Review – X-Men Onslaught Wolverine Unleashed

“Feeling responsible for Professor X’s possession by the evil Onslaught entity, Wolverine seeks to save his mentor. Finding Onslaught unstoppable, Wolvie rescues the one person whose reality-warping powers might be able to defeat the villain — Franklin Richards.”
— from the card back

Welcome back, Toy Fans, for another installment in our — increasingly depressing — X-Men Toy Week here at battlegrip.com. This time around we’re looking at another Toy Biz action figure from 1997: the unloved, ugly, and most certainly unwanted X-Men Onslaught Wolverine Unleashed. And Toy Biz, just to make sure that we really disliked this action figure, decided to include a statue of the little Franklin Richards.

Let’s see what makes this suck.

Wolverine Unleashed Action Figure

One serious problem with action figures in 1997 was the fact that McFarlane Toys tricked everyone into thinking that sculpting and paint was more important than articulation and play value . . . and, with this figure, we can see Toy Biz embracing that idea. This particular Wolverine action figure — showing a bestial, enraged Wolverine that’s more Hulk-like than he is Wolverine-like, is sculpted in an “action” pose that seriously limits his poseability and causes major balance issues. So not only does the figure look stupid, it’s stuck in practically the same stupid pose from now until it falls into a raging inferno and returns to the plastic goo pile from which it was born.

Taller than a can of Cherry Diet Dr. Pepper (hey, I’m relaxing on the deck and don’t have a ruler handy), Wolverine Unleashed has shockingly little points of articulation for an action figure of this size. His legs and arms rotate up and down, his waist turns left to right, and his head twists a bit side-to-side. That’s it. If you were expecting more, you can forget it. I told you this toy sucked.

Another problem with Wolverine are the fuzzy bits hanging from his forearms. Someone over at Toy Biz — probably around late 1996 — looked at the available X-Men action figures and muttered something along the lines of “these toys need fuzz.” Well, fuzz we’ve got, and I don’t like it. I never read the Onslaught series, but the trade paperback entry at Amazon describes it as:

“It begins here! The saga that literally remade the Marvel Universe of the 1990s is collected in chronological order across four volumes! The psionic force of nature known only as Onslaught sprang forth from the fractured psyche of mutant mentor Charles Xavier and the genetic terrorist called Magneto. Powered by his progenitors’ rage, Onslaught laid siege to humanity – touching off a catalysmic conflict destined to deprive a world of its most revered icons!”

Eh. Okay. Maybe I would have been excited had I been reading any Marvel comics in 1996/1997, but I wasn’t, so I’m not. All I know is that this is a really stupid Wolverine, from the appearance to the sculpt to the poor articulation choices.

But, luckily for us, Toy Biz included an equally lame accessory.

Franklin Richards . . . or, why I hate kids in most stories.

Rather than dive into a long rant about Franklin Richards, and why he completely sucks and exists as the Marvel Mary Sue, I’m just gonna point you to his Wikipedia entry. I’m supposed to stay focused on the toy here, and not my dislike for the character, so . . .

Taking a look at the photos above, you can see that Franklin Richards is an inarticulate, inanimate statue and not an action figure. Standing about half the height of a can of Cherry Diet Dr. Pepper — mmmmm, tasty — Franklin has a stupid-looking face, a FF baseball cap on backwards (seriously?), and is in about an exciting pose as Wolverine is. (They’re both standing on the toes of their right feet. Couldn’t the sculptors think of a different pose? Maybe as a flattened corpse-child?)

Franklin’s an unnecessary addition to Wolverine (even if his bio goes on and on about how important he was to the Onslaught story, the last thing a kid needs with his Wolverine action figure is a stupid-looking kid in a FF ballcap) but it feels like the perfect accessory for such a bad toy.

Closing Thoughts

You know, this is fast turning into Crap Toy Week just as much as it is X-Men Toy Week. Wolverine Unleashed, and his Franklin Richards accessory, feel like a poorly planned comic tie-in that was created solely to appeal to collectors. I’m sure someone out there reading this absolutely loved the Onslaught storyline — and maybe I would if I ever read it — but I don’t see how any action figure fan could find this toy fun.

If you want an action figure from this line — take a look at the card back, above — you’re better off tracking down Onslaught or Apocalypse. Skip Wolverine Unleashed and Jean Grey (for that matter, Jean Grey in any form is an action figure worth skipping).

I promise to review a cool X-Men action figure before the week ends.

Philip Reed mentioned in his review of The Thing that he doesn’t like the Fantastic Four. Well, Franklin Richards is another good reason to dislike the FF. So there.