Review – X-Men Onslaught Onslaught

“Though Onslaught was unwittingly formed from the minds of Xavier and Magneto, he took on a life of his own and existed independently of his creators, his body and armor being composed of pure psionic energy. For a time, Onslaught was perhaps the mightiest being on Earth.”
— from X-Men: The Ultimate Guide

Onslaught, a terrible villain in the Marvel Universe that — for me — is more about looks than he is story, is sitting on the table staring at me. He’s big — standing almost 7-inches tall — and looks awesome in his red and purple color scheme. He’s not a great toy, but he’s a really nice desktop piece or display piece and I’m happy with him. Let me tell you why.

Packaging

What you see in the photos. It looks like Toy Biz was so excited by the “Xavier trapped in the body” gimmick that they used a window cut-out on the back of the card. I guess you could leave Onslaught on the card, but then you wouldn’t get the opportunity to play with him.

As you can see, I tore mine out of the package.

Naked Onslaught

Even though he comes already wearing his “Ultimate Power Armor,” I want to start with the streamlined, stripped down Onslaught figure. Don’t worry, we’ll get to his accessories, but it’s going to be a lot easier to judge the figure’s articulation and design without the armor.

Onslaught suffers from the limited articulation that was common in the mid-1990s, with a twisty head, simple hip articulation (that really isn’t useful since moving his legs into anything but the default position prevents him from standing), ball joints in the shoulders, and hands that spin all of the way around. His waist doesn’t even move. And as if that isn’t bad enough, we run into the old “the sculpt gets in the way of the articulation” problem since Onslaught’s shoulder armor has his right arm pretty much locked in place. Poor Onslaught.

Onslaught’s sculpting is fantastic — even if it does harm his articulation — with the design right in line with the comic version of the character. His huge, grasping hands and his shoulder armor give him a menacing look that’s sure to terrify the other X-Men toys in your collection; I know mine started shivering on the shelf as soon as Onslaught joined them.

The paint applications on Onslaught are pretty minimal, with the figure cast in red plastic and decorated with purple, black, and white paint. Unfortunately, the guy who painted mine got a little wild with the purple and splashed some into a few places where he shouldn’t have. Fortunately, there’s only one really ugly bit of extra purple paint — around the neck — and that’s hidden once Onslaught’s armor is in place. (I’m getting to the armor, I swear.)

When looked at from the back, Onslaught’s most important feature has to be the clear window through which you can see the trapped Charles Xavier. I don’t know if this is really what it looked like in the comics . . . and I don’t care. A dude trapped inside another dude and a window to peer through? I’m sold!

. . . with Ultimate Power Armor

Onslaught comes with three accessories — two gauntlet-like bits and a helmet-like component — that are used to “armor-up” the action figure to an even larger, even cooler version. The gauntlets snap on nicely and stay in place; even when I pick up the toy the gauntlets stay firmly in place and look great. The helmet, unfortunately, barely holds on and fall over even if I look at the toy wrong. And if that’s not bad enough, the helmet getting jarred loose knocks Onslaught off balance which sends the entire toy toppling over. Poor guy.

The paint on the accessories is just fine, with the face looking great in silver and black. There’s a little unruly silver paint that leapt out of its lines, but overall the paint job on the accessories is better than what’s on the actual figure.

What is this, glue?

As cool as Onslaught looks — and that probably has more to do with the artist who originally designed the character than it does anyone at Toy Biz but, to be fair, they did a good job translating the character to an action figure — there is one major problem with it. Glue. And lots of it.

Around various parts of the action figure you can see globs of glue where it oozed out during the manufacturing process. This isn’t at all attractive, but it’s not too noticable after you set Onslaught on the shelf and step back a few feet. If it wasn’t for the armor hiding some of the worst of these glue blobs I’d probably spend far too many words complaining about this issue. Luckily for you, the armor does an adequate job of concealing Onslaught’s unattractive glue spots.

Closing Thoughts

Despite some nasty paint, gobs of glue, and a limited range of motion, I’m happy with the toy. The character’s appearance, especially when the armor is added, combined with the heft and size, makes this a cool-looking action figure that looks nice in my collection. As a toy it’s not the greatest — what with the poor articulation and the helmet falling off — but I can see where a lot of kids would forgive the articulation for a chance to use such a cool-looking villain.

There’s another Onslaught action figure out there — Wikipedia can tell you (very little) about it and the character — but it sounds like this one’s closer to the character’s first appearance in the comics.

Poking around online I’m seeing this guy priced everywhere from $8 to $105. I could see someone spending $8 on him, but there’s no way in hell this is worth $105. If you want Onslaught, keep your eyes open for the deals and try not to spend over $12 or so. He’s worth about that much, and not really any more than that.

Philip Reed knows that it’s wrong to praise this figure after he was so harsh on the Wolverine Unleashed action figure (reviewed here), but that’s just too bad for Wolverine. If Wolverine had looked as cool as Onslaught then Philip would have been more forgiving of Wolverine’s limited articulation.