Where to begin?
How about at the beginning?
When I opened Galactic Comics I spent maybe an hour deciding on the name of what would become my comic shop. I had a few ideas and bounced them off friends when suddenly Galactus came to mind. The idea of possibly the largest Marvel villain looming over my competition seemed like the obvious answer! From there came the color scheme, the logo and my obsession with collecting Galactus items for the shop.
When Hasbro’s Haslab announced the towering 32-inch Galactus figure I knew I had to have it. A friend of the shop made a deal to ensure he would arrive to his rightful home and it was done, we would have the largest to date Marvel Legends figure and the largest Galactus ever made.
Fast-forward many long awaited months and finally an enormous brown box arrived! First impression, wow that’s a lot of action figure!
The box art work is fantastic and makes a fine center piece alone. The Galactus figure himself is awesome in size and appearance. I’ve moved him around the shop and used him for several photo shoots already and here’s what I’ve found.
The articulation is decent, shoulders are tight and move decently enough from waste to chest. I haven’t dared to apply more pressure to try to get more reach over his head, the figure may allow it, but I’m certainly not going to force it. The knees are a tight bend, but do move quite well and the same can be said for the ankle joints. I love the posable fingers although I wish they provided more grasping strength as I want him to be able to actually hold items rather than appear to have a grasp on them.
The light up feature is excellent and provides an illusion of Galactus cosmic power. The feature is easy to turn on with a simple button in the center of the chest and stays on for about two minutes allowing for plenty of time to enjoy without draining the batteries.
Now let’s talk about the upgrades. When Galactus was unlocked on Haslab (figures must be backed similar to Kickstarter) the bonus items began to unlock as well. The figure comes with three heralds which I will discuss in a bit, a total of three faces which are excellent (including a Zombie face which looked great for Halloween) and the one unlockable which made no sense to me and still doesn’t… a GIANT Doctor Doom head.
As a long time reader of Marvel Comics, I had no idea where this image came from and immediately had to start researching it. Apparently, in one short lived comic series by Chip Zdarsky (Marvel 2-In-One issues 4-6) the Doctor Doom of Earth-18466 became the devourer of worlds and gained both the cosmic powers and hunger of Galactus. Does the head sculpt look great? Yes. Is it easy to install on the figure? Yes. As a Galactus fan will I ever use it? No. I would have much rather have seen a forth herald figure or even a smaller scale Galactus figure included rather than the obscurely referenced head of Doom that I really have no use for.
Now let’s look at these Heralds. Obviously, we have a Silver Surfer figure. The figure is a repaint of the previously released Obsidian Surfer and is nothing particularly special. The figure comes with an energy projection which the surf board can be mounted to give the appearance that the Surfer is flying out of Galactus hand. Problem being that there are no instructions on how to mount this. With some research and a bit of practice I got him positioned. Unfortunately, the mount doesn’t actually connect at all and the loose joints of the Surfer lead to me picking him up off the floor in under a half hour. Sadly, the Surfer was returned to the box shortly after.
The figure of Frankie Raye is a nice addition with an excellent paint job and fire energy projection. I don’t believe this character has been released since the Toy Biz days (2002-06), so it is a great add to the collection. And finally there is Morg, another character that hasn’t been previously released and is a fine addition to the cosmic collection. I personally would have rather had Terrax, but I guess that’s a personal opinion.
All and all at $450 original retail price, I’m quite happy with this figure being the crown jewel of my Galactus collection. Looking at previous large scale Haslab releases, I think it will be interesting to see if the investment side of it pans out, but I can’t imagine even being open that this figure would ever go under it’s original sticker price.
Happy collecting!
Galactus HasLab Mock
