The articulation on this guy is crazy! It’s kinda funny because sensibly, he just needs to float around and be intangible. Yet his articulation affords him some serious kung fu poses. He’s got ball-joints at the head, shoulders, wrists, hips, & ankles*, swivels at the biceps, waists, thighs, & calves, hinges at the neck & elbows, double-hinged knees, and an ab crunch. Nearly every articulation point has great range and, I say this seriously, he almost moves too much. The only issue here is that I still hate the hip design that Hasbro uses. I really wish they’d use something more similar to Doctor Who or the Four Horsemen hips.
* – I wanted to give a special shout out to the ball-jointed ankles. The peg from the ankle extends into the front of the foot. This not only gives the figure a fantastic rocker ankle, but also gives good range to the traditional hinge as well. Maybe I’m overly impressed, or maybe I just miss rocker ankles on my DC figures.
Doctor Strange doesn’t include any accessories, but he does have an MU stand. It’s crafted out of the same iridescent plastic and looks pretty sweet if you have the figures displayed on their stands together. I do wish he had some mystic energy attachments, but that’s neither here nor there.
Overall, while I should probably be cutting back on the MUs, this is one purchase I’m happy with. The sculpt and articulation are so great on this figure, that I really do regret leaving the painted one behind. He’s an excellent rendition of Doctor Strange with great articulation and hey – flawless paint! While I’m always going to be more into Marvel Legends and looking forward to at least cherry picking the big line (no completism for me this time around), Dr. Strange does a great job of showcasing just how far along the Marvel Universe line has come since the early figures. He’s fantastic and choosing between the lines in the future is going to be a lot more difficult than I’m making it sound here.
For more Marvel Universe reviews, check out our
Marvel Universe Collector’s Guide.
Since Mattel was kind enough to pretty much End the DCUCs for me,
I’ll have money enough for both the Legends (That I Love.)
AND the Universe that I’ve come to enjoy.
I can’t bring myself to be interested in the relaunch of Marvel Legends because I already missed so much. In addition to being a bigger fan of DC, one of the biggest components of starting my DCUC collection was that I could get in on the ground floor so to speak.
You are def not alone in being torn between ML and MU! I am in the same boat cherry picking MU’s until the legends comes out but this new wave is really hard to pass up I just picked up a Doc Doom and Scarlet spider myself (great figure) anothe great review on your part!!
I’m really having a hard time as well. When Legends went downhill really fast I stopped collecting them in favor of GI Joes. Then Universe came out and I was really excited about it because 1:18th is my preferred scale, however the early MU figures were really not that great, so I have just been cherry picking the line. Now that the MU figures are getting better and better and I’m finding myself wanting more and more of them, Legends is coming back and looks great. I’m really torn, but I just don’t see any way I can pass up an Arnim Zola BAF.
That’s me.I’ve been wanting Terrax the Tamer
for a long time,and to top it off we start
getting a ML Wrecking Crew.Can’t wait. Just hope
they don’t all drop at once…My Poor Wallet. 🙂
To be honest, I haven’t thought much about what I’m going to do once ML starts up again. Legends has been on life support for so long that buying MU just made sense. While I’m not a completist, I’ve gone from getting about half the figures in the first year to most of them now (got Strange, Scarlet Spider, and Falcon, left Skaar on the pegs and didn’t get Doom because I picked up the SW pack with him). I actually started to divest myself of Marvel Legends but didn’t get very far because I heard the news about Legends coming back.
I like the little guys because of the army building and the multiple scales. It’s pretty cool to have a huge Frost Giant put the smack down on Thor, while a truly gigantic Galactus looks down on them both. Plus I can use previous ML BAF’s to greater effect (like Modok and Fin Fang Foom).
Of course, Legends was all about detail and articulation. But MU is really starting to close the gap. It’ll be a tough decision.
I honestly don’t know which way I’m gonna go. If the DCUC sub dies (and that’s looking likely), I’ll probably just get both. If not . . .
I don’t have many Marvel legends…mainly all the Spider-Man bad guys and the odd other villains thrown in. However, they all wound up in my shed when they lost the competition for space with DCUC and MOTUC.
I was tempted by the Iron Man series Dynamo and Titanium Man, but resisted. The wave they showed at SDCC was tempting, especially Constricter…but I resisted.
But literally just hours ago, someone told me that the Wrecking Crew is coming.
Is this true?
If so…
God. Damn. It.
The Constricter was the one that interested me as well he looks amazing.
I would buy the wrecking crew in a heartbeat ha ha
This version of Doc looks amazing. I only hope he’ll be easy to find at retail. Excellent pics, btw.
yup, that doc looks great, and even w/ a ML strange, you could easily consider the astral projection as smaller than the physical guy and incorporate the clear dude into a display w/ the larger ml fig in a “sensible” way
for me, legends is the clear winner and will get my money when it comes back in force… but i can understand the MU community being a tad put off by the resurgence of legends, since they were sold on MU due to the cancellation of legends. hasbro had better get some damned good PR out about this topic, because of how they pushed MU in the early days.
that said, the one area i will concede to MU collectors, their collection overall has a better scale to it than ML had. for some folks, i know that scaling is very important, so there’s still that reason, and the smaller size of the characters means they can take up less display space. so it’s not like MU is completely left w/ their thumbs up their asses here.
I think Hasbro has upped the quality of MU in preparation of bringing back ML. I picked up a Skaar and Scarlet Spider because they looked awesome, and they are now that I’ve opened them up. My friend picked up a Strange, and those new ankles are so good! I hope Hasbro is incorporating that mechanism into Marvel Legends (I remember reading how Hasbro said Big Time Spidey would have a new type of articulation).
Bravo on those last two pics, those were great.
A great review as always. Still looking for this guy.