Marvel Legends Avalanche review – Retro card

When I originally got into the X-Men titles, the main squad was on the verge of a roster shakeup as Mutant Massacre was about to kick off while the founders in X-Factor were battling the newly renamed Freedom Force. I didn’t know the backstory of the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, but thought Mystique’s squad of Avalance, Blob, Pyro, Destiny, Spiral and Spider-Woman were pretty cool.

Avalanche in particular had a cool outfit. Of course, I’d later learn this was a Freedom Force attire and not his typical costume. When Avalanche was announced for the Marvel Legends line, I knew the odds of my preferred look were slim, but I was hoping for one that would at least capture how he looked at some various times in Uncanny X-Men. 

Let’s find out if this Avalanche figures leaves me all shook up. 

Packaging: The Retro brand packaging kept the window setup going until we complained enough for Hasbro to bring it back. Kidding, Hasbro didn’t care about our whining just the impact to the bottom line.

Avalanche’s card art is done by the great Dan Nakayama, who frequently seems to capture the essence of the character better than the figure itself. Maybe the Hasbro team should hire Dan out on the figure design team to ensure we get the most classic look of a character? Just a thought. 

He’s got a sentence bio, but it’s effective in explaining his team affiliation and power. Good enough for me. I remain a fan of the color change up for the retro packaging. He gets the really like the purple and yellow-green color scheme. 

Likeness: It’s actually impressive that for all of Avalanche’s various costumes, Hasbro’s Marvel team managed to come up with a look that isn’t accurate to any of them. That takes some effort.

We get a hodgepodge of various Avalanche costumes, but it’s frustrating that Hasbro wouldn’t go with a style that would be truer to the source material — any of them. I thought maybe Hasbro was going for the X-Men Animated Series look, but that’s not right either. The wild thing is Hasbro actually designed some new elements with his gloves, helmet and armor.

While accuracy is still a problem, going with the knee-high boots would have provided an Avalanche look more consistent with his typical appearances.

Hasbro probably should have taken a different approach with the mask/helmet going with a half mask that stops around his cheeks or the fully enclosed helmet, which would help since his expression gives off a “I’m bored with this battle” vibe more than that nutjob with the claws is coming my way again look.

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Paint: Early on with the X-Men figures, Hasbro figured yellow translated to orange yellow. That’s kinda what happened here as Avalanche is in a deep blue compared to the darker pink/light purple of his typical costumes.

His armor pieces are done with the pearlescent silver, which reads more white in the comics, but it’s fine. 

Avalanche’s lips are a shade too red, which wouldn’t be as big a problem if his expression matched the intense fired up look of the card art. 

Scale: Avalanche is typically portrayed as the Brotherhood/Freedom Force’s thick, burly muscular guy. How big largely depended on the artist. Most artists drew him around the same height as Pyro so his height and size are fine.

Articulation: Avalanche battles from a distance to give himself enough range to launch his seismic attacks on his enemies. He’s more of a deep stance guy in action poses than brawling with Colossus or Rogue so the base Marvel Legends articulation is mostly fine for him. 

His elbow range is restricted thanks to the gauntlet, however. 

He’s also got some stiffness with his shoulders thanks to a combination of a ball joint that needed more wiggle room and a tight shoulder pad clearance section.

Avalanche has:

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

Accessories: Avalanche gets the absolute minimum in this category to still count — he comes with swappable outstretched gripping hands.

These aren’t the same as the far more character fitting wide open hands we typically see for Spider-Man’s “wall-crawling” hands. Given Avalanche’s various costumes, adding a different head with another type helmet would have been a nice extra.

Worth it?  At $24.99 with hardly any unique sculpting or any worthwhile accessories, Avalanche is another terrible modern Marvel Legends value. current price for the line. I was able to get him for under $20, which is my threshold price for a good deal for Marvel Legends especially ones with enough issues to not warrant paying full price.

Rating: 7 out of 10

Hasbro could have made Avalanche more exciting with a different head sculpt or another expression, getting the colors right and just sticking to one consistent design for his look. He’s ok but could have been so much better. 

Where to get it?  Online is the way to go with this wave. Target.com has him as well as standard online retailers from Amazon or Entertainment Earth.

As an Amazon and Entertainment Earth affiliate, I earn from qualifying purchases.