Marvel 3 3/4 Figures: 2010 Area

My pics of Marvel figures were always spotty - not sure why.  It's not that they didn't excite me as much...I guess I've always just did my own thing with them and figured a lot of it wouldn't make sense since I made up my own stories for long-time characters that I barely knew anything about.  Superhero figures were always my wildcards that were used across my old toy stories, so I see them in a different light than most.

So we start in February of 2010 wit ha comic pack I bought for Ultron.  It came with a Mr. Fantastic of whom has nothing to simulate his powers...so he's just a dude figure.

Now Ultron is a robot dude figure, and that's awesome!  Regular dudes kinda bore me, but any 'ol robot usually does the trick for me.  Now I've looked up Ultron before and seen him on the recent Avengers cartoon, so I am a fan of the character, but I'm mostly a fan of the look.

He's a good old fashioned evil robot, no two ways about it!  You don't have a face like that and help old ladies across the street.  No sir, that's a face that smears old ladies across the street.

At the time I had already done a few different holding-you-up and saying "Where's my money?!" jokes, so that's where that comes from.

Overall I wasn't terribly impressed with this guy, even if the visual is great.  I don't like how they decided to mold the shoulders...they're awkward.  They never sit against the body well, and the pegs go in at an angle so it's always a fight to get the arms in some sort of good position.  Also they do that stupid thing there the shoulder armor is just clipped on there, so while you're fighting with the arms the armor will pop off.  Sadly these arms are also used with Dr. Doom, and gives him similar problems, which is why I'd really like to see another Dr. Doom and Ultron mold at some point.

Next guy is an exciting one: Venom!  And not bulging-sack-of-chunky-soup Venom with thirty-foot long tongue and a constant waterfall of TMNT ooze coming out of his mouth - NO!  This is classic Venom with that winning smile and sharp teeth!  My favorite kind, and one you don't see very often (thank you Marvel Select for your recent offering!  I will be buying.)  This is from whatever Spider-Man toyline was going at the time, ad he is sadly missing knee joints - but WOW I don't care!  The figure really works with the lack of knees rather than against it (the hips really help).  You won't get a lot of swinging poses, but you can get whatever else you need.  Plus: I'll take what I can get if they're actually gona make one without a tongue and tons of lime flavored saliva.

Anyone ever had the talking toybiz Venom with the backpack with the three buttons on top?  You press 'em and they say different things, like "DIE SPIDAMAN" and "I WANT TO EAT YO BWAIN" and finally "HAAAARRRRAA."  I friggin' love that thing.  I'd show you what I mean if anyone had uploaded the noises, but I'll have to do that myself sometime. 

Anyway, theme for that toyline was different web constructs, and Venom came with a web axe, so...I dunno, he can hit a tree with it and have it stick.  He's a prop comic, maybe? 

You can see this is a perfect example of molding a figure dynamically.  No waist joint and no knees, but VERY dynamic!  You get a lot from only a little.

That's a missile launcher of some sort - one of the better ideas when it comes to those.  Melds with his arm to make it look like symbiote gloopiness. 

This is still my top favorite Venom figure - and that's over all!  Even the 6 inch figures.  We'll see what happens when I get my hands on the Marvel Select version.  But I have a soft spot for this scale, so I'd imagine the smaller, easier to play with one will stay my top favorite. 

Oddball side-fact: as I stated, I didn't know much about the characters back when I was a little.  I liked Spider-Man, and I love-love-LOVED evil versions of the heroes, so Venom was a favorite without needing to know anything else.  Back then my friend Ryan and I would surmise that Venom was possibly an alien composed of green goo under the suit, because of his drooling (possibly).
 
Since I didn't read the comics, I had to make up my own stories for him.  Wana know my favorite types?  Villians who make robot armies!  Guess what Venom became until I found out who he was supposed to be?  Yeah...enter the countless robots I made up and used as Venom's crazy schemes (that includes the towering Venom Robots that were the size of Sentinels - no I didn't know about those back then).  Once I figured out who he was and who Dr. Doom was, I switched their roles (Doom at the time was a goofball idiot who was trying to take over but couldn't get anything right).  My random retcon in my own little-kid story world was that a dimensional vortex (the thing bringing all the heroes together in one random dimension of my own creation) switched the intelligences of Venom and Dr. Doom and scrambled their brains a bit.  They eventually got better?  Sure, good enough.

Noooow fast forward from February to October of the same year, and I was taking less pics, for some reason.

This is a comic pack with Daken, who is Wolverine's son?  Last I read on wikipedia, anyway.  Knowing comics, I'm sure that may get retconed at some point.  Anyway, the second guy is "Venom", though it's actually whoever was wearing the symbiote at the time and acting like a Spider-Man type dude on an evil Avengers team.  This is a seriously truncated version of what was going on, 'cause I have no fuggin' idea, nor do I care.  As usual, I'm a toy guy first and foremost, and I bought this for that Venom only. 

Why?  *sigh* Well you know all that jargle above about my old stories?  Well my friend Ryan and I had NO idea why there was a black suited Spider-Man and a red-and-blue suited one, so we thought they were two different guys.  So I played Spider-Man, and he played the one in the black suit, of whom I figured was called "Spidey" because I only had one comic, and in it there was a picture of a T-shirt with the black suited Spider-Man on it where he was talking to himself and calling himself "Spidey."  MAN...that is some good conclusion jumping.  Anyway, since Ryan was always a bigger dude than me, I thought this one was a perfect "Spidey" as a sort of homage to my old insane kid stories.  Funny how these things work out!

Now Wolverine and the black ninja came in a Target two pack.  Bought it 'cause I liked this Wolverine's face better than the last one's, but he's just WAY too tall!  Kinda sucks, 'cause the face is fantastic.  It's just the other Wolverine figures are shorter, like they should be, but this one is pretty massive compared to them.  Can't even do a headswap because the heads are so different in size!  Still a neat figure.  You can almost see the cigar that is supposed to be there!

Oh and the ninja is of course cool - the red one is back there for a comparison, of sorts.

This is an A.I.M. soldier, and I bought him because I thought he was hilarious and I liked his weapons.  I would have gotten another one if I had known about them at the time.  Sadly I didn't really get educated on them until the last Avengers cartoon (Earth's Mightiest Heroes, which is of course canceled, because it's awesome).  Now I'm glad I at least got one!  These guys are wacky as hell.

I bought this because I found out it's supposed to be Norman Osborne in there, and I thought that was pretty slick.

Then I did this!  After that I gave him Captain America's shield, 'cause why not?

I also like the idea of Captain America armor, so it kinda works two-fold.  Nice figure, too!  All the articulation works well, and I honestly don't know why more figures don't use the awesome neck on this thing.  It's a mix of ball joint and disc joint and gives you a lot of range.  You can find this mold in numerous ways, so at least get yourself one!

Alright, looks like a good amount of pics on this post, so I'll finish up 2010 on a final post and move on to the 2011 stuff, which wasn't much.  PEACE.