By Loran
For awhile now, I’ve been wanting to do some reviews of older toys; namely stuff from more than five years ago. Covering new stuff is great, don’t get me wrong, but there are plenty of places that do that! I love picking up random toys and taking a good look at them, especially ones from our childhoods or ones that have just been lost in the sands of time. Since I can really only cover stuff that Forbidden Planet NYC carries, I figured it was time for me to cover a soon-returning line that is a staple of comic stores everywhere: Marvel Legends.
Psylocke was my first Marvel Legend. What can I say, I like female superheroes, even if their characters get completely destroyed far too often (I’m looking at you, DC). I try my best to make up superhero teams that are more than just “white males only”. In retrospect, though, I wish I picked someone else for my first Marvel Legend. Psylocke just… isn’t all that great.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe Psylocke uses the standard Marvel Legends female body, if there was one? Thankfully, she’s one of the later Marvel Legends, so she doesn’t have the bizarre hips that earlier females like Elektra had. She has all of that crazy articulation I came to expect from the later years of the Toybiz Marvel Legends, albeit lacking articulated fingers like the male figures. Usually this kind of thing would bother me, but in cases like this it doesn’t bother me, since I imagine sculpting such small fingers would be a complete nightmare. They’d probably get broken easily, too. The hands she gets instead are nice, but I wish she got energy effect parts or hands that could hold swords… or, well, accessories in general.
I’ve come to find that Psylocke is rather cheap on the aftermarket, and it’s pretty obvious why: her face sculpt is terrible. I don’t know what it is about Marvel Females, but so far the only one I have with a good face is wearing a mask. Psylocke’s face just looks too… old. Isn’t she supposed to be young? She looks like she’s 40! She also has that weird no-ears look that far too many of the females have. It’d be more passable if her hair was styled differently, but it just looks like she’s an alien.
My biggest issue with Psylocke, and really the Toybiz Legends in general, is the TERRIBLE quality control. I know Toybiz was a small company, but damn, some of these paint apps are knockoff-quality. Just look at her back! Was something covering that part? It’s bad on the thigh, as well, but not as noticeable.
Mine also came assembled VERY badly. Not too long after opening her, her stomach pretty much fell apart. There was no glue or friction or… anything holding it together. I managed to fix it, but that’s just such a strange thing to have break.
Yes, it sounds like I hate this figure but I really don’t. She was my first Legend, so she holds a special place in my heart. Aside from the face, her sculpt is pretty good; it’s just the face sculpt and bad paint apps that really bring her down. Still, she tends to run pretty cheap these days, so if you’re a big fan of hers or if you want to complete your Mojo, she’s worth coming into FPNYC and looking for!
