Review – X-Men Light Up Weapon Juggernaut

“Sustained by his mystical energies, Juggernaut does not need to eat, drink, or even breathe. Immense in size, he stands 6ft 8in tall and weighs nearly 900lbs!”
— from X-Men: The Ultimate Guide

Time for another Toy Biz X-Men from the mid-1990s, this time another gimmick-based figure that relies on his accessory — rather than his sculpting or articulation — to make a fun toy. Juggernaut’s always been an okay character — at least he has a pretty cool look — but we can depend on 1990s Toy Biz toy designers to take what should have been a fun action figure and turn our dreams into an ugly mess.

I really do love toys, I swear. I just keep picking up the bad ones.

Packaging

Hey, Toy Biz actually went to the trouble of giving ole’ Juggernaut here a custom card, with a large illustration of the character covering most of the card front. And it doesn’t even look bad . . . in fact, it looks pretty good. Now if only Toy Biz had gone to the trouble of coloring the action figure the same color as the packaging artwork I would have one less thing to complain about. They must have known I liked to complain, though, because they ignored their own packaging artwork when selecting colors for the toy. But we’ll get to that soon enough.

The card back shows us how to use Juggernaut’s weapon, gives us a little info on the character, and shows us X-Men action figures from several different toy lines.

Wait a minute. The photo of this Juggernaut toy on the card back is in the same colors as the artwork. What happened?

Juggernaut and His Mold Lines

At almost 6-inches tall, Juggernaut’s a nice, beefy size that towers over many 5-inch scale action figures. He’s a thick, broad piece of plastic with a removable helmet (see picture, below) and a giant-ass hammer accessory. Unfortunately, Juggernaut has three problems that prevent him from being a cool toy.

The first, and largest, problem has to be the mold lines that decorate Juggernaut’s arms. Now I understand that the casting process requires some lines, but on most action figures — even back in the 1990s — the toy company does some work to minimize the effect that mold lines have on the final toy. On Juggernaut here it’s almost as if they worked to emphasize the mold lines; take a look at Juggernaut’s left arm in the photo below for an example of what I’m talking about. That’s just a ridiculous line.

Juggernaut’s second problem is his articulation. His arms are blocks of plastic that pivot 360-degrees at the shoulder, his legs are your standard swing up and swing down at the hips plus hinges at the knees, and the head — under the helmet — twists from side to side. I guess he’s okay for 1996, but would it have killed them to at least hinge his elbows?

Juggernaut’s third and final problem (I’m not even counting his hammer because it’s such an obvious gimmick that it deserves its own special section, below) is, as I’ve already mentioned, the fact that he’s colored weird. Gold just isn’t right. It’s not that they did a bad job with the paint — it’s pretty much clean work — but that they chose the wrong color for his armor and helmet.

Light Up Weapon!

What is it about toy companies and lights? Is it because adding a light feature is pretty cheap or do they just expect us to get all excited over random, not-at-all-related-to-the-character lights? Juggernaut’s light effect is his hammer, which lights up a bright red whenever he’s holding the weapon and you press the button on his back. If the light had anything at all to do with the character — a Havoc, for example, with lightup hands would be just fine — I might get excited. As it is, this is just another lame gimmick that — while yes, it does work — doesn’t do anything for me.

Closing Thoughts

Juggernaut’s the right size, and with a removable helmet, but there are so many things wrong with him that he’s not a very good toy. I recommend skipping this action figure . . . unless, of course, you’ve got a thing for lights.

Philip Reed should add a Juggernaut figure to his collection to replace this poorly-designed, ugly, gimmicky imitation of a Juggernaut figure.