Review – Avengers Mini Muggs Captain America

A couple of years ago Hasbro was flooding the market with their Mighty Muggs platform toys (Amazon.com search*). There was a time when it felt like there was nothing that Hasbro wouldn’t release as a Mighty Muggs toy . . . but eventually the sales died and we got lots of clearance Muggs. It was unfortunate, because the actual toys were pretty good. But it seemed like there were just too many of them.

Well, with the new Avengers movie Hasbro is trying something a little different. Using the smaller style, Hasbro has released several Avengers Mini Muggs. And after linking to the toys earlier (post here) I thought it was a good idea to take a couple of moments to snap a few pics and post a quick review of the Captain America Mini Muggs toy that I picked up at Wal-Mart a few weeks ago. Will I buy more of these smaller Mighty Muggs toys? Yes. But not a lot more of them.

Everything that is Bad in One Photo

I figure we may as well get the bad out of the way first, and there was no better way to show all of the problems than in the above photo. Going point by point, my complaints with the Captain America Mini Muggs toy are:

• Sloppy Paint – Speckles and rough edges. Basically, the thing is just dirty. And I’m not even sure if it’s actually painted details or a tampo print, but either way the lines aren’t as crisp as they were on the larger Mighty Muggs toys.
  
• Accessories Not Removable – To be fair to Hasbro, the box makes it clear that the accessories are not removable. That doesn’t make me happy, but there’s no one to blame but myself if I expected to be able to remove the shield.
  
• Mold Lines – The Mighty Muggs were much cleaner when it came to seams than this little guy is. I don’t know if that’s because the larger toys had a single-piece head or if it’s because these are just weaker, but either way that line down the side of Captain America’s head is ugly.

Buy One!

Though after those complaints I’m actually going to say it’s a pretty cute toy and a good buy if you’re a Captain America fan. I know I really tore right into the toy first thing, but I wanted to get those negatives out of the way because anyone who can live with the issues that I pointed out will likely enjoy the toy because it seriously does make a cute addition to any Capttain America collection. The details are minimal, but they’re appropriate and give just enough depth to the toy to make it clearly Captain America.

Below you can see the larger Captain America Mighty Muggs toy next to the new Avengers Mini Muggs version, and to be fair it’s probably the fact I can place these two toys together that makes me quite happy with the newer release. But at just $6 for this new one that felt like a reasonably low price to pay to give my shelf of Captain America toys (it’s a small shelf) a new companion.

Closing Thoughts

The Mighty Muggs platform toys (Amazon.com search*) seemed to me to be a cute series of toys that were damaged by over-production. With this new round of Mini Muggs it looks like Hasbro is trying again, and I think that as long as they are restrained in the number of releases that these will do well.

This Captain America Mini Muggs toy isn’t amazing, but it looks good on my shelf and makes me happy. And that’s really the most that I should ever expect from any toy.

Philip Reed can’t explain why he was up at 4 am taking photos and writing a review. Maybe he is too dumb to know that sleep is important.