Products You May Like
Iceman is an original member of the X-Men, X-Factor and the Champions, but I’ve always felt a little let down by both his comic book character development and also his action figures. But now, Diamond Select Toys has released an all-new Marvel Select Iceman figure with lots of bells and whistles. Is this an essential toy of Bobby Drake, or does Hasbro still boast the best Iceman action figure in the land?
Diamond Select Toys (DST) has been giving X-Men fans a lot of love in the Marvel Select series over the last half decade, including Select Beast, Rogue, Psylocke and Apocalypse—and now one of the founding members is joining the lineup for the first time!
Iceman has had numerous toys from Toybiz and Hasbro since his debut figure in Mattel’s 80s Secret Wars line, but more often than not I feel like they’ve missed the mark. Will DST’s 7” figure buck that trend?
Marvel Select Iceman comes in the traditional MS packaging that DST has been using for close to two decades now. The large bubble shows off the 7” figure and its multitude of accessories well, clearly illustrating why this toy is a fair deal at its $29.99 MSRP.
The cardback gives a bio for Marvel fans who somehow don’t know who Iceman is, as well as crediting the artists who worked on the figure. I do miss the days of comic book artwork on the spines of the packaging, though. The big photo of the figure close-up just doesn’t have the same flair.
The first question I know a lot of fans will ask is if this Iceman will look good displayed with 6” Marvel Legends Hasbro figures. And as is usually the case with non-oversized Select characters, the answer is “probably not”.
As a 7” figure, Iceman towers over 6” Legends. You can put him a bit further back to fudge it, but naturally I don’t think it works.
The Iceman action figure itself is made of a mixture of clear and translucent tinted blue plastic, with white frost deco applied on some of the clear areas. There have been many previous translucent Iceman figures from various companies over the years, but the combination of blue and fully clear parts used here looks really, really bizarre to me. I think it ideally really needed to be one or the other if DST was going to use see-through materials here.
The clear plastic let’s you see the inner workings of the toy, including the very obvious elbow and shoulder joints, and it’s simply not a good look. Transparent parts look incredible on an iceman statue, but on a toy they pose real challenges that I don’t think this Iceman Select overcomes.
Where this figure does excel, though, is the accessories loadout. We get one huge accessory in the much-hyped Ice Slide, as well as 5 total interchangeable hands, 2 heads, 2 belts and 2 support stands for the ice sled effects. That’s an exceedingly generous spread of extras that clearly sets this figure apart value-wise from a $25 Marvel Legends.
The belts have a snap in the middle and fit remarkably well. I’m not likely to ever display this figure with the 80s-feeling oversized buckle belt after taking these review photos, but Champions and original X-Factor fans may prefer it. It’s going to be classic X-Men belt for me from now on.
Conversely, I think I like the modern “hairy” head more than the classic “bald” one. It looks more fun and fitting for Bobby Drake’s jovial personality, in my opinion (though the bald head look makes me nostalgic for Toybiz’s first Iceman).
The ice slide is really neat, and I can foresee many Hasbro Marvel Legends collectors buying this Iceman just to scavenge the slide. It has two pegs to insert into Iceman’s feet to attach him, as well as holes for two support poles to assist in holding up the heavy ice blasting effects hands.
The support poles are the kind often seen with SH Figuarts and Figma figures, but they are extremely fiddly and I don’t like them at all here. They were constantly coming apart at some place or another while I was taking review photos, and even when they are set up I feel like they look distracting and bad.
The ice blast hands themselves are lots of fun, and though they’re heavy, I actually prefer displaying them without the poles. I’d love to get effects like these in the Marvel Legends scale.
There’s also an alternate left hand that looks like an arc of ice daggers Bobby is throwing. I don’t know if I’ll use this hand much on display, but it is a novel option.
The concept of Iceman on his ice sled is awesome, but in execution it doesn’t work as well as I hoped because of the figure’s somewhat antiquated articulation scheme.
The Iceman Marvel Select figure features a ball-jointed head, ball-hinge shoulders, a ball-jointed upper torso, swivel waist, swivel biceps and thighs, ball-hinge knees and elbows, swivel-hinge wrists and hinged feet with rockers.
Maybe I’m spoiled rotten by Hasbro, but the lack of double-hinged elbows and knees, a hinged neck, swivel calves and butterfly swivel shoulders are sorely felt here. Iceman just feels so “stiff”, and the forearms and lower legs not being able to even bend 90 degrees seems archaic in this day and age. There are still fun poses you can achieve, but they’re much more limited than I’m accustomed to.
Overall: I think Diamond Select Toys really tried hard to incorporate lots of cool bells and whistles with this Iceman Select figure, but I feel like the whole thing just doesn’t come together all that well. The support stands for the ice slide are a cluster, the articulation is a step back for DST and the mixed translucent plastic with visible innards makes for a figure that many will find ugly. I really enjoy the interchangeable heads, belts and hands—not to mention the super cool ice sled (no pun intended), but as a whole I like this release a lot less than some other recent Marvel Select figures such as Super Skrull.