Toy Review: Marvel Legends Psylocke Is Full Of Potential… And Not Much Else

One of the eternal quests of toy collectors, particularly for superhero lines, is the desire to complete teams. For some that’s harder than others — such as the X-Men. That’s what makes one of Hasbro’s latest Marvel Legends so desirable, and unfortunately so disappointing.

Betsy Braddock is considered a mainstay of the X-Men now, but she started existence as a Marvel UK character. Her brother Brian Braddock was Captain Britain, and Betsy eventually became an adventurer herself, both as a spy and as Captain Britain herself. Her adventures led her to being captured by the extradimensional despot Mojo.

In 1985’s New Mutants Annual #2 and Uncanny X-Men Annual #10, Betsy aided the team in their latest battle against Mojo. She would go on to join the team shortly afterwards, adopting the name Psylocke, serving as a crucial part of the team in the mutant massacre, and in events that followed, and eventually being amongst the team as they faced the Adversary and were killed. They would be resurrected shortly afterwards and began operating covertly from the Australian Outback.

The latest Marvel Legends figure of Psylocke is based on this era, and not the more famous (and complicated) ninja form. Though she was a powerful telepath, she wore durable purple armor to compensate for her lack of physical power.

Now, the biggest high point of this figure is in that design. It perfectly captures Betsy’s armor, curly purple hair, and all the other elements of the costume. If I were to strictly base this on that design, the figure would be perfect. 

I like the accessories — a pair of hands and a power effect. There’s not much, but they’re solid accessories. With her hood though, she needs an un-hooded head, and a cowl piece to hang around her neck. Without those two things, the figure feels grossly incomplete. She simply needs to balance her combat form.

But what makes this figure fall short, as I was alluding to, was in its posing.

Now, Hasbro has a reputation for some of the worst capes in the toy industry. They’re often rigid and hard to work around at best, and outright distracting and difficult to work with at worst. This cape falls into the latter territory, and a huge part of that is that it’s not just a cape, but the folds of it are filled in, giving it so much mass that it’s impossible to stand the figure up (see the attached photo above). I was able to get it to stand straight up with two small foot stands just long enough to get a photo, but adding to the unbalanced cape, the peg holes in the figure’s feet were so shallow that I couldn’t place the figure on the stands for more than a few seconds.

Now, on a flight stand, I was able to get some cool action poses. There was simply no way to get the same poses on a flat stand though, and that makes it fall short of where it needs to be. A figure should not be unable to even stand up, much less impossible to pose.

Is it a failure? No, not entirely. But it is a disappointment, especially for any X-Men fan hoping to fill in the Outback team or even just complete their X-Men line-up.