Hydra Soldier: Dark Threat

(Captain America: The First Avenger)

Height: 10.5cm to top of head.

Articulation: 17 points total- ball-jointed neck; 4 points each arm: universal joint shoulder, universal-joint elbow; 4 points each leg: universal-joint hip, universal joint knee.

Colors: Molded dark green, silver, black, clear blue, and clear yellow. Painted black, silver, blue, and clear red.

Accessories: Dual-use weapon gauntlet with flame and energy missiles x2.

Release Data: Released Summer 2011 at an MSRP of $12.99.

Author: RAC

(more...)


The soldiers who serve Red Skull are equipped with the latest bio-shield armor and weaponry. Their dual flamethrowers and missile launchers inspire fear in all but the most hardened warriors. Together, they carry enough firepower to take on an entire army... but that won't stop Captain America from taking them down!

So in case you don't know yet, Captain America: The First Avenger is really, really good. I don't know if it's the best of the Marvel Movies- still love Iron Man -but it's the first movie in a very long time that I find myself wanting to go see again at the theatre. This does not happen to me. But at minimum, if it hits the discount theatres before it hits DVD...

Anyway, now that I've seen the actual movie, I want more toys. Movie Collection toys specfically- I wouldn't mind a BuckyCap or a normal Comics Cap, but the movie really grabbed me so I wish to grab figures from it. My first find in this vein is the deluxe "Dark Threat" Hydra Soldier, the one you saw in the trailer using flamethrowers. I've been a bit skeptical of Deluxe movie releases from Hasbro, because while they cost a couple bucks more they generally feature less articulation due to the big, gimmicky accessories they come with. Unlike any of the other movie Deluxes I can think of*, this figure is actually in the film, and so it doesn't have a huge backpack or a parachute pack. But unfortunately, the lessened articulation is still in place to a degree.

*Okay, there's Heimdall in the Thor line, but good luck walking into a store and finding him.


The Figure

Let's get nitpicky for a second. The figure is I'd say 80% accurate to the screen version as far as I can tell, with the biggest divergences being the shoulder armor and the lack of any kind of groin protection on the body armor. The belt's also different, with the toy version looking like generic GI Joe webgear, but that's not a big thing. For the most part, the figure looks like what we see on screen: a bulky, heavily-armored soldier using heavy Cosmic Cube energy/Flamethrower guns. While the standard Hydra soldiers have exposed mouths these guys have some kind of face protection- I'm betting there's a gasmask and/or oxygen supply built in so they can go in before everybody else and clear the area. Being covered up is also just good policy if it's your job to play with fire. The harness is designed to look like the Hydra H, though the silver-painted belt at the bottom- also an inaccuracy, as it should be black -spoils that effect a tad. The back's more interesting though, as that's where the battery for the Hydra armor and weapons resides. It's neat-looking, and the cables spread out from the backpack through the armor and down the arms where they presumably power the guns. (The whole thing's rather Zeonic if you ask me- round off the cables and you've got your new prototype.) The armor is technically removable, though it's kind of tough since it only opens on the one side.

The missing points of articulation relative to Basic Marvel movie figures are at the torso, wrists, knees and ankles. Some of these you don't particularly miss, most notably the wrist since both hands are buried under a big gun. The knee does pretty well too since they went with the universal-joint type used on Star Wars toys. Even though a double-joint gets you more technical range, these are functionally pretty nice since they let you adjust the angle of the leg for wide stances more easily than is normal for the touchy hip joints the movie line uses now. As for the rest of it, the head is technically a ball-joint but functionally a swivel, the shoulders do get perpendicular to the chest (even if they have to warp the shoulder armor a bit to get there), the elbows get about 90 degrees, and the hips are the usual movie kind that take work to get adjusted.


Accessories

The big guns are only slightly bigger than the movie would suggest- they look decent enough to me. They use the same mold for both left and right, and it fits both arms equally well. Technically I believe that the little rectangular blocks on the bottom are supposed to be the flamethrowers, but in practice of course the main gun is either a "missile launcher" (i.e. the Hydra-tech energy weapon; I'm reasonably certain the card's wrong on that point) or flamethrower depending on what set of missiles you have loaded. The fan-shaped flame missiles look sort of flamey. They look flamier than the blue ones are going to look like energy blasts planted in the gun anyway. But even if you use the missiles as jets of flame, that is one short-range flamethrower.


Closing Remarks

I'm still not super-thrilled that we're talking reduced articulation for a figure that costs five dollars more than the basic figure. In fact, in this case it's practically inexcusable, since there's not a lot more here than what basic figures come with. A bit bulkier, two sets of missiles and two missile launchers doesn't really sound like five bucks' worth of extra value to me. But this is a film character I wanted, and I think looked at independently of price it's a Very Good figure. You might want to chance waiting for clearance unless you really want to fill out your Hydra ranks for Cap to beat on.

-RAC