Toy Review: Marvel Legends ‘Avengers: Doomsday’ Thor Has Lots Of Potential And Not A Lot Of Execution

We’re about two months out from the release of Avengers: Doomsday, and that means the merchandise is starting to hit. As we gear up for the movie, we took a look at the first of Hasbro’s Marvel Legends we could get our hands on — Thor!

At this point, Chris Hemsworth’s Thor is the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s elder statesman, both on screen and behind the camera. The hero made his debut in his self titled movie in 2011. Since then, he’s appeared in 8 MCU films –his own movie series and the Avengers flicks. 

He’s also been the MCU character to have gone through the most change. His film series started with him as the crown prince of the Realm of Asgard, surrounded by friends and family. Now, he’s a foster father, navigating Midgard as a defender of the weak. Asgard is gone, his family is entirely dead (to his knowledge), and his friends are all either dead, survivors in a small community on Earth, or are newer mortal friends (though he’s already seen many of those friends die as well).

So Doomsday is finding Thor in an interesting spot.

I’m sort of dealing with mixed feelings off the bat as I take a look at the figure. The design, frankly, is extremely drab. There’s a decent pop of color in his cape, but the interior cape lining is black. Looking at the figure straight on will show a figure dressed entirely in black and grey, with only a few small highlights adding any color. It does capture Hemsworth’s likeness extremely well, but that’s probably the highlight of the design.

As far as accessories, there’s a mixed bag. It’s great to get an alternate head. I’m thrilled to get both Mjolnir and Stormbreaker with the figure as well. But I’m surprised to not get alternate hands (even a single closed fist would be a big improvement) or any lightning effects at all. It makes the figure feel incomplete, without a doubt, especially coming immediately after the excellent Maximum Thor figure. It would have been incredibly easy to get one of those lightning effects in this box.

The posing for this figure is mostly good, with one glaring flaw. The figure itself moved great. He’s a big guy, both in bulk and height (closer to 7 inches than 6), and for that size he posed fantastic. I largely was able to do what I wanted with him (but again, was missing the lightning effects). The big issue here though is the cape.

Thor’s cape is large, heavy and largely inflexible. That makes it much harder to pose in general, no matter the circumstance. I found myself taking way more time to get the pose just right because the weight of the figure was so off thanks to the bulk of the cape.

It’s time Hasbro — you need to move more towards soft good capes. They don’t even necessarily need to be wired, though that would be nice. It’s already the standard at McFarlane and Mattel, which says that they’re behind the times. With the prices rising, there’s no excuse for Hasbro to not “plus up” a figure slightly.

Overall though, I did love it. I’m glad to add him to my shelf, even with the extra time it’ll take to keep him from knocking over the other figures on it.

Avengers: Doomsday Thor is available now online and at all major retailers from Hasbro.