DE 
EN 
& SILVER SURFER
Allegiance: None
Series: Marvel Universe
Category: 19'' Masterworks Figure
Year: 2010
Figure: First thing you notice? This figure is BIG! Very big! At nearly half a meter (or 19 inches for those of you still stuck with antique measurements) he towers over pretty much every other toy I own (though Fortress Maximus can still call him Shorty). It’s also quite heavy, thanks to the electronics inside. Thankfully he’s got big feet, so toppling over is not a problem.
Galactus appears as a gigantic man in funky-looking space armor. Now a giant with a big helmet with antenna on them and a metal skirt-thing, not to mention those ribbed moon boots he wears, should look ridiculous. He doesn’t, though. Jack Kirby, the artist who designed Galactus’ original look, knew what he was doing. Little side note: In his original appearance Galactus wore the metal skirt thing and the boots, but no pants (whether he wore underwear is debatable). And you know what? He was still scary as hell. If you’ve got the power to eat entire planets, you can wear whatever you want to.
Galactus is reasonably posable for a figure wearing this kind of bulky armor. He’s got the full assortment of joints, but his legs are hampered by the skirt thing. Then again, who needs dynamic lower body poses when you’re practically a god? The arms can move pretty freely, though. No finger movement, but the hands are nicely sculpted for the standard Unleash-Mighty-Energy-Blasts-to-Smite-your-Enemies action. So no complaints here.
Galactus utters a number of phrases when the button on his chest is pressed, including “To me, my herald”, “I’m the devourer of worlds” and “Behold the world eating machine”. Now I’ve got nothing against these phrases (though I don’t think Galactus ever called his energy converter a world eating machine in the comics), but the voice speaking them sounds like the one used for the Bulkhead toy from Transformers Animated, which really doesn’t fit the image of Galactus as an aloof force of nature. Pressing the button also makes his eyes and various lights on his helmet light up.
So all in all a terrific figure representing a classic comic book character. You’ll need to like the look, of course, but if you’re in any way a fan of Galactus, this figure is for you.
Accessories: Galactus is accompanied by his first and best-known herald, the Silver Surfer, complete with his silver surfboard. There isn’t really much to the Surfer as a figure, a bald humanoid painted silver all over. The figure is pretty posable and fits easily onto the surfboard. Its main purpose is, of course, to serve as scale reference for the larger Galactus figure. The Surfer is human-sized. Galactus is most definitely not.
Remarks: Galactus was first introduced more than forty years ago in the pages of the Fantastic Four comic book by comic legends Stan “the Man” Lee (writer) and Jack “the King” Kirby (artist). Galactus is a cosmic entity of incalculable power, cursed with an eternal hunger for life energy, which he gets by draining entire worlds. Neither good nor evil, Galactus is a force of nature far beyond ethical reasoning and to this day remains one of the preeminent forces in the Marvel Universe. The only time he has actually been physically defeated by anything less than other, more powerful (and usually more numerous) cosmic entities was when he was nearly completely starved of energy and even then it took the combined might of Marvel’s entire A-list of heroes (Avengers, Fantastic Four, Dr. Strange, etc.) to take him down.
Galactus originally started out as a man called Galen, who lived in the universe that preceded ours. When that universe collapsed (eventually giving birth to ours) Galen survived, but was changed by the cataclysmic energies and became Galactus. Some stories suggest that he is an agent of cosmic balance, the counterforce to the immensely powerful Celestials who gestate in living worlds. Others suggest he is the living embodiment of the principle of survival-of-the-fittest, testing worlds and weaning out the weak. Galactus has also turned a number of individuals into his heralds, first and best-known among them the Silver Surfer.
Another little side note: The world-devouring Transformer Unicron was influenced quite heavily by Galactus. Both eat planets, both transform other beings into their heralds, both have origin stories that have them precede the creation of the universe. Some might even say that Unicron’s horns are the spitting image of Galactus’ antenna (though the devil was probably more of an inspiration here than Galactus).
Despite being a long-time comic reader, I don’t usually collect toys of comic book superheroes and -villains. When I saw Galactus here on preorder, though, I knew I had to have him. He’s the original eater of worlds, the original cosmic entity, the original god-level threat to the world (in fact, in the Marvel comics the heroes actually call big-time world-ending threats “Galactus-Level Threats”). There’s really nothing more to it than that.
Rating: A
Galactus appears as a gigantic man in funky-looking space armor. Now a giant with a big helmet with antenna on them and a metal skirt-thing, not to mention those ribbed moon boots he wears, should look ridiculous. He doesn’t, though. Jack Kirby, the artist who designed Galactus’ original look, knew what he was doing. Little side note: In his original appearance Galactus wore the metal skirt thing and the boots, but no pants (whether he wore underwear is debatable). And you know what? He was still scary as hell. If you’ve got the power to eat entire planets, you can wear whatever you want to.
Galactus is reasonably posable for a figure wearing this kind of bulky armor. He’s got the full assortment of joints, but his legs are hampered by the skirt thing. Then again, who needs dynamic lower body poses when you’re practically a god? The arms can move pretty freely, though. No finger movement, but the hands are nicely sculpted for the standard Unleash-Mighty-Energy-Blasts-to-Smite-your-Enemies action. So no complaints here.
Galactus utters a number of phrases when the button on his chest is pressed, including “To me, my herald”, “I’m the devourer of worlds” and “Behold the world eating machine”. Now I’ve got nothing against these phrases (though I don’t think Galactus ever called his energy converter a world eating machine in the comics), but the voice speaking them sounds like the one used for the Bulkhead toy from Transformers Animated, which really doesn’t fit the image of Galactus as an aloof force of nature. Pressing the button also makes his eyes and various lights on his helmet light up.
So all in all a terrific figure representing a classic comic book character. You’ll need to like the look, of course, but if you’re in any way a fan of Galactus, this figure is for you.
Accessories: Galactus is accompanied by his first and best-known herald, the Silver Surfer, complete with his silver surfboard. There isn’t really much to the Surfer as a figure, a bald humanoid painted silver all over. The figure is pretty posable and fits easily onto the surfboard. Its main purpose is, of course, to serve as scale reference for the larger Galactus figure. The Surfer is human-sized. Galactus is most definitely not.
Remarks: Galactus was first introduced more than forty years ago in the pages of the Fantastic Four comic book by comic legends Stan “the Man” Lee (writer) and Jack “the King” Kirby (artist). Galactus is a cosmic entity of incalculable power, cursed with an eternal hunger for life energy, which he gets by draining entire worlds. Neither good nor evil, Galactus is a force of nature far beyond ethical reasoning and to this day remains one of the preeminent forces in the Marvel Universe. The only time he has actually been physically defeated by anything less than other, more powerful (and usually more numerous) cosmic entities was when he was nearly completely starved of energy and even then it took the combined might of Marvel’s entire A-list of heroes (Avengers, Fantastic Four, Dr. Strange, etc.) to take him down.
Galactus originally started out as a man called Galen, who lived in the universe that preceded ours. When that universe collapsed (eventually giving birth to ours) Galen survived, but was changed by the cataclysmic energies and became Galactus. Some stories suggest that he is an agent of cosmic balance, the counterforce to the immensely powerful Celestials who gestate in living worlds. Others suggest he is the living embodiment of the principle of survival-of-the-fittest, testing worlds and weaning out the weak. Galactus has also turned a number of individuals into his heralds, first and best-known among them the Silver Surfer.
Another little side note: The world-devouring Transformer Unicron was influenced quite heavily by Galactus. Both eat planets, both transform other beings into their heralds, both have origin stories that have them precede the creation of the universe. Some might even say that Unicron’s horns are the spitting image of Galactus’ antenna (though the devil was probably more of an inspiration here than Galactus).
Despite being a long-time comic reader, I don’t usually collect toys of comic book superheroes and -villains. When I saw Galactus here on preorder, though, I knew I had to have him. He’s the original eater of worlds, the original cosmic entity, the original god-level threat to the world (in fact, in the Marvel comics the heroes actually call big-time world-ending threats “Galactus-Level Threats”). There’s really nothing more to it than that.
Rating: A
Picture Gallery:
