Marvel Ironman Mark 01 Armor (Movie version)

Trapped and forced to build advanced weapons for a vicious rebel group, Tony Stark builds this powerful armour suit in order to escape. Flamethrowers in the arms create a fiery corridor before him, chasing off his attackers, and lighting his way to freedom.


Robot Mode: I know, this isn't technically a robot mode, seeing as it's not a robot at all, but rather a man wearing armour, but I was too lazy to change the heading. Anyway, the Mark 01 Ironman armour looks exactly like what it's supposed to be: an improvised contraption cobbled together from whatever parts were lying around at the time, dirty, half-rusted, and in some strange, retro way just too cool for words. It looks fantastic. The amount of detailing they went into here is astonishing. There are nuts and bolts visible, the conveyer belts at the hips, lots of tubes and stuff on the back, and so on and so forth. You can tell a lot of attention went into the sculpting of this figure.

The figure's posability, while potentially good due to its joints, is somewhat limited by the way the arms and legs are sculpted. That's just common sense, though, seeing as a man wearing this kind of patchwork armour wouldn't exactly be very bendy, either. I think it was intentionally done this way and it's a great little detail.

As for weapons this early version of Ironman doesn't sport his characteristic palm-mounted repulsor rays, but instead uses flame throwers mounted on each forearm. The one on the right arm is significantly larger and features a 'flame blast' missile. The missile doesn't really lock in and looks more like a honey spoon than a flame blast, but whatever. It doesn't take anything away from this excellent figure.

I'm not that big a fan of the standard red-and-gold Ironman suit, but sign me up for this rusted contraption anytime. I love it.

Remarks: I don't usually review toys that aren't Transformers (or at least transforming robots of one kind or another), but this Ironman figure here just called out to me across the toy store and so I decided to include it here at my site. It's kind of a robot, more or less, and it just looks so incredibly cool.

To include some comic background: Weapon inventor Tony Stark is caught in an explosion and captured by some group of villains or other. In the original comic from the 60s it was the Vietcong, the Movie will probably feature a different Enemy-of-America-type. Sporting a potentially fatal chest wound due to exploding shrapnel, Tony is forced to build weapons for his captors, but instead builds himself a suit of armour which he uses to escape. This Mark 01 Ironman is that suit of armour and it looks fantastic, I must say. I don't know whether I'll buy any other figures from the Ironman Movie line, but this baby here just had to become part of my collection.

Rating: A