Review: #386
Name: Iron Man Mark VII
Brand: figma (The Avengers)
Year of Release: 2014
Variations: none as of this date
PACKAGING AND CONTENTS:
Being the main prototype suit that Tony Stark wore in The Avengers, Iron Man Mark VII comes in your standard figma box.
The back, as per usual, shows off some nice stock photos.
Taking out the tray, Iron Man comes with a few accessories including an additional four pairs of hands, and four thruster effects.
The thruster effects are made from soft translucent plastic with some paint details.
The additional hands are in various poses, and two pairs have pegs for the thruster effects to attach.
There is a cutout cardboard stand.
Not to mention the standard plastic bag to contain all the additional accessories. To be fair, the figma box is easy enough to put everything back to not use this bag at all.
And finally, the articulated figma stand.
FIGURE:
The stock photos did not lie, Iron Man Mark VII is every bit as shiny and metallic as they showed and it looks fantastic in person.
That does mean that you need to take a bit of care when handling him as pretty much every surface is coated in paint.
The headsculpt captures the character perfectly.
The sculpted detailing of the figure is excellent. They've captured the look perfectly.
Another impressive feat is that the joints does not stand out. They blend in with the rest of the figure.
This is Iron Man without his back thrusters though (since those parts came in a limited edition), so that's a bit of a shame.
Iron Man is on the taller side of things. Taller than most standard figmas, above is a comparison against Transformers Orion Pax and figma Tsugumori.
In addition to the accurate translation of characters from onscreen to toy form, the figma series prides itself on the articulation is packs into each figure.
Iron Man is no exception and he is extremely poseable, able to pull off all of his iconic poses.
One of the main negatives though is his knee caps which are on separate pieces. They are prone to detaching (since they're thin pieces on friction joints) when posing his legs, which is annoying to keep reattaching.
The other negative, but is a necessary one, is the various softer plastic used such as above his feet, arm guards, and the attachments of his shoulder guards and collar.
The soft plastics are necessary because they need to be flexible for various poses, annoying because they feel like they're easy to break and are just ever so slightly, a different shade of red.
Iron Man uses the older style of hand connections, in that the hands have the pegs on them. Swapping them is easy enough. The thruster effects doubles as Iron Man's blaster effects.
The hands are full poseable and can tilt up/down, as well as rotate. Although this is also where the soft plastic flap above the arm gets in the way.
The bottom of his feet also has peg holes for the second pair of larger thrusters for his flight.
Unfortunately, attaching the thrusters onto his feet means that the stand is not tall enough, even with the extension piece. It makes posing a little bit more awkward.
That's it for accessories so Iron Man Mark VII is definitely on the short end in terms of what he gets.
Having him in your hand, the proportions are slightly off thanks to the elongated torso.
The torso also has multiple waist joints which is a pain to line up properly.
Despite the amazing range of motion for his feet, knees, elbows and hands, ironically, his thighs are extremely limited in both outward motion and front motion. The thigh pads gets in the way, a lot.
Overall, the display and wow factor of figma Iron Man Mark VII more than outweighs his cons. There was no cutbacks or compromises made in terms of sculpting and paint applications, which makes him look amazing on your shelves.
OVERALL:
figma Iron Man VII is an expensive figma, clocking in just over 7000 yen RRP. You can see why it's so expensive thanks to the numerous paint applications and probably the licensing as well. While it's not a perfect figma due to the limited thighs and slightly-off proportions, this is a fantastic figure.
----------------------------------------------------------
For other (selected) figma reviews, have a look at this page.
----------------------------------------------------------
Thanks for reading, and here are the remaining photos taken that was not used in the main body of the review.
