Aw look, he’s made a little kitty cat friend.
Originally published 5/5/16. I’ve since seen the movie, and thank goodness.
Captain America: Civil War comes to U.S. theaters today, and while we here at Toy Time have yet to see the movie in action, we’ve played through it over and over again atop our desks, first with the LEGO Civil War sets, and now with the Giant-Man Build-A-Figure series from Hasbro.
Despite not appearing in a trailer for the latest Marvel movie, Giant-Man has been all over the toy marketing for Civil War, from LEGO sets to Pop! vinyl figures. The Marvel Legends series Build-A-Figure set, consisting of six Captain America comic and movie figures each packaged with a piece of Scott Lang, have been out in the wild for months now.
While not the first Giant-Man Build-A-Figure set in the line, it is the first one based on live-action Giant-Man, so what we wind up with is 10 inches of pure Paul Rudd goodness.
But first we need to collect six different $20 action figures. The set consists of three movie figures and three comic book figures, which seems like an odd choice when the movie is so jam-packed with characters, but here we are.
We’ve got the second-best low-end Black Panther figure on the market (the Marvel Selects figure that comes with a tree for BP to get stuck in is the best). He comes with both masked and unmasked heads.
Iron Man Mark Whatever the Hell Mark We’re On is packaged with an extra set of hands and a pair of blue special effects for when he wants to cosplay as Elsa from Frozen.
Rounding out the movie figures we have yet another Chris Evans Captain America that uses that one mold. You know, the one where they pretty much nailed his face and decided never to try again ever. I mean, it is the same guy under the mask for every movie, it makes sense his body wouldn’t be much different.
On the non-movie side we’ve got Nuke, the character that got some face time in Netflix’s Jessica Jones season one. It was a very different face. A non-tattooed face. Perhaps they’ll get to that later. Nuke comes with a red, white and blue rifle, a stabby thing and an alternate head that’s slightly blown open to reveal that at one point Marvel wanted him to be a Terminator.
The Red Guardian is Russia’s answer to Captain America. They copied his shield, his classic flared boots and gloves, and added a head fin so it looked like the whole thing was totally their idea in the first place. I use him to test the limits of the Legends line’s poseability.
My favorite figure of the set has to be Nick Fury, only not Nick Fury. Hasbro bundled classic S.H.I.E.L.D. Fury with three heads. One is his classic half-blind David Hasselhoff look, which is fine. Then there’s what looks to be a Halo Reach helmet, meant to turn the figure into a faceless S.H.I.E.L.D. drone, perfect for army building. You can see those heads in the video atop the post. This is the only head I am concerned with.
Continuing the trend of sneaking in obscure characters into more popular packages (see Werewolf Captain America), Nick Fury’s third head transforms him into Dirk Anger, agent of H.A.T.E. A parody of Nick Fury from Warren Ellis’ excellent Nextwave series, Dirk is the kind of guy that doesn’t relinquish his action figure body lightly.
Yes, we are keeping that head.
These six action figures come with bits of Scott Lang—two arms, two legs, a torso and a head. Together they are the mighty Really Tall Man.
Having not seen the movie, I really hope Giant-Man gets bigger than roughly twice the size of a normal human person.
Giant-Man is big enough to hold his own in a battle between Captain America and Iron Man, but he’s not exactly giant. The normal figures come to his waist, which makes him about 10 inches tall or so.
He looks great. I love the eyes behind the helmet glass. I don’t like that the sockets for his arms are bigger than the arms themselves, leaving a strange gap around his shoulder, but I guess that’s an issue of making a build-a-figure with realistic human proportions.
So not too big, not too small. Just the right size to make my wife’s Monster High dolls uncomfortable.
Check out the video at the top of the article for a closer look at each of the Giant-Man series Marvel Legends Build-A-Figure set. I’m off to prepare for a night at the movies.