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What does 'Marvel Legends' really stand for?


DesiSpider

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I always wondered how the line up for any wave gets decided. Of course with a series name like 'Marvel Legends' , toybiz did start of with the most prominent figures of the Marvel Universe. But down the line we started getting re-hashes of earlier figures, the umpteen number of wolverines and Iron Man. (Not that they were bad!) and now hasbro started including movie line figures as well.

 

There also seems to be a bias towards the X-Men universe. There are so many spiderman foes i would like to see done.

 

So what constitutes a Marvel legend figure?

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i don't really know. i see your point, but if they tried to make only those characters with "Legend" status, then the line would be doomed early for there are only a few characters which are "Legendary." i think marvel legends really stand for these things:

1. making money (for the toy companies)

2. making fans and collectors happy

 

for those spider villains, i think that's why spidey has his own line of toys, so that they can put out all the characters in spidey's world with out making others complain (that they are biased towards a certain character). a spider man line also means more toys for us and more money for them. for those villains you've been waiting for, maybe hasbro will make them on future waves of their spider man series. let's just hope that they come up with a standard quality among all lines (no more cheap-looking, cheaply-made lines).

 

about including the movie characters in the legends line, i think their idea was stupid. they should have made a line for the x-men movie characters, just like spidey's trilogy line. the x3 characters take up the slots that could have been used for characters which still don't have an ML figure. imagine having quasar in HML1 rather than the x3 beast. why not have jubilee instead of the x3 jean grey. you get the point.

 

and for being biased towards the x-men, maybe because the x-men have always been great sellers. but honestly, i don't see that they're biased towards the x-men. where's the ML Jubilee? how about a standard ML rogue? these characters are major characters, yet, they don't give them to us.

 

but even if we don't have the same views, i think we share the same interests. we want to let hasbro know that we want a hell lot of characters to be included in the ML line.

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i thought X23 turned out well. anyway, theres a bias towards x-characters because when X-classics went belly up, they still had some sculpts around and folded them into ML. the BAFs are mostly x-centered as well.

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Yea, don't get caught up in the name having a bearing on the product--it could be called Marvel Characters, Marvel Superheroes, Marvel Comics toys.........none of which really have the zing as Marvel Legends.

 

And as for the Legends part of it, some folks assume that means only the top tier characters.........but who are they really?

Marvel goes back at least 45+ years for their modern age, and back to the 1940s for the Timely titles.

What can consititue a "legend" can be different in some folks eyes.

I consider Man-wolf and Deathlok to be clear legends, because I know of the characters from as far back as the 1970's. Someone only 19 or so years old might have no clue who those characters are, or their relevance, because they probably haven't seen much print-time recently and those readers have been exposed to the books for only a few years. The conceit of history only being relevant from the time we are born on and all that.

A character like White Queen has always been a villainess to me, X-23 is not that relevant to me because I pretty much stopped reading comics a few years back. So quite a few of us are filtering what a "legend" is by our exposure to Marvel comics.

 

The brand managers and marketing team are the ones who, essentially, call the shots for who a legend is, and who is in any given wave's line-up.

Honestly, I applaud them for their savvy in mixing old and new Marvel, giving us a selection of characters from all tiers and titles.

I love the obscure characters as much as the mainstream ones and want them to continue with their selection philosophy as is.

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i always thought that starting with series 5 when the line-up went from 4 to 6 figures a wave, it woudl be three prominent characters a villian or 2 and a lesser known but popular character (waves 5 & 6 are pefect examples). I loved wave 8 because i could pick adn choose what i wanted but then they started the BAF thing, the rules were out the door. If you wanted a Galactus or a Sentinel you had to buy some lame figures as well. With all this milking a BAF with 8 characters a wave, Now Marvel Legends mean "a perfect way to fleece collectors out of their money in the name of profit".

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i always thought that starting with series 5 when the line-up went from 4 to 6 figures a wave, it woudl be three prominent characters a villian or 2 and a lesser known but popular character (waves 5 & 6 are pefect examples). I loved wave 8 because i could pick adn choose what i wanted but then they started the BAF thing, the rules were out the door. If you wanted a Galactus or a Sentinel you had to buy some lame figures as well. With all this milking a BAF with 8 characters a wave, Now Marvel Legends mean "a perfect way to fleece collectors out of their money in the name of profit".

I've had similar feelings regarding BAF's; they way they're executed seems to appeal mostly to collectors who were going to buy the whole line anyway. I mostly like Spidey toys; I have no use for Onslaught's leg.

 

I liked Hasbro's creation of themed BAF waves for the FF and SM3 for exactly this reason.

 

EDIT: Although what you call "fleecing the collectors out of their money", I call capitalism and clever marketing.

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Marvel Legends just means characters who've existed for years and have fans that could be 5-6 year olds to CEOs of Fortune 500 companies. See my dad was about 17-18 when Marvel made its initial push, so he's all about the F4. I'm more a child of the 80's-90's so I gravitate towards X-Men/Daredevil/Captain America.

 

To be honest my dad doesn't even dig the X-Men he says they're just Superman split into five teenagers?! WTF?!

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Marvel Legends just means characters who've existed for years and have fans that could be 5-6 year olds to CEOs of Fortune 500 companies. See my dad was about 17-18 when Marvel made its initial push, so he's all about the F4. I'm more a child of the 80's-90's so I gravitate towards X-Men/Daredevil/Captain America.

 

To be honest my dad doesn't even dig the X-Men he says they're just Superman split into five teenagers?! WTF?!

 

 

ain't your dad talking about the power rangers, not the x-men? just jokin' around..

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To be honest my dad doesn't even dig the X-Men he says they're just Superman split into five teenagers?! WTF?!

 

Yep.

 

Cyclops= Heat vision

Iceman= Frost breath

Beast= Super Strength

Angel= Flight power

Marvel Girl= Smarts, X-ray vision, or super hearing (telepathy?)

 

The comparison is rough, but it can be made.

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To be honest my dad doesn't even dig the X-Men he says they're just Superman split into five teenagers?! WTF?!

 

Yep.

 

Cyclops= Heat vision

Iceman= Frost breath

Beast= Super Strength

Angel= Flight power

Marvel Girl= Smarts, X-ray vision, or super hearing (telepathy?)

 

The comparison is rough, but it can be made.

Seems more than rough, more like forced....and the Marvel Girl one is totally off.

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To be honest my dad doesn't even dig the X-Men he says they're just Superman split into five teenagers?! WTF?!

 

Yep.

 

Cyclops= Heat vision

Iceman= Frost breath

Beast= Super Strength

Angel= Flight power

Marvel Girl= Smarts, X-ray vision, or super hearing (telepathy?)

 

The comparison is rough, but it can be made.

 

 

 

That's not really a fair comparison. First, Beast was strong, but not remotely in the Superman/Hulk class. Beast's thing was more agility (leaping, flipping around, kicking, etc.). Second, Marvel Girl doesn't fit at all.

 

But in general, Superman embodies some of the most basic archetypes of superhero powers, so to some degree, just about EVERY hero has some connection to him.

 

As a demonstration, you could make the same argument with the Fantastic Four: super strength (Thing), heat rays (Human Torch's fire), super strong breath (Invisible Woman's force fields), and being impervious to bullets (Mr. Fantastic's elasticity).

 

And don't forget, the concepts for the X-Men's powers were still novel in the 1960s. You could base a comic on the simple idea of "flying guy" and "agile guy" and it still hadn't really been done before. Compare this to today, when writers need to stretch their imaginations to the limit to come up with something that hasn't been done 20 times already.

 

Okay, thus ends the speech.

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To be honest my dad doesn't even dig the X-Men he says they're just Superman split into five teenagers?! WTF?!

 

Yep.

 

Cyclops= Heat vision

Iceman= Frost breath

Beast= Super Strength

Angel= Flight power

Marvel Girl= Smarts, X-ray vision, or super hearing (telepathy?)

 

The comparison is rough, but it can be made.

 

cyclops doesn't have heat vision. its heatless blasts of concussive force.

 

besides superman has so many powers you could lump almost any handful of comic book heroes together and get superman

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Nope guys, you are taking the comparisons literally--which is why I said rough comparisons.

 

Cyclops optic rays LOOK like Superman's heat vision--even though they are not the same thing. Its still a beam coming out a guys eyes. Like Superman can do.

Iceman and Angel are self-explanatory.

Beast is muscular, and strong, but not super-strong--but he is the muscle for the group.

Marvel Girl's telepathy is like hearing someone's thoughts, which is like being able to hear a coversation a long ways off--which is what Superman can do.

Yea, its not a fair comparison, but the posters dad was being critical, and thus not trying to be fair.

All ya gotta do is being to see that something is like another thing enough ways to draw the comparison.

I can see it fits somewhat, but like was stated, its not a neat fit.

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What's a Marvel Legend? A highly articulated, detailed 6 inch scale action figure based on a charater that has appeared in Marvel Comics. Personally, I don't care if the character in question has ever had a solo book. I want and am willing to buy just about every character I've seen in the comics. As long as the figure is well done and looks good, I'm there. The more the better.

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A Marvel Legend? An iconic display figure that I can admire and look at and represents the character as I can remember him in the books I've read. And when I tire of looking at him weeks or months from now, I can pose him in a different position and look at for the next weeks or months and still not tire of him. A character that doesn't have a ridiculous, goofy looking mug that I would be afraid to show off in a display case.

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