I liked the recent She-Hulk figures in Marvel Legends quite a bit, but I’m a sucker for a more classic look and ordered this version as soon as I could when I saw the Iron Man retro carded line. Let’s take a look at the latest She-Hulk!
I wasn’t buying toys or watching the Iron Man cartoon at the time so I’m unfamiliar with the origins of these retro cards, but looking this up online it’s a fairly faithful recreation of one of the Iron Man line card backs. The illustration is quite striking and the card is nice and tough. I almost feel bad recycling it.
She-Hulk comes with few accessories including two sets of hands and a bent gun. The bent gun is fun and feels like a classic super-hero move when some dickhead gets in their face foolishly brandishing a firearm. The hands swap easily, though a funny thing about the way she’s constructed is the little white arm bands are separate pieces that can come off. The fists are nicely sculpted, but the wrist isn’t quite as straight as I’d like for punching poses.
The sculpting on Jen is pretty fantastic with an especially beautiful face portrait that captures the joy of the character perfectly. She’s also appropriately huge and impressively muscular. The hair also captures the epic mane as drawn by Byrne back in the day.
The costume choice appeals to me because it takes me back to how she looked when I was most reading comics in the ’80s. The articulation is pretty good with nice range on the double elbows and knees, but it is lacking a bit with the ball and socket mid-torso wobble.
I love that joint in theory, but it never gets close to the range of motion you get from a hinge. The hair is quite lovely, but it does severely hinder head movement with little side to side, but not much looking up or down. It’s a trade off for all that glorious ’80s hair I guess. She-Hulk has:
- Swivel/hinge shoulders, wrists, hips, and ankles
- Double hinged knees and elbows
- Ball and socket head and mid-torso
- Swivel biceps, thighs and boots
The other issue I have is the ankles are a little loose and the plastic soft, so they weren’t very supportive balancing the figure in fight poses. The paint is really solid, mostly cast in the appropriate colors, but the face print is really impressive as per usual with this line lately. I feel like there’s a bit of blush at the cheeks and the eyes are bright and shiny. The green skin is almost radioactively green, which feels a bit on the bright side, but I’m assuming they are referencing the show or the toy here. It’s not too off from what I would prefer. I didn’t notice it playing with the figure, but you can pick up a bit of a difference between the elbow and knee colors than the rest of the green arms and legs.
Overall, even with a few nitpicks about articulation and range of movement, this is still a stunning figure. I cannot wait to get a repaint in FF colors. I hope if they get there they will include an alternate head with either an angry or neutral face for variety. A flowing hair sculpt that gets out of the way when posing her punching would be great too. At any rate, she’s head and shoulders better than the previous legends efforts and one of my favorite figures this year. The shelf presence is fantastic.
