a much more reasonable $17.40 a pop. As usual, my rule is any Marvel Legends figure for under $20 is a heck of a value.
Rating: 9.5 out of 10
I love the enhancements to Spider-Woman and Tigra. Iron Man is better, but still would have benefitted from being bulkier and fixing the neck articulation. Mockingbird is just a few tweaks from being perfect and Pym just needed a flared collar and somewhat rolled sleeves for my preference. The West Coast Avengers set is another excellent multipack from Hasbro and definitely worth grabbing.
Where to get it? This set is exclusive to Amazon. You can try and wait out for another sale, but there’s no telling how much longer it will remain in stock.
As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.