YMMV / Marvel Legends

• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Fin Fang Foom is probably more known for his Legends toy than he is as an actual character. He's seen as one of the best Build-A-Figures in history, and it's seen as the gold standard for how they should be done.
  • Doctor Doom gets great figures for some reason, and is especially popular as a result even among non-Fantastic Four fans.
  • Similarly, the Thing gets unique molds that are sizeable and have solid articulation and tends to be the best seller when the FF are released (and they're always released together), being hard to find while the others sit around.
  • The Bucky Cap mold, seen as when Hasbro really started trying with the line. Ironically, this eventually changed to The Scrappy since it became so overused.
  • The basic Wolverine mold, thanks to being short but muscular. To many, it surpasses even MAFEX's, and this reception is probably why Hasbro continue to use and iterate on it.
  • The Moonstone mold, for the more sexualised physique.
  • The Retro Spider-Man mold, for giving him more torso articulation.
  • The Shriek mold, which gave female characters double elbows which they sorely needed.
  • The Vulcan mold, thanks to its beefier build and butterfly joints, though the latter received some criticism for a design flaw that impeded some articulation.
  • The "Super Articulated" Black Widow mold, and the figure in general as well. While people doubt the "super articulated" aspect (she has the same articulation Spider-Man had for years), the mold is liked for how smooth it is as well as the amount of articulation. The figure itself is very popular thanks to her abundance of accessories, especially compared to figures released just before her, within the same subline and even after her.
• Friendly Fandoms:
  • With Jada Toys. Because Jada makes figures for Capcom video games, they can be used with Legends figures for Marvel vs. Capcom displays. Plus, Jada rose to prominence in the 6-inch figure world when Legends was undergoing a Dork Age, so their lower prices, higher accessory count and more unique sculpts were seen as what Legends should've been.
  • With MAFEX if someone also likes DC characters. Since the main DC line is 7-inch, MAFEX is the only option for current 6-inch figures with modern articulation, and they tend to scale well with Legends figures.
• Growing the Beard: Hasbro's run is considered to have come into its own with modern engineering with the arrival of the first Bucky Cap.
• Improved Second Attempt: While the Haslab Sentinel was well-received, something that wasn't was its knee joints. They're held together with screws and because the figure is so big, the knees weaken over time. This was directly addressed by the Legends team with the follow-up Haslab, Galactus, who has ratcheted knees which are much more durable.
• Memetic Loser: The Eternals wave. Tying into the divisive and not very lucrative film, the figures themselves have minimal articulation due to their designs, and are just seen as unappealing on toy shelves due to their untoyetic designs. Not helping is Salma Hayek herself making fun of the Ajak figure's likeness. The wave has since languished on shelves, receiving steeper and steeper discounts and being on permanent clearance. It's clear that many stores took losses on the figures, and it's become a bit of a game to track how low their prices will go.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • Jokes about the absence of Thunderbolts characters have been around for years. While it extends to all non-A-list teams, the Thunderbolts in particular suffer from getting one figure every few years, with no end in sight for when the team will be completed.
  • "It has a top, middle and bottom." ^note This was said in an interview when the Engine of Vengeance Haslab's price was criticised, seemingly to defend against criticism that an old Bratz car was less than a third of the price and was diecast. Needless to say, people took this and ran with it as an incredibly weak argument, and now use it as a joke defence.
• The Scrappy:
  • Toy Biz's female figures are often criticised, even by those with rose-tinted glasses, for their horrific faces. The standouts in particular are Rogue and Emma Frost.
  • In general, any time Hasbro tries cel-shading, the figure will be this. It's usually seen as bad and unwanted, with people going out of their way to try to remove it if there's no alternative figure for the character.
  • Bucky Cap eventually became this due to the mold being overused.
  • House of X Jean Grey, who can barely move. The very firm plastic for her skirt makes her legs basically useless, and her hair impedes her head. Basically only her arms are poseable.
  • The Hood, since he can't actually wear his hood, as it's too long and will float off his head.
  • The Retro Wave Sue Storm, thanks to her face. Eventually, people realised it was the paint specifically and not the mold that let the figure down. Ironically, Hasbro released a clear version to better represent her powers, and fans have joked that this is better since you can't see her face.
  • The Engine of Vengeance Haslab, seen as an overpriced project that had consumer-unfriendly ways of trying to get backers. These include an early bird special that was essential for the project to make sense (a depowered Robbie Reyes, despite the car coming with powered down parts), locking long-requested characters behind its tiers (including Madelyne Pryor, who isn't even slightly related to Ghost Rider), and just the fact that it was Robbie Reyes being used to celebrate Ghost Rider's anniversary when he was only about a decade old. It's still a popular punching bag to this day.
  • Speedball for coming with zero accessories, which is especially noticeable given how much empty space is in his box.
  • Madame Hydra for her terrible articulation and face.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • Movie/comic mixed lines. Fans generally really don't like it when comic and movie figures are in the same line, since it means the Build-A-Figure requires buying figures you probably don't want, unless you happen to be a fan of all the figures. The fact that sometimes the characters are completely unrelated doesn't help, such as when the Shang-Chi wave randomly had Iron Man and Civil Warrior, with a Mr. Hyde BAF of all things.
  • Double ball jointed necks. Not that they're inherently bad, since many collectors actually prefer them to the hinged neck joints Hasbro usually uses — it's Hasbro's execution that fans don't like, since they sit the ball so low in the neck that it barely functions.
• Surprisingly Improved Sequel: The Giant-Man Haslab to the Engine of Vengeance. It went out of its way to avoid all of the mistakes of the Engine of Vengeance, with a lower price, no exclusive figures and a much less aggressive marketing push.
• They Changed It, So It Sucks:
  • Under Toybiz, the Marvel Legends line generally eschewed movie figures, with the sole exceptions being Daredevil, Blade II and The Punisher, which each received a single figure. This immediately changed when Hasbro took over the line, with their first three waves including figures from X-Men: The Last Stand, Sam Raimi's Spider-Man Trilogy being the subject of its own wave, and Target stores getting an exclusive The Incredible Hulk figure. Following the line's return from hiatus, Hasbro began doing movie-themed Marvel Legends waves, beginning with Iron Man 3 in 2013 and continuing to this very day. While this move proved to be a highly successful one (since the popularity of the MCU helped renew interest in the line), a number of longtime collectors disliked it, as they preferred Toybiz's strategy of keeping the comic and movie figures separate.
  • Another major complaint was the perceived downturn in quality once the line transferred to Hasbro, with most of the early Hasbro figures having less articulation and paint application than their Toybiz predecessors. While Hasbro thankfully increased the articulation and quality when the line returned from hiatus in 2012, there are still many fans who feel things were better under Toybiz. This is exasperated by Hasbro's habit of reusing parts (and in some cases, entire bodies), which some critics have compared to kitbashing.
  • The decrease in the size of the Build-A-Figures is another frequent criticism. Toybiz instituted the Build-A-Figure concept with the idea that fans would be willing to buy an entire wave of toys so they could complete a larger figure that would normally be too expensive to release on its own. These included massive characters like the Sentinel and Giant-Man. Under Hasbro, the size of the Build-A-Figures gradually began to decrease, hitting a breaking point in 2013 when minuscule characters like Puck, Rocket Raccoon and Hit-Monkey were featured. While Hasbro has since returned to doing larger Build-A-Figures, they'll still occasionally release one that is essentially the same size as one of their single releases, like Mantis from the Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 wave, Okoye from the Black Panther wave, or sometimes an even smaller figure, like Cosmo the Space Dog from the Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 wave.
• Unexpected Character:
  • Madelyne Pryor as part of the Engine of Vengeance Haslab. She has nothing to do with Ghost Rider aside from them both having demonic motifs, so her inclusion was seen as a transparent attempt to entice X-Men fans to back a project they would otherwise not care about.
  • Herald of Thunder Thor, a very recent design when the figure was released. The only real tie-in he has to anything is being a Herald, which makes him fit with the then recently released Haslab Galactus.
  • The Eye, a complete Z-list villain.

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