When I started picking these guys up in a big way, Magneto was rotting on pegs and you could buy peoples' collections of this line on eBay for as little as $4-$5 on average per figure. Now Magneto is commanding a slight premium as the line slowly vanishes from Targets, GameStops, and grocery stores after its sudden demise. It's probably the best line to get for the axis of the xennial generation, bringing you the Bronze Age comic designs you may remember from the comics or even some of the cartoons you grew up with. Magneto almost always looks like Magneto, which is handy - this figure looks good.
He uses the same basic body as Captain America, Loki, Moon Knight, and other beefier fellows with a hole in the back and a sculpted rectangular buckle on his belt. Also Black Panther. And Cyclops. Not to mention Daredevil, US. Agent, Bullseye... I could go on. Using the same basic torso, arms, and legs, Hasbro saved some real money and delivered a lot of characters with minimal accessories. Magneto has a unique cape and a unique head - but otherwise, he's reusable parts.
While he doesn't exactly match his card art, he's a pretty good pastiche of how he look in the comics. The gloves lack some of the drawn detail, but he has some of the purple stripes sculpted to his collar. He's got the black lines up and down his chest. His eyes are blanked out, which I'm not crazy about, but it's a nice shortcut to saying "this guy is powerful and evil." It worked for M. Bison in Street Fighter II, after all, and he's pretty much the same colors. Magneto's fleshy face seems a little big for his helmet (and body), but that sort of thing wasn't totally out of the question with the toys of the 1970s, 1980s, and even 1990s. The cape gives him a little more visual bulk, resulting in a perfectly nice figure of a popular bad guy.
His only accessory is a cape which hangs off his neck and pegs into a hole in his back. It makes him a little back-heavy, but not enough to cause the problems I had with Spider-Woman. (And as I typed that sentence, he fell right back over.) You'll probably want to lean him forward a bit, or display him against a wall so he won't knock over other figures on your shelves. Like his peers, he has seven joints - neck, shoulders, wrists, and hips. I'm sure a lot of younger fans will balk at the lack of joints, but this is the way we did it in the 1980s most of the time. If the figure looked like the character you wanted, you called it a victory and went on your little plastic man adventures in the yard.
I kind of wish we really did get great Marvel toys in the 1980s with wild powers. Wouldn't a Magneto with magnets in his hands like the 2002 Star Wars line and the Raimi-era Spider-Man 2 figure have been cool? Alas, it was not to be - but we got this swell figure who can stand and sit in some old vehicles. I'd love some sort of cityscape diorama playset to display him and his pals, and I wish we could've had just a few more mutants from X-Men before this line died. It's not like Secret Wars was swimming in Homo superior, and unlike Mattel's 1984 figure this one has a cape. So there. It's good enough for me, and as I'm eyeballing the end of reviewing all of these "Kenner" figures this is one of the first and also best bad guys in the whole line. For $10 or less, you should go buy one. For the current going rate on the secondary market, well, that's up to you. But I could totally see paying a little extra just to get one since he's Magneto should the secondary market dictate it in the future. (Still, if I were you, I'd try to save up and buy a small collection with him in it instead of the per-figure average is better.) It won't be that way forever, but people are impatient and sell recently deceased lines as a lot/collection at some surprising losses sometimes. You should take advantage if you can.
16bit.com is best not viewed in Apple's Safari browser, we don't know why. All material on this site copyright their respective copyright holders. All materials appear hear for informative and entertainment purposes. 16bit.com is not to be held responsible for anything, ever. Photos taken by the 16bit.com staff. Site design, graphics, writing, and whatnot credited on the credits page. Be cool-- don't steal. We know where you live and we'll break your friggin' legs.
RSS 
