Marvel Legends X-Men ’97 Cyclops and Jean Grey review (2025)

Cyclops and Jean Grey have been two of my biggest candidates for updated from Marvel Legends for a few years. For Cyclops, it was more a matter of the Bucky Cap mold becoming so outdated and a slight scale creep used on excellent updates of his X-Men teammates.

Jean Grey needed a better figure since her first green and yellow Marvel Girl offering from Hasbro was overall terrible.

With the success of X-Men’97 and a final act featuring their classic 80s costumes, the ML team had a built-in excuse to get these looks back out with updated sculpts and articulation.

Let’s see if these longtime lovers finally get the superior figures they deserve or if we’ll need another two-pack to truly mark the spot.

Packaging: This is the second of several X-Men’97 two-packs. It retains the color scheme with the orange and yellow mid-section, the black top and blue bottom.

The sides feature animation style versions of Cyclops and Jean Grey. Over on the back is a wide picture of both Cyclops and Jean Grey in some action stances along with the other pair of two-packs. As usual, I would have loved to have seen some sort of bio or write-up for the characters.

Likeness: Cyclops and Jean Grey are improvements over both previous versions of these outfits.

Cyclops gets the Vulcan mold, which makes him taller and thicker without looking overly muscular. He was slim while Dave Cockrum and John Byrne drew him, but he wasn’t gangly either.

His gloves don’t flare out and lay flat up against his sleeve although they should go up further along his arm than this version. In some of the early prototype pictures, his belt rested too low down his waist. That’s more of an issue with the design as the belt is situated properly. He really just needed his shorts lowered by carrying the paint job to the upper leg portion.

Cyclops’ buccaneer boots have a more dramatic flair to them in the comics, but the more simplistic style is cartoon accurate.

Jean Grey is a noticeable improvement over the previous Marvel Girl, who suffered from lackluster articulation, proper scaling and overall design.

This take uses the same torso, but with the addition of new arms to see the bicep and double-elbow joint articulation. Her comic book gloves did stretch out but were flat against her wrists in the cartoon.

Jean’s head sculpt skews closer to a cartoon aesthetic (shocker) with less detail in the hair so there’s fewer sculpted strands. Her expression is livelier than the previous figure as it actually conveys some type of emotion.

She has more developed legs, which provide a needed height boost, so she looks like an adult instead of a teenager.

Scale: Cyclops and Jean Grey shouldn’t be close to the same height. Cyclops is one of the taller X-Men at 6’3″ while Jean is 5’6″.

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Paint: This is the section that kinda dings the set a bit. The first Dark Phoenix Cyclops had an awesome paint job with shading of lighter blue to mirror his appearance in the comic books. That’s not the norm we’ve seen from Marvel Legends. The X-Men’97 has a solid shade of blue, but oh it would look sweeter with some black shading in there as well. His skin tone is paler than I’d like, which is not how it looks in the cartoon.

The linework around his cowl is fairly clean with just a little fuzziness around the edges. Fortunately, his ear coverings are painted this time. In the cartoon, the X square on his belt is painted red — a difference from the comic where the square around the X is yellow.  I appreciate the shade of yellow here, which is not the yellow orange Hasbro used for a basic yellow for way too many years.

There was one positive about the Marvel Girl figure. Her paint job was straight from the comics. Jean Grey of course is based on here appearance from the cartoon, so she’s got a darker green, and the yellow is replaced with gold. I don’t love the black line up the boot, which is just more distracting.

One thing that threw me off a bit is Jean’s pinker skin tone. As a redhead, it would be fine for Jean to have a paler skin tone, but this one is too rosy/pink and looks a little off.

Articulation: Cyclops and Jean Grey get major articulation boosts with the upgraded molds. The Vulcan mold is great for posing and Cyclops has no issues hitting some fun optic-blast targeting poses.

Jean Grey definitely benefits from the new arms with the bicep swivel and double-jointed elbows.

It gives her much improved range and the ability to make more dramatic stances. There is a slit in her dress that gives her more poseability as well.

Cyclops and Jean Grey have:

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

Accessories: Cyclops and Jean Grey get a decent number of accessories — even though most of them are reuse.

Cyclops gets an alternate intense, gritted teeth head sculpt to simulate him unleashing a massive optic blast. It looks solid, but as always, I wish Hasbro’s ML team could also include a ruby quartz strip that could be placed into the visor when the blast effect isn’t used. The black void space looks weird and Cyclops could show that anguished, intense look without blasting away as well.

Naturally, the next accessory is his optic blast. This debuted with the X-Factor Cyclops, but it’s such a nice accessory, it probably should be the norm for any and all future Cyclops figures.

Finally, he’s got two swappable hands — a pointing/gesturing left hand and an open right hand to make for more dramatic posing. Solid offerings for him.

Jean Grey/Marvel Girl gets an alternate head sculpt. Like Cyclops, it’s more dramatic and intense with gritted teeth with a more windswept style for her hair.

Marvel Girl/Jean is a character worth investing new accessory parts to show her telekinetic powers in action. Instead, we get the commonplace, vapor/magic trail effects that Hasbro has given every Scarlett Witch figure since the Family Matters version.

Finally, she’s got a pair of gesturing hands. That makes sense for her, but it’d be nice if she got a new TK-showcase accessory like Cyclops.

Worth it?  Initially, the set was the reasonable $49,99 price point — the same price as two Marvel Legends. Now with Hasbro jacking prices up, the set has jumped to $57.99, a ridiculous increase just because some collectors to get the set later for a widely available set.

We’re approaching a point where Hasbro figures are going to come down to collectors are going to stop buying everything and just get the essentials while waiting on sales.

At $50, this set is a worthwhile upgrade. As they hit $60 after tax, there’s not enough accessories to justify it.

Rating: 9.5 out of 10

I’ve been anticipating a Cyclops and Jean Grey upgrade for a bit now. This set delivers with a much-improved take on Marvel Girl with just a few design choices holding it back.

Where to Get It? This set is exclusive to Hasbro Pulse although with the way things are going with clearance and outlet deals, I wouldn’t be shocked to see Cyclops and Jean Grey end up on in the Marvel Legends section on Amazon at a cheaper price next year.

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