Marvel Legends Iron Man vs Spiral review

I haven't paid much attention to the second lineup of MvC inspired Legends, but there was one set that changed my mind. How did I end up with the Iron Man and Spiral 2-pack, you may ask? First, we gotta go back to the reveal; at first, I was under the impression that Iron Man was just a rerelease of that one Modular mold without the metallic colors and retooled unibeam. After finding out that it was a new mold, I decided to pick it up, but I chose doing so via second hand because I want to give Hasbro less money. I liked the original Modular Iron Man they made, but I wish the proportions were better and didn't have small shoulders. On top of my curiosity on this redesigned figure, I did like the original Spiral and wouldn't mind getting another version of her. Let's see how well this potentially underrated set turned out!

Here we have Iron Man in-hand, and while he may look like the previous Modular version we got from Hasbro, this one is closer to what the physique should look like for not just the armor but comic book proportions in general. The shoulders are bigger nor do they hang as low, the torso is tapered properly instead of vaguely appearing superheroic, and the legs have more bulk in them. All this helps improve the look of not just Iron Man, but any superhero with a build like this, armored or not. The bright red and yellow are accurate to the game, but I would love to see a metallic repaint. That means no marbleized plastic, Hasblo! One downside my copy has is the right kneecap's yellow paint chipping slightly.

Head sculpt is consistent with what the design previously got in Legends, though the eyes are still black rather than red like in the promo art and sprites. At least they aren't blue like in the HasCon version. Articulation consists of a ball and hinge combo for most of the neck as a dumbbell joint for the lower part to give him some slight tilt or whenever he needs to raise his head while flying. Not the best approach to neck engineering but it's reasonable. Shoulders rotate, hinge in and out, biceps swivel, elbows bend at two points, wrists swivel and hinge inwards and outwards. We have a dated waist swivel and a not so great ab crunch. We have butterfly joints but they only go backwards; at least they don't disrupt the sculpt, a similar benefit with their Hulk body. Hips are on ball joints, thighs and boots swivel, knees double bend, and ankles hinge as well as pivot. One of his pairs of hands include a more clutching right hand and a pointing left hand.

He comes with two massive blast effects that look cool when they use the dual colors and double layering at the base, but they're annoying to keep upright without them drooping at the pegs or weighing his arms around at the biceps given those get loose. It may seem possible to remove the blue pieces from the middle purple ones, but doing so seems pretty difficult, and I don't want to imaging reattaching them.

His other accessory is a holographic shield that can clip onto the wrist like almost every Captain America figure under Hasbro. You may notice that the middle of the shield is sculpted similarly to the forearm bit, and while the clip can detach, this visual trick would have people believe that the forearm bits can also detach to strength the illusion. However, despite what Hasbro stock photo editors claim, that is not possible whatsoever. I saw AnthonysCustoms attempt recreating the look, and he called them out for misleading people with their renders. That said, the differences between the Modular Iron Man from 2021 and the new one 5 years later at least make me appreciate Hasbro taking a second stab at this design to improve his physique without just up-sizing it slightly. I still hope we can get this with metallic colors, though maybe not as dark as the original release. 

As for Spiral, the main differences are the heads, weapons, belt, boots, and a second cybernetic arm on her left instead of a fully organic one. Obviously, this all matches the sprites and character art from MvC2, with the swords likely stemming from Capcom wanting to simplify work on said sprite work rather than using an entirely different sword and a weird axe thing. As expected, anything that appears metallic is mostly marbleized plastic, but one thing that sucks is that at least in my copy, the arm joints feel a little gummier than the original's. Maybe they were also like that on the original, but it's out of reach currently given I've been organizing shelves. Aside from that, at least she doesn't feel like that much of a downgrade.

She also comes with a pair of alternate hands, with fists, karate chop hands, and gestural hands per side. The previous Spiral only had 2 alternate hands, mostly for the left side, but I like this both as a way to give her something still without charging a higher price while also nodding to her hand-to-hand moveset she usually worked with in the game.

Overall, this set turned out a whole lot better than I anticipated. Thanks to Iron Man being a new mold and Spiral already having some value once again despite her differences, I see this as a pretty solid recommend in spite of the price bs Hasbro does nowadays. Only real issues mostly lie in some aspects of Iron Man, mainly the torso articulation and the wonky size of the blast effects not fully working with his joints. And of course, we need that Proton Cannon again for him and War Machine. Says a lot when the non-MvC MAFEX has one! As for Spiral, you could choose what aspects you like of each look, but do you prefer her with mostly unique weapons or more alternate hands?

Final ranking: ⭐⭐⭐⭐ out of ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐