Mandroid (Marvel Legends)

Marvel Legends Mandroid BAF

The Marvel Legends Mandroid Build-A-Figure is finally complete but I never expected this long to find all the parts and get it completed. If it wasn't for that hard-to-find Black Widow (now I'm talking about her again), I would have showed photos of it here like 2 or 3 months ago. But here it is now, armed with a wide array of weapons! Go up to it and you'd be shattered like a piñata with its huge ass claws. Run far away from it and you'd get peppered with rounds after rounds of bullets. It's the perfect killing machine and may be the perfect wallet killer if you're becoming too excited of purchasing "the figures" just to assemble it.














Yes, ...it always comes back to how tough to find the action figures that comes with Mandroid parts. Stealth Captain America, Black Widow and the Winter Soldier are just the last three action figures you need to courageously search for your Mandroid. But if you just want to skip all that hassle, you can actually buy a completed Mandroid BAF on eBay right now... with a price that's pretty reasonable! uh-hmm...

By glancing at the sculpt, you can almost immediately pinpoint Iron Monger's legs being utilized. Also, the arms are from that of the Build-A-Figure but being added with a whole lot of features like the claws to its left arm and this double-gatling gun to his right, along with other parts such as these bendable "cables" that made it so much different. The figure kinda reminds me of a Cylon in Battlestar Galactica but on steroids. The mechanical features and the line works are incredible. It's realistically designed that make you actually wanna sit and imagine how we can actually turn this beast into a life-sized real one.

For paint job, the only silly thing about it is that there are absolutely no paint variation or paint washes over its metal-like body. It would have been better if Hasbro added more details on all these little thingies (i.e. the bolts and the screws) being molded and sculpted to its armour to make them pop out! The big black S.H.I.E.L.D. logo painted over its wide torso doesn't make up for its lack of paint details. Moreover, I think it would probably look cool if they fixed a translucent plastic over its visor kinda like the ones on the NECA Gipsy Danger, but that's just me asking too much. I would just say they need to at least step the paint job up a bit.

The Mandroid comes with only one accessory- the shoulder turret! The turret is removable and it's made out of this bendable, pliable, cheap plastic that's hollow underneath, and it's something I'm not a huge fan about especially when it comes to weapons. Weapons for action figures are suppose to be made of sturdy hard plastic to prevent it from being deformed! Another issue and probably a minor one is that there are no articulation that would let you aim this turret up or down; only rotations towards the sides.

Being a huge chunking plastic as it is, Mandroid's articulation is limited. Having a short neck, it's really hard to twist his head and aim it at some angle! You can't really move the arms to its full potential because of the weapons it got there on both. The arms have hinged shoulder (no bicep swivel), single-jointed elbows with rotations and also rotation at the wrists. It got a good diaphragm swivel that rotates and bends side to side, and unfortunately, no waist rotation. Mandroid got T-jointed hip, rotation at the upper-thighs, double-jointed knees, hinged ankles with pivots!

Scale: The figure stands at 7.5 inches tall and if it wasn't for that turret, Iron Monger would have been taller by probably a centimeter. In term of body girth though, there's no question that Mandroid takes this especially with that huge torso and all the assembly molded into its arms.

I think if this Build-A-Figure is placed inside a box and sold separately, I probably be first one to pass on the figure because I'm not quite familiar with this character other than being a special army unit for Nick Fury and his guys. But if I plan to build the entire S.H.I.E.L.D. Unit, maybe a single or two of these Mandroids would probably look good on display. Ideally a Mandroid army would be nice, but the fact that some of the parts are hard to find and are probably overpriced make me wanna settle with just one. Oh yeah, ...one is good enough!