Toy Review: Marvel Legends Diamond Emma Frost Is An Incredibly Pretty Centerpiece

by Tony Thornley

Here’s one of the things about adult collector geared action figures — sometimes translating a design to plastic just won’t work. That’s exactly the problem faced with Astonishing X-Men’s Emma Frost, that could be fixed with Hasbro’s new Marvel Legends diamond Emma Frost.

Emma Frost originally debuted in 1979’s Uncanny X-Men #129, as the White Queen of the Hellfire Club. Emma was instantly seen as a master manipulator, and one of the X-Men’s greatest villains. But gradually that shifted.

In the 1990’s, she saw her students, the Hellions, murdered by time travelling villain Trevor Fitzroy. From that point forward, she transitioned from villain to tragic figure, to ally, to eventually an X-Man. She was the mentor and teacher to Generation X for the series entire run, until she joined the X-Men proper in Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely’s New X-Men #116 in 2001 which revealed a secondary mutation — the ability to transform into living diamond.

Emma would eventually become co-leader of the X-Men in 2004’s Astonishing X-Men, a role she would hold until the Inhumans Vs. X-Men crossover in 2017. Emma has become cemented as one of the most iconic X-Men, though one with a dark side and more of a grey mortality, doing what needed to be done no matter the cost.

This figure is based on Emma’s look from Astonishing X-Men, designed by the late John Cassaday, and basically used as Emma’s default costume since. It’s also mostly reusing the body mold from 2024’s version of this design, in flesh tone. Both head sculpts appear to be totally new though.

And I’ll say, in hand, this is an absolutely gorgeous figure. The clear plastic used for her diamond form looks great and matches the white of her costume. Both head sculpts are fantastic too. The paint application had some serious fine detail that could have been messed up, but they look great. Genuinely, these photos do not do it justice. It looks so good.

Where this figure falls short is in the posing. The over-the-shoulder cape was a huge problem with the previous figure with this design. Basically the figure’s arms were only posable from the elbow down. This would have been easy to resolve — just make the cape cloth (wired or not) rather than vinyl. But instead, they used essentially the same cape, resulting in the same issues.

It’s a great figure, appearance wise. It’s downright gorgeous. But if you want to pose it out of the packaging Emma any way outside of her arms sticking out of the cape a little, it will need to be customized. And that alone makes it fall short.