Toy Review: Marvel Legends World War II Wolverine Is A Good Figure Limited By Its Concept

For a comic universe that is the world outside your window, there sure are a lot of immortals. But that upside is that some of our favorites get some very cool designs from across history and that’s the case with the most recent new Wolverine Marvel Legends figure from Hasbro.

Logan is one of Marvel’s greatest heroes, without a doubt. One of the most interesting aspects of the character is his longevity, which means he’s been present for much of the history of the Marvel Universe. In World War II, he fought for the Allies alongside Captain America, Bucky and the Invaders, though often in more discrete roles. One of the most famous stories of Wolverine’s past is Uncanny X-Men #268, in which Logan and Cap team up to rescue a diplomat’s daughter … a young woman by the name of Natasha Romanova.

One of the most interesting things about this story is that, due to Chris Claremont’s intent for Wolverine’s origin, Logan never uses his claws. Later, it would be retconned that Logan’s had his claws all along, so there have been all sorts of continuity shenanigans to make that fit, ranging from wanting to stay incognito (a short wild man with bone knives in his knuckles is pretty hard to forget) to wanting to maintain a surprise advantage.

The latter has become one of the more widely accepted explanations, and resulted in the one of the big parts of this design, largely based on Wolverine’s design in the 2024 miniseries Hellhunters by Phillip Kennedy Johnson and Adam Gorham. You’ll see in a moment.

I love the concept of taking a long-lived hero, and placing a new figure based on him in a historical period he lived through. Though I’m not enough of a historian to know how accurate this figure is, that’s exactly the vibe we get from the design. This is Wolverine in the face (including a yelling and neutral face) and attitude, but the uniform looks like something pulled from Band of Brothers and the accessories are generally a WWII vibe.

Again, I’m not a historian, so I can’t vouch for the accuracy, but this figure nails it on vibes. Also, my favorite part is the improvised claws on the alternate hands, giving Logan his most distinct design touch without outing him as a mutant. 

This figure is much better on accessories than we’ve gotten in a long while. There’s three alternate hands, including the two clawed hands and a fist, the alternate head, a ka-bar style knife, a rifle and a satchel. The only thing I don’t love is that it would be great to swap hair between the heads, or making the helmet removable, so either headsculpt can wear the helmet.

While it wasn’t perfect, it was very fun to pose. It did have some limitations based on the design. The jacket and the belt did keep some running and jumping style poses from being attainable, and hindered any butterfly jointed shoulders or the ab crunch. 

Beyond that, though, this was a fun figure to pose. Its limitations led to some inventiveness. I was still able to hit good museum and action poses. The claws, yelling head and rifle led to some really dynamic poses that were just plain fun.

So it’s far from a perfect figure, and definitely not a definitive Wolverine. It is a very very good variant of the best there is at what he does.