X-Men '97

I’m really disappointed with how the new Cable has turned out, his range of motion at the shoulders are very restricted by the pads and makes trying to pose him really underwhelming.


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Misfit said:
Whether or not prices go down if the tariffs suddenly go away is only answerable by Hasbro’s bottom line. If profits are up, the price stays, if things nosedive, then they might come down. Right now, I’m only assuming the companies that lay out their tariff fee when you order from them are likely to adjust down. The one’s just baking it into the price are more likely to hold firm unless they go away soon. Then it’s more about recency and consumer awareness, but if it goes on for another year or the entire duration of the administration then they’ll bet on people essentially forgetting about it and just adjusting to a new reality.
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They'll do what they ALWAYS do: make up an excuse why the prices can't go back down. "Oh, you see, even though tariffs are gone we had to pay tariffs for other things so it'll be a while before we can adjust down.' Then it'll be 'oh, you see, we are finally able to adjust down from the tariff change, but our costs have gone up in other areas so instead of lowering and raising the prices again, we're just going to leave them where they are.'

They've been doing this for two decades and people still don't see it coming.
 
KAILRYU said:
I’m really disappointed with how the new Cable has turned out, his range of motion at the shoulders are very restricted by the pads and makes trying to pose him really underwhelming.


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What would even be the solution to work around the pads? That’s his design, and by design, his arms will be blocked.
 
KAILRYU said:
I’m really disappointed with how the new Cable has turned out, his range of motion at the shoulders are very restricted by the pads and makes trying to pose him really underwhelming.
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I totally get why some folks wouldn't like him, but I think his range is honestly pretty good. Yeah, he can't put his hands straight up above his head, but he can T-pose just fine, put his arms out, etc. It's really only if you want to keep the arms close to the body in any way, but the majority of poses he can still do. Like Norm said, I think it's just the nature of his design. I suppose they could've made the pads a softer plastic, but then it's more prone to warp. All things considered I think they worked around his design pretty well; I really like that they made the straps 2 separate pieces instead of 1 so as not to impede articulation. I think Emma is more restricted by her cape than Cable is with the pads, but to each their own.
 
Regardless of how you feel about him, I think it's pretty easy to see that he's where the budget for the wave went. Not that any of the figures are bad, per se, but I have a feeling that he may be why Jubilee and Sunspot especially feel a little plain. I'm not educated enough to know if he's entirely new parts or just mostly, but he certainly feels like he got extra love and care. I think they easily could've made him a deluxe if they really wanted to, even without tossing in an extra accessory or two, so maybe to keep costs down, they stuck to the uber basic bodies for Jubilee and Sunspot.
 
I usually don't go for Hasbro's animated aesthetic, but I'll admit that I like the X-Men '97 line for whatever reason. I guess these are getting new sculpts instead of ugly repaints.

While the head sculpts don't match their comic figures, something about them feels more comic-inspired than the regular line.
 
NORM said:
What would even be the solution to work around the pads? That’s his design, and by design, his arms will be blocked.
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No come on, sorry I'm absolutely not having this - it's their job to figure out engineering to make figures poseable, and we have numerous examples of them trying to figure out how to make this work, and succeeding to various degrees, ranging from individually socketing each shoulder pad so it rotates slightly with the shoulder, to separately hingeing or ball-point-connecting each pad just above or to the rear of the shoulder so it can move with the arm when lifted. Doesn't the new silver samurai figure have this alteration to accommodate the larger more game accurate shoulder pads on the updated figure? I've heard that for some this pops off if pushed too high but at least that's an attempt . They just didn't bother at all with Cable, and I don't know why saying he's able to do a good T-pose is any kind of impressive because then it's only good for posing him perpetually firing off to the sides.

I've got Death's Head sitting on my desk right now who is bigger than Cable because he uses the Colossus body and has bulky shoulder pads but they're flexible enough to move up a bit so he can point his weapons or gesturing hand straight up in front of him and no the pads don't have to be so thin they warp.

This feels like the confidence they had in us wanting a new show-specific Cable was so high they felt they could pass on caring if there was suitable functionality in the shoulders, and it seems like yeah they're not wrong, but this is a definite downgrade in functionality from the old Liefeld style Cable which though it was hindered by reusing a lot of Hyperion/Nuke, the flexible overlay of straps and pads meant he posed pretty well and he even had a degree of weapon storage at the belt and via a peg hole which this figure doesn't.

I think this will become a mod-project so I can upgrade him to properly shoulder his rifle or fire the blaster out straight ahead, he's too good in the size and detail department's to discard but definitely too limited to leave as is.
 
Has anyone gotten the Wolverine 2 pack and can test masked head swaps with any other releases for a comic aesthetic kitbash? Does this yellow match any previous release?
 
Received the ‘97 2pks this afternoon.

Wolverine and Storm are fine. Storm is nearly exactly the same as the previous version, just with darker skin, new face sculpts, double elbows/bicep swivels, and no open hands. I wish her irises were painted in like on the box art. Would give it another difference from the previous. Her calm cape had really sloppy yellow painted on the trim on my copy.

Wolvie is a preferred shade of brown from the Secret Wars version, but the yellow paint between his eyes cuts off to black too soon so it looks like a line across his mask. The yellow/orange isn’t quite a match with Secret Wars Wolvie. I don’t have other Wolverine figures handy to swap heads.

Cyke and Jean are nice. Jean is an upgrade over the HoX version. I prefer the hairstyle but it’s minimally sculpted so lacks comic style detail. But both heads are pretty. I really don’t like the pale gold of her boots and gloves. Her new legs make her a half inch taller than the HoX version. Surprisingly the pinkish skin tone looks to match the older figure too.

Cyke is great. Exactly what I want and expect from this body combo. The boot cuffs are a little too simple, again, matching the anime aesthetic over the detailed comic style. Just needs some wrinkles or something. This build was made for him (a Summers brother) but looking at him next to Angel and Banshee, I’d like to see some variation in body types sooner rather than later. This figure should not be locked behind an exclusive 2pk.
 
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Got the two 2-packs and the rest of the wave today as well.

I wish Wolverine's skin tone matched other versions of him - I don't love his lack of neutral head on the 2-pack version but the colors just don't match up with any other version. Other than that though, like every other Wolverine on this buck, he's fun, I like him. Nothing new there.

Storm - yeah, same as the previous release with her but with different skin tone and colored effects. Honestly, I wish I'd paid more attention. I probably would've skipped the two pack if I'd known how little new was happening in here, but that's on me.

Cyke and Jean are great though. Finally got a proper Marvel girl who can move her legs! And Scott needs butterfly joints. I like the paint apps on the comics Scott and Jean two pack from a million years ago, those are still kinda my go-to's for both of them, but this is a nice addition to the options to display both of them, no regrets here.

All of the animated characters seem to have that oddly soft skin texture that the Classified figures who came with the Dragonfly have. It's weird on them but I suppose it offers a unified tone for all the animated '97 X-Men so it's less bothersome here.

I've decided now that I have them all in hand I really don't LOVE the flat colors and tones they use for clothes in the animated X-Men figures. It's thematic, it's screen accurate, it WORKS, but in-hand it just feels flat to me. Truly not a knock because it's working as intended! But I think I compare them unfairly to how Star Wars Black Series added realism to the stylized cartoon versions of characters so they'd fit in with the overall collection and I like that concept more. that being said, while I find his flat-toned jacket off-putting, plainclothes Wolverine is hard to put down.

I'm surprised how much I like Jubilee. My only complaint is that her knees are weak enough I worry they'll degrade over time. Same with Morph. She just doesn't feel sturdy.

Gyrich's head actually matches PERFECTLY in color with Everett Ross if you have a spare suit body! Head sits a little low on the neck, but then again Gyrich should look a bit sniveling. It's functional. Morph's pretty good. Nothing special to write home about but he does the job.

I always judge a figure by "will this stay on my desk for weeks and weeks cos I want to pose it for fun" and Scott and Jean win on that (I haven' thad a Wolverine that wasn't fun to pose in years so he almost doesn't count). Emma and Jubilee are the best head sculpts in my opinion - they feel the most like they can fit in with any other legends and not feel like a separate line, but ALSO feel like they belong with the rest of the wave.
 
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