Terry McDannell
Editor in Chief
Joined: 24 Apr 2006
Posts: 2779
Location: North of Milwaukee, WI - Behind the Cheese Curtain
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 Posted: Sun May 14, 2006 9:41 pm Post subject: Marvel Legends Wal-Mart Exclusive Wave: The Mighty Thor |
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Marvel Legends Wal-Mart Wave: THOR
The God Of Thunder. The Son Of Odin. And one of the first figures produced in the Marvel Legends line of action figures.
The original Marvel Legends Thor came out in Series 3, which seems like forever ago. There were many, many complaints about this figure, but I was OK with it. After all, it presented the Thunder God as an imposing, towering icon, which is how Thor should be portrayed. However, the figure had its problems, and so fans clamored for an updated version of Thor to be released. And now they’ve gotten their wish.
Thor is one of 9 featured characters (or 11, if you count the variants separately) in the Wal Mart Exclusive Marvel Legends series. As with each character in the line, Thor comes with one piece of the Build A Figure (BAF) Giant-Man, in this case the right hand.
Thor comes in the standard ML bubble packaging , and has the standard level of ML articulation that fans have come to expect from Toy Biz; he weighs in at an incredible 31 Points of Articulation (POA).
 
The Odinson was sculpted magnificently by the Fab Four, the action figure world’s Four Horsemen, who have their studios in New Jersey. The sculpting on the figure is top-notch, and this newer version blows the doors off of the original ML 3 figure, IMO. This is not to say that the figure is not without its problems, but those are manufacturing-based, and have nothing to do with the magnificent sculpt.
 
 
The colors on this go-round are also slightly different, as Thor’s boots are yellow in this case, rather than the brown, leathery looking ones on the previous figure.
There has already been a tremendous amount written about this series of figures, and one of the biggest complaints that fans have expressed about this particular figure is the way the cape is done. I have to say, the cape is sculpted a bit differently than I would have preferred, with a couple of very deep folds toward the middle of Thor’s back. I can’t say I’m crazy about that, but I can’t really say I hate it, either. It did, however, quickly catch my notice as soon as I opened the figure.
Another major problem I have with my particular Thor figure is some very, very loose joints. The two main offenders are the waist joint, which is so loose that Thor can basically twist in circles with very little effort, and his right arm, where the bicep cut is also very, very loose, to the point that he can’t even hold his hammer up.
And speaking of the hammer Mjolnir, I was somewhat disappointed to find not the traditional inscription, but rather what appears to be some sort of ancient script engraved on the hammer’s face instead. While the hammer itself is beautifully sculpted, I have to say I would have much preferred the old standard instead. I also had a slight bit of difficulty getting the hammer into Thor’s hand, although nothing too major.
Thor’s scale issues have been addressed as well; as I mentioned above, the ML 3 version was tall – almost TOO tall. This version is much more in line with where Thor’s height should be, relatively speaking, as demonstrated here by a couple of very special guest stars:
Here also are a couple of comparison pics between the two Thors:
And just because I have an odd sense of humor, and the ML 3 Thor just kind of assumed the pose that he did, I did this one just for laughs:
And that’s pretty much the WM MLE Thor. Look for detailed Breakdowns of the rest of the set shortly. And as always, thanks much for reading!
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