Mark VI Armor (Iron Man 2 Movie Series)

Height: Approx. 11cm to top of head.

Articulation: 24 points total- ball-jointed neck; 5 points each arm: universal joint shoulder, universal-joint elbow, swivel wrist; mid-torso ball joint; 6 points each leg: universal-joint hip, double-joint knee, universal joint ankle.

Colors: Molded off-white, maroon, and gray. Painted metallic red, silver, gold, blue, and white.

Accessories: Missile Launcher, Stand, Armor Card x3.

Release Data: Released on March 1st 2010 with an SRP of $7.99.

Author: RAC

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As far as I can tell, this will be the last new armor shown in Iron Man 2- the cardback calling it Tony Stark's "mightiest invention yet" strikes me as a good indicator of this. (That and the fact that it's the highest-numbered suit in the Iron Man 2 Movie Collection.) Tony's obviously got the armor formula down by now because, with the exception of the incredibly neat-looking Mark-V "suitcase" suit, the latest Iron Man armors all follow the pattern laid down by the Mark III.


The Figure

Unless you had all three designs side by side you might be hard-pressed to see a difference between the Mark III, IV and VI suits. The Mark IV has some gold panel-lines that the III lacks, and the VI has those plus the new triangular Arc Reactor in the chest. The suit also features a few more hard angles overall, but at this size I wonder how many kids are going to care about the differences.

The metallic paint job is similar to the larger figures, if a little brighter- but the size brings a few new problems. Where the larger line had troubles with the eyes being printed off-center, the entire gold part of this figure's mask is off-kilter here. It's easiest to tell when you're looking at the square indentation at the top of the head, where you can see how the gold paint overlaps it a bit. Not a big deal with how tiny these are, but still noticeable- and I imagine the Nikon D40 will not be this figure's friend, either. The other issue is that the Arc Reactor, which should be bright white with blue edging, is slightly pink in the middle on my figure. It's hard to paint white on red, and this figure suffers a bit because of that. There's also the paint-lock issue, the same as ExVee mentioned in his review of Comic War Machine. I had a tense few minutes freeing up the hips in particular.

The head isn't changed much from the Mark III design. Where the larger toy had almost no tilt, the ball-joint shape means this figure has no head tilt at all though swivel is just fine. The shoulder armor is a separate piece like before, but seems to be permanently attached- to the arm, unlike comic War Machine's interesting new type of torso-mounted shoulder armor. You can get the arm almost straight out to the side- probably about as far as you could get the 6" Mark III figure's arms up without threatening to launch his shoulderpads somewhere. The elbows are the universal joints commonly used on most of Hasbro's other 4" lines, and they're a bit limited compared to the bigger figure- though I don't think a solid double-hinge would be possible at this scale. Perversely, the arm bends frontwards only to a 45-degree angle because of the shape of the bicep- any other direction and it manages a much tighter bend. The hands seem to be peg joints, which lose a fair degree of the motion the 6" Mk. III had- but again, at this scale that's fine. He still has the not-quite-open-enough "repulsor" hand on the left, but on the right there's a fist- I guess there's no way that bizarre "One more, bartender" gesture would've worked on this tiny a hand.

The torso joint has perfect swivel and good tilt in all directions, though what I take to be the "neutral" position makes Tony look a little barrel-chested. There's a hole on the back, presumably so Hasbro can make use of this mold later on with a selection of specialty backpacks. It also fits modern GI Joe backpacks, interestingly enough! The legs are about the same as the larger figure's. I do wish Hasbro would do ball-joints the way Toy Biz did. This is the only thing I wish Hasbro did the Toy Biz way. But like on the larger figure, the movement of the hips, while functional, isn't terribly natural. Just moving the leg in the direction a real leg might move probably won't work; you have to wiggle the leg around until the hinge part of the universal joint is pointing the right way. On the other hand, the knees are much improved, getting a tight U-fold just the way I like it. The ankles are about the same as the old Mark III mold- a little bit of front-to-back lean, and boot shapes that prohibit swivel. Considering the extreme difference in scale, this figure compares pretty favorably to the larger figures from the first film, losing only a bit of arm articulation.


Accessories

-Missile Launcher

Pretty similar to the one that came with the 6" Mark III figure, when you get down to it. It's a bit more angular, and the missile is designed to look like a physical object rather than an energy shot, but in practice it's the same accessory- an oversized springloaded missile launcher that clips to Iron Man's forearm. There is one practical improvement- instead of a dinky little clip that slides around, you get a much tighter connector that clamps around the entire forearm. It'll rotate around the arm if you move it, but it'll also sit still when you want, which the original wouldn't, particularly.

-Stand

The same model as War Machine's, with the same block on the front where it looks like there ought to be a name tampoed onto it. Still, if the budget for that paint-app went into the figure itself, I'm just as happy. It pegs into Tony's foot just fine, and I had a bit more luck getting the cards to stand up in the slots than ExVee did. I like the Armor Card gimmick- it's more fun than a big goofy rocket launcher, and probably has less of an impact on the figure's accessories budget too.


Closing Remarks

There's a few deco hiccups here, but I'm hoping most of them are unique to my figure. Otherwise, this stands up neatly to a larger figure, and that's a plus. Scale Change is here and for once, it doesn't hurt that bad. Mark VI is Very Good.

-RAC