Iron Man Mark-01

Height: 15.5cm to top of head.

Articulation: 22 total points: swivel neck; 4 points each arm - universal shoulder, universal elbow; swivel waist; 6 points each leg - universal hips, universal knee, universal ankle.

Colors: Molded silvery gray and transparent orange(missile). Painted black and white with rust red wash.

Accessories: "fire" missile for flamethrower.

Release Data: Released March 23rd, 2008 at suggested retail price of $9.99.

Gallery: 7 pictures.

Author: RAC

It probably won't surprise you to learn that ExVee and I are both excited about the Iron Man movie. It looks good, early reports seem positive, and the final armor seen in the film, the Mark-03 suit, is almost identical to the current comic armor. This suit on the other hand, is not- the Mark-01 armor is the movie version of the first Iron Man armor and deviates from the comic in appearance but not concept. See, in the comic, Tony Stark's original armor was designed and assembled hastily in order to save his life. I have to assume that's the case here as well, and they've expanded on the original idea nicely: this armor is bulky, unwieldy, designed on-the-fly for pure function with no regard for aesthetics or symmetry. Even though that's the idea, it still looks great in its own way. However, Hasbro also chose to reproduce the clunky, though I'm not entirely sure how much choice they had in the matter.

The Figure

The head (or helmet) looks like a modified bucket. Or possibly a bomb casing. (Maybe he really does have an artillery shell for a head, thus justifying the nickname?) Either way, it looks seriously repurposed, like most of the rest of the suit. The shape of the shoulders and the helmet mean that the neck only swivels, and can only turn about 45 degrees total at that. The arms are uneven but cylindrical, and more than any other part of the suit look ballistic in origin. The inner joints are covered in some kind of black skintight material- something fire-retardant, I'm guessing, what with the flamethrower and all. The shoulders are the least-obstructed joint on the whole toy, and Iron Man can at least raise his arms to a respectable right angle to his torso. The elbows don't fare so well, and barely bend at all. The left arm's "flamethrower" block tends to catch on the torso, but is otherwise pretty unobtrusive as far as action features go.

The torso is a lot more detailed than the all-but-featureless chest plate of 1965. I especially like the details on the back, which features some very uneven, organic-looking welding seams... and what looks like a full internal combustion engine. (Which once again leads me to believe that the Mark-01 armor is built over a heat resistant suit of some kind.) The pulleys on the engine reduce the waist's effective articulation to that same 45-degree arc as the head. Assuming the circle in the center of the torso is part of Tony Stark's chestplate, as I'm led to assume by the promotional images and the Prototype Iron Man figure, then the Mark-01 is a bit out of scale with the Mark-02/3 mold. If so it's not by much, but it would be enough to make the 01 slightly taller, rather than the slightest bit shorter.

The legs are really neat looking, featuring what seem to be massive drive belts used to move the suit's knees. These, combined with the shape of the lower torso, do restrict the hip joints, though not as badly as the waist, head or elbows. Or the knees- they're very limited by the shape of the lower leg. The knee joints can be turned to the side and get significantly better range, but that's not much of a help since Tony's leg would have to be completely broken for him to do that. What makes the ankles interesting is that they have completely different ranges due to the legs being significantly different. Tony's left foot is severely restricted, but the right ankle has a pretty good range, particularly for this figure.

 
Sculpt and Deco

In my opinion the sculpt forgives most of the limited articulation. No two pieces of the armor are alike- one calf is square and the other round, and even the feet, which look extremely similar, are clearly made of different parts and are noticibly different in width! All of the detail is rendered cleanly and sharply, and it pretty much has to be since the entire figure is molded in a single color. Besides the black details like gloves and knee drive-belts, the entire figure has a rust-red wash to make it look slightly dingy and, of course, rusty. It also helps dull the color of the gloss-grey plastic, which is of the type that looks slightly silvery and noticably swirly. Normally I tend to associate this color plastic with really, really cheap toys, but somehow I feel it fits the look of the armor very well. My only complaint about the red wash is that it wears off some parts- ExVee figures this is because those parts were likely improperly rinsed before painting and retained some of their coating of mold release agent, and that makes sense to me. Still, the patchwork quality of the suit doesn't make it that big of a problem- rust usually doesn't coat evenly anyway.

Articulation- 7/10
Sculpt and Deco- 9/10

Accessory

-Missile

It's a long orange plastic stick with a sort of fireball-ish bit on the end. Exciting! Still, the flamethrower gimmick interferes with the suit's aesthetics minimally, helped largely by a pull-and-release springloaded firing mechanism- no ugly triggers! (Not that a big ugly trigger would have looked out of place on this toy, but still, good call by Hasbro.)

Accessories get 8/10

Closing Remarks:

I'm usually more focused on articulation than appearance but damn, this figure looks good! While unneccesary re-imaginings of comic book costumes often irk me, this design is a logical extension of the concept behind the first Iron Man armor. And while the articulation is pretty limited, I gave it relatively high marks because anything more would probably have been difficult to fit into the design of the armor, and how mobile could a bulky suit of armor like this truly be? Likewise I scored the accessory eight out of ten because it does its job well, and without causing any inconvenience to the figure proper. Quite the contrast to the crippled-by-action-features Iron Monger! This is an Excellent figure, though personal tastes towards articulation may well drop it a rank or more for others.

-RAC, 4/22/2008