Marvel Legends Gladiator & Deathbird X-Men Figures Up for Order!

Products You May Like

2025 may ultimately go down as the year that Hasbro more or less phased out Build-A-Figures, opting for deluxe figures, 2-packs and retro cards instead. But on the upside, Hasbro is filling in some big long-demanded holes in the collection. Case in point: the X-Men Marvel Legends Gladiator & Deathbird 2-pack is now up for order! We’ve had Gladiator twice before, but this version has some upgrades for fans to get excited about…

The Shi’ar Empire is having a bit of a resurgence these days, both in cartoons like X-Men 97 and in comics with the resurrection of Lilandra and the “Imperial” series by Jonathan Hickman.

And with the Shi’ar on the rise once again, the timing is perfect to unleash some highly requested Marvel Legends action figures. Following up Hasbro’s first-ever Lilandra Neramani last year, now we’ve got the inaugural Deathbird and an upgraded Gladiator coming our way as well in a Fan Channel/Amazon exclusive set!

Although Gladiator has been released twice before in 6” scale by Hasbro (in 2014 and 2017), this Kallark stands out by coming on a more modern body and with more accessories than before.

Gladiator is utilizing the excellent basic mold from the Hercules action figure, but now modified to be fully pin-less. This improves Gladiator’s aesthetic a lot, as the pins stood out quite a bit on the bright red plastic of the Apocalypse Series Gladiator.

I had two main complaints about the previous Gladiator action figure when I reviewed it in 2017: no head with pupils in Kallark’s eyes and no swappable non-fist hands. Hasbro has fulfilled both those requests here, as we get two heads and four hands for Gladiator.

The raging head with charged eyes looks killer, while the stern face has a certain stoic majesty to it. Love both. The open hands open up a whole new galaxy worth of posing possibilities as well, creating much more potential than solely having fists.

A character making their Marvel Legends toy debut would ordinarily be the headliner of a 2-pack, but the new Gladiator is such a great update that Deathbird somehow feels like the “lesser” figure in this set (despite being reasonably high on the list of fan-requested characters).

Hasbro has captured a suitably vicious, insane-looking smile for Deathbird’s portrait, which is great since that’s the only head she gets. She also doesn’t include any alternate hands, but it’s legit hard to imagine her without her claws poised to strike, so I think that’s A-OK.

The lack of wings with Deathbird is admittedly a bummer, but I think Hasbro was smart to go with a costume choice close to the X-Men 97/Animated Series design that will be familiar to casual fans.

The Marvel Legends Deathbird/Gladiator 2-pack is now available for order online, and is scheduled to arrive this winter. Overall, I think this is a very solid set Hasbro has put together and a rare two-pack where I’m really excited to get both figures in the pack.

What do you think of this pair, X-Men collectors? Are you itching to add either of these figures to your toy shelf?