I got my Dragon Man the other day and have had a day or two to ruminate on the quality and value of it under this made to order model....
It's .... okay. Just.
This is basically a really expensive BAF. It could have come spread across a 10 figure wave although I don't think there's been one with that many figures before, maybe Eternals and that completed the roster with some exclusives that didn't have BAF pieces.
The reason I say this is because the quality and execution of the articulation and engineering is absolutely nothing we haven't seen in a carded or deluxe scale figure, it's just... bigger. And not by much. The wings and tail push it up, but DM is not a whole lot bigger than Gamerverse Abomination, maybe 130-150% with the extra 'limbs' but certainly not 200% which is where the cost is sitting compared to an average deluxe/baf figure offering.
What could be improved?
- The tail. Like the retro card Lizard, and a reason why I did not keep that figure, the tail plug socket makes it stick out at an odd angle that does not look like it follows the natural extension of a tailbone from the back of his pelvis. Consequently it makes for more difficulty in using it to counterbalance him in posing and being able to stick him on a shelf without him being precariously close to toppling off the front. Additionally, it's just a bendy wire tail. For the size of it, they should have considered developing a segmented articulation system so that it was about 8 POA and could pose in more interesting positions than it can. Additionally, this would have been in their best interest because if they had developed one single piece of articulated tail/tentacle that was about 10/11 sections long, then they could use the last 8 for a tail piece on this guy and full sets of the 10/11 section long piece as individually poseable tentacles for the Gargantos/Shuma Gorath figure. Bendy wires have a limited lifespan. We all know this.
- The toe joints. These are bizarrely over-engineered in terms of how many breaks there are visible in the hinge line, just to enable not using a pin connection, but then only give a downwards tilt of 45 degrees and upwards barely 20 degrees due to the sculpt lines of the scale texture on his feet. A moron implemented this, the sculpt lines would have enabled a better system to be employed, but would have required a little more lateral thought than the person responsible was capable of, so it equates to a joint that does little to assist in posing.
- The abdomen. To get a good range of motion at the diaphragm joint, it ends up being a bit gappy at some angle. This is a large torso, so there was scope for giving a second pelvic ball joint such that you would get a fraction less tilt at the diaphragm and eliminate gaps by having a second similarly ranged ball joint at the pelvis. People might argue that they don't believe this is possible. They are wrong. The geometry works, and there are examples that can be found with similar implementation in some of the McFarlane megafigs - no gaps, just an extra POA.
- The hands. On the open 'style/gesture' hands, specifically, the fingers are the thickness of a regular size female elbow joint. For the price of this figure, I would say people would have even paid an extra 5-10 pounds for details like his open set of hands having finger articulation, it adds to that overall feeling that we're spending money on a quality product, not just a pricey upscale of a standard figure.
- The wings. These are really limited. They only hinge in one plane and rotate in another, so there's a lot of limitation in how they can be posed without hitting each other or the tail. Then there's the fact there is two different sets instead of making a folding articulated set like Sauron or such. They make capes for standard figures that are sometimes thicker, stiffer and heavier than the membranous parts of these wings, so they could have put in at least one hinge point on each to allow three sections of wing to close and overlap or open and create a spread appearance without too much weight on the hinge at all. They just chose not to.
Ultimately I think the reason for the limitations in these area all stems from one source, and it's sadly the old Toybiz figure. It's existence has clearly influenced a limited perspective on what an updated DM figure could be. The scarcity of the old TB fig and absurdity of being able to get a character like him on a cardback gave a lot of delight and joy in having him that made it easy to overlook his limitations, especially because at the time BAFs only appeared in the main Legends series but not in the satellite lines like Spiderman/X-Men/FF classics. I too had that old DM figure and it was nice to have but I knew I was ignoring how it was too small and had some issues like the lack of a torso joint and static wings, and a tail that basically was just a tripod leg. A new Hasbro figure at this size should have been so much more like an intermediate figure between a deluxe/BAF and a Haslab, but the bar of expectation that we as collectors set for years was that we were happy to pay high prices for a figure like the old TB one so we'd not expect much of this bigger made to order offering from Hasbro.
So, I'm happy to have it, I love dragon-related figures and it's a fun enough piece, but only for what it inherits from it's standard size brethren in the line, and it doesn't offer a whole lot more. It's still a whole lot better than the Lockjaw figure which they were too lazy to figure out an articulation scheme that would work for, and packed with a hostage figure of Crystal to make us buy (I didn't, but I might get it on sale.
Mephisto looks to be a better future offering, in that it has the throne and accessories, and the metric it will be measured against was the Select figure which was nicely detailed but basic in its articulation. Again, we all showed as a collector base that we were happy to pay a high amount for a figure with limitations and issues because of its scarcity and lack of alternatives, so I think that was a big signal to Hasbro that they would be able to claw back some of the investment in the Haslab tier that never came to be.
Some notable positives:
- The diaphragm and particularly butterfly shoulders do a LOT for this figure that the old TB fig didn't have, and I think they did a fantastic job of making good use of the larger volume in the chest to implement these joints - goes to show that they can do some really nice engineering when they try.
- The head. Making it partially hollow really helps with the overall weight distribution and the articulated jaw and separate tongue hinge make it work for lots of expression. With the size of his brows, they could have even added some articulation there to give more personality but still very nice as is.
Last thoughts.... holding this guy in your hand, remove the wings and tail and head and squint....
If they had made the torso in three pieces as I suggested, the upper chest having a softer textured overlay instead, then they could have developed a second character from the tooling for some of these parts.
- with different feet,
- alternate pelvis (i.e. a underpants and no-underpants version, without the tail sockets),
- a soft DM chest overlay and a second that covers the wing sockets and has different detailing on the back of the spine and the collarbones,
- and different forearms and hands
- and a new head for another character,
.... they could have developed both this Dragon Man figure and an adaptable base for both and MCU or a comic Abomination.
It's right there in the potential, this could have essentially been developed as at least three different made to order figures, all of which I think would have actually sold well at retail, and given them scope to develop the articulated tail/tentacle for use with Gargantos/Shuma Gorath.
I'm absolutely not regretting getting Dragon Man, but yeah that sums up all my thoughts about what Hasbro have done with the offering, and it's a fair amount of unrealised potential.
