Pros : Body is well designed, well articulated and painted in muted tones
Cons : Head sculpt looks wrong. Shield is not screen accurate and Cap should have two
Captain America is the fourth of the MCU releases in the first Avengers wave of 2018, coming along with Iron-Spider, Proxima Midnight and Iron-Man. The wave was completed by comic book figures of Taskmaster, Songbird and King Cobra. The figures (aside from Iron-Man) included parts to build an MCU Thanos figure.
The packaging design was a bold purple, with gold Avenger Infinity War logo and card insert that enhanced the figure on the shelf. Cap comes set into the inner tray with his new Wakandan shield to one side of his head, and two alternative hands to the other side. The Thanos head sits down near his knee.
Marvel Legends have been using face print technology to fantastic effect for a year now, but this Chris Evans likeness is pretty poor when you compare it to other recent figures like Thor, Hela or the Guardians figures from last year.
The big issue for me is that the hair looks to be a separate piece and it doesn't sit quite right on the head and is not dark enough. It is also not the hair we saw in Infinity War which is longer and swept back. The do is closer to his Winter Soldier look, and I wonder if the head and hair is being used or tweaked for the MCU 10 year Crossbones set.
The beard suffers a similar problem and the whole face looks a touch too thin. From the side it starts to look more like Chris Evans, but sadly the search goes on for a good Captain America MCU head sculpt.
The costume is the same one we saw in Civil War, but the body of the figure is not a re-use of that Legends figure and appears to be brand new throughout. Again, I suspect there will be a lot of re-use in that Crossbones set. There are specific infinity war details in the sculpt, with the central star sculpted to look like it has been removed.
The sleeves are also rolled up, but sadly Hasbro have only sculpted one hand with a glove - Cap wore gloves on both hands in the movie. The outfit is well painted with lots of subtle shade changes across the blue. The red ad white are muted and the boots a single brown tone. There is no weathering or washes which would have gone a long way to matching what we see on screen.
It is good to see this new Captain is a comparable height to the more recent figures, sitting 6.5" in height - earlier figures like the Winter Soldier versions had wildly variant heights for the same character.
Cap's accessory is his Wakandan shield. The shield is cast in a softer plastic, but the points are crisp and the lines are straight and not deformed. It is painted in two tone silver with a darker colouring on the inserts. It has a moulded handle round the back which with a bit of work then slots into Cap's ungloved right hand.
While the shield is done well, I suspect it is based on an early concept as it is not what we see on screen and Cap ended up with two smaller ones for some of the Wakandan battle scenes.
Articulation on Cap is brilliant and weighs in at an impressive 21 points of articulation. The main bulk of the body has a pivot head on a ball joint followed by the T-joint chest joint and a rotating waist. The arms have ball jointed shoulders, bicep swivel, double jointed elbows and pivot & swivel wrists.
For a different look to the figure, although it won't be overly screen accurate, the hands can be swapped out to a pair of fists. Here, you can use the articulation in those arms into the "I can do this all day pose".
Cap's legs have ball jointed hips with a thigh swivel under neath. There is then a double jointed knee and under this joint a rotating lower leg where the boot meets the pants. We finish with ankle rockers.
This leg articulation gives Cap the ability to kneel, crouch or take up action stances - he is however difficult to keep standing as the ankle rockers don't seem to line up to allow the feet to be flat to the floor. I had to use a stand to keep Cap standing through our pictures and beyond onto my MCU display.
Captain America, Infinity War, feels like a release that was conceived a touch too soon. The shield isn't all that accurate - he should have the two smaller ones. And of course he should be wearing gloves on both hands. The head sculpt isn't the best, but is a passing likeness to Evans and is passable at certain angles.
Where the figure does have merit is its articulation and costume design and paint. It is a wash away from perfection, and if they re-use this articulation and colouration on the Crossbones 2-pack then we may be in for the best Captain America MCU Legends to date.
As it stands this Cap will fill in a gap in your Infinity War display, but its a 3 out of 5 for me due to that head sculpt and obvious discrepancies to what eventually made it on screen.
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