This Marvel Legends 3-Pack is one of the problems we are facing with the toy industry. The large number of repaints for a single figure. The companies, in this case Hasbro, is trying to cut the cost on their tooling by reusing bodies. That is all and fine, to an extent. What they have started doing is reissue figures with new paint apps in three packs. Generally one figure we need, and two we don’t. Then they change the same amount as if we were going to buy the three characters individually. I would really like to know the thinking behind this. What we are ending up with is a bunch of this three-pack sitting on the shelves of Target. In the meantime, someplace like Amazon gets a hold of the set, sees the writing on the wall, and drops the price down to $20. That is where I found it, and for that price, it is like getting Spider-Man for regular price, and getting two bonus figures for free. That is a deal I can get behind. But now the question is, does that hurt Hasbro overall?
Another example is the Rogue One three-pack that came out recently. That set had the opposite problem. Two figures we do want (Death Trooper Specialist, and Cassian), and one figure that was in mass market already (Jyn in her Jedha outfit). What that one caused was a huge number of Jyns to be sitting on the pegs at the stores. It seems that overall the problems mount with the reuse of bodies as opposed to actually going about doing something new.
I was not going to pay $60 for a 3-pack that included dirty versions of Cap and Iron Man, just to get Civil War Spider-Man, when you know we are going to be getting one upcoming for the Homecoming movie. But with the price reduced to $20, that was just right. So let’s take a look at this trio and see what we get.
Spider-Man is in his new movie outfit with black accents. I think it works well, and I think he was a great addition to the movie. The outfit is a modern take on the classic outfit.
Gone are the days of the puff-paint spider webs. Even on his back, we get the classic giant red spider. Nice touch.
In the packaging, Spider-Man comes packed with Cap’s shield in his hand. That of course references his stealing of Cap’s shield during the film. He does not come with any accessories of his own, so they let him borrow Cap’s for a while.
Captain America is a battle damaged repaint of the Civil War Cap. Nothing special going on here, except for a bunch of burns all over his outfit.
Steve comes with an alternate unmasked head. It is a good sculpt, but it does not look a lot like Chris Evans. I would really like to have seen some paint added to the face. I bit of dirt and grime to match the clothes.
Iron Man took a lot of damage in the movie. He looks pretty badly burned in his repaint. This is also a repaint of his Civil War armor, the Mark 46. This is one of my favorite armors that Hasbro has put out. There is a lot of detailing and colors going on here.
His back is strangely untouched. It seems that he should be battle damaged all over, not just on his front.
Tony comes with the most accessories. He comes with hand blasts as well as feet blasts, and they are in two different colors.
He also comes with a maskless face. It is really unfortunate that he does not have any paint apps to the face. He pretty much spends the entire movie with a beat-up face, and it should have been reflected in this face. By the time his armor got this messed up, he was already physically beat up too.
Overall, this is a fine set. I am glad I waited for the price to drop. Spider-Man is great. he looks good, and he fits in so well with the other movie figures. The other two are just minor repaints of their original figures, so paying full price for a little bit of black paint would have been hard to swallow. But at $20 for three figures, this was a deal too good to pass up. That seemed to have been the bottom price. It stopped there, and now it is slowly climbing back up.
My Life in Scale 