Stryfe (Marvel Legends)

Marvel Legends Stryfe

There are two interesting facts I learned about Stryfe today. One- he carries a weapon called a toothpick... I mean- a sword, and two- he got nipples showing off his armour. While it's probably not a major deal that he comes with a sword (which I doubt he ever used one) that is not in-scale to his size, the inverted nipples (and there are four of them over his chest) are just the oddest and funniest things to see. My guess is that Hasbro wanted it to look like Stryfe's "energy ports" like Iron Man's arc reactor but with poor sculpting, it appeared nipple-like! Nail file to the rescue!














Stryfe is part of the Marvel Legends X-Men Jubilee Build-A-Figure Wave along with Cyclops, Storm, Magneto and the Unmasked Wolverine, and carries Jubilee's head and blast effects. And like Sabretooth and Gladiator, he is a "machismo" with the Luke Cage body mold. Despite being not 100% impressed with this body mold, there are a few characters in the Marvel universe that might fit to this type of physique, and having it on Stryfe is not that bad except that he looked almost like a muscle builder.

But thanks to that body armour he's wearing, those bulky arms and feet are a bit hidden. The addition of spikes on top of his shoulders and thighs, and fins behind his legs made him gorgeously intimidating like a knight from the future. The sculpt on his headdress is done symmetrically and by the looks of it, it seemed that it would hinder his head articulation but it's completely not getting its way. The one thing that bothered me is his cape- it got this wave forming like an "S"... which appear nice from the back but once you view Stryfe at the frontside, that S-cape kind of make him look ridiculously awkward.

The cape with its nice texturing is glued at the back of his chest armour and from what I heard, you can actually take the cape off by also taking off the armour. It's interesting how the parts are being assembled all together. The only parts that are not glued are his armbands and his epic loin cloth which you can spin around and are made of a soft plastic material. Stryfe only has one accessory and that is his sword which to me, looked really cheap and hungry for some paint work.

Speaking of paint work, the combination of gunmetal gray and ash gray made this figure a real stunner! The gunmetal paint over his flesh got that shiny reflective finish while the ash gray paint over his armour has that slight gloss in it but not as shiny as the other one. As for those four (4) nipple-like energy ports, maybe it would have been nicer if Hasbro applied the middle with white paint and dark gray paint at its indented border. The rest of the paint work is, otherwise well done.

Articulation-wise, he is as poseable as the Marvel Legends Luke Cage, but some of the movements are hindered by the bulk of his armour like for example, his shoulders. The figure fails to meet its potential because of this reason. Stryfe has rotation to the biceps, double-joints to the elbows, rotation at the wrists as well as hinges. He got the ab crunch with movements being limited by his stiff cape but has a fully functional waist rotation. He has T-joints, rotation at the upper thighs, double-joints at the knees, ankle rockers with the hinges. Sadly, no mid-calf rotation on this one.

Overall, I'm not too impressed nor too disappointed with this figure. Hasbro could have added maybe 20% more paint work that could enhance the details. He stands at about 7.4 inches tall and I got no problem having the Luke Cage body mold being used here, however, they could at least get the sculpt right and I'm not gonna say this again. Being the first Stryfe figure we have on a 6-inch scale, this Marvel Legends figure may be a good one to have (I guess) for your collection of X-Men villains but like the ML Magneto, he's not perfect and he's something that Hasbro would consider learning from.