Toy Review: Marvel Universe Gigantic Battles

Marvel Universe Gigantic Battles

3.75 inches.

I’m still not completely sold on the idea, especially for superhero lines. Yes, there is a lot of potential for play sets and vehicles and accessories and so on; I’ll conceded the point. But admit it, comics isn’t really a genre that doesn’t offer a hell of a lot of opportunity for any of that. The only playset that would really be great are the respective bases: the X-mansion, the Avenger mansion, the Baxter Building, Iron Man’s armory. If they were done right, to scale and realistic, the price would be so insanely high, no one would buy it. If they made sacrifices and say did something like the old He-man Grayskull playset, it might be fun for kids, but there’s not much there for collectors who want nice dioramas and things.

For vehicles, there’s the Blackbird, Avenger’s Quinjet, and the Fantasic Four’s car. For the most part, superheroes can either fly or teleport, or know someone who can. Same with accessories. Why carry guns when you know that you can out run bullets or heal super fast? So I’ve pretty much kept my Marvel Universe collection to the bare minimum, getting only those characters or figures that really stood out for me. But now I finally see the real potential of the 3.75″ line: SCALE.

For the first time, we can get a Goliath who is really 25 feet tall in comparison to the rest of the Avengers. Or a Fin Fang Foom who really dwarfs Tony Stark. Or how about a Sentinel that will drive fear into the hearts of all your little mutants? Bwahahahahaha!

Sorry. You get the picture. If you don’t, here’s a few to help you along:

There are two Gigantic Battle sets in the Marvel Universe line so far. One is the Skrull/Captain America set, the other is the Goliath/Iron Man set. Both are worth the price in my opinion (p2,200.00). The retail price is the equivalent of 1 sixth scale Icons figure and 1 3.75″ scale figure, so you’re paying about the same. As you can see from the pictures, the 12″ figures are perfectly scaled to the smaller ones. They are very close to the stated 25′ of Goliath, or at least closer than the 6″ Iron Man would be. This makes for some excellent diorama possibilities if you’re into that sort of thing.

Me, I just love doing stuff like this:

So far, my Marvel Universe collection is made up of the Hulks and the Iron Men. Like I said, I don’t really want to get serious about the line until we see more of these kinds of things come out. A Sentinel would be nice. Some Celestials maybe? An Ego? And Hasbro’s quality control with the line has been making a poor showing lately, with garish errors on the newest figures, including these Gigantic Battle sets. My Iron Man seems to be suffering from a botched vac-metal process, as if they stopped mid-coat. He’s awfully dull compared to some of the others.

Hasbro also has to look into it’s articulation schemes. The articulation on the sixth scale figures is awful. Really sub-standard compared to the old Bulid-A-Figure toys or some of the old Toybiz era Icons. In addition, the joints are so tight, that every time I hear the CLACK of a ratchet, I’m afraid I’ll break off the appendage. The smaller toys fare better, but some of them have better articulation than others. These two, Iron Man and Captain America fall in the middle somewhere, with nice double jointed knees and ball jointed heads, but others like the modern Iron Man or the Hulk figures are pretty crappy.

Value wise, you’re going to have to dig deep. Marvel Universe runs about p550.00 for a single figure. More than a GI Joe. You don’t even see the extra dough in accessories. Frankly, I’d rather spend the p800.00 they were asking for a Marvel Legends figure, but as they are scarce nowadays, you’ll have to decide which is a better buy.

At the end of the day, the final thing is that I can not stop playing with these things. I’m totally sold.