Micromatsing: Toyworks: Apples and Oranges: a Review of Marvel U's Extremis Iron Man figure

Now i'm sure some of you are familiar with the Marvel Universe toyline by Hasbro, which deals with 3.75 inch tall figures of your favorite Marvel characters. you may also know Hasbro created template bodies for multiple characters for ease of production, like making Daredevil and later re-using his body for say... Black Panther or Union Jack (if i made an error on these figs feel free to correct me). of course as the line grows longer there's more new stuff to come out with unique molds. one such figure is Extremis Armor Iron Man from wave two of the "Hammerfiles" series. and i'm here with comparisons between the first modern iron man figure from the very first wave and the Extremis version.

let's start with comparisons, first up the basic look of both figures, let's have the modern armor figure go first:

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now compare this with the Extremis version:

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already the differences are huge between these two figures. the Modern armor version looks rather squarish and the proportions seem a bit strange, it has that blockier more segmented feel, contrast that with the Extremis version whose likes are smoother and favor curves, as well as having a well proportioned sculpt... though the thighs are weirdly thick.

now then let's compare their ranges of motion by putting them in the iconic Ground Punch pose:

first, the Modern Armor again:

then Extremis:

in my opinion while both figures can smoothly accomplish the pose to some degree, the Extremis version feels more natural, albeit incomplete in some respects. this is particularly due to the articulation being designed in a way that it is incorporated into the design without taking too much away from the figure in terms of look. and boy does it ever look handsome:

this mold is so full of detail and the sculpt is the closest to ever get to the original Extremis Designs of Adi Granov. if not that it's pretty close to the image of the armor as drawn by Carlo Pagulayan in Iron Manual. now i've said before the articulation of this is smoothly integrated into the mold, well this is the first ever iron man from hasbro with the ability to fully look up:

i tell you what, this makes flight poses a hell of a lot more convincing in my book. aside from the shoulder pads being assembled in reverse in all of the toys (i like them the way they look in the comics) this thing also sports the best color palette and application of any Hasbro iron man toy to date! (YES you read that right--

a GOOD PAINT JOB. FROM HASBRO. ON IRON MAN. i know kinda hard to take in, let it sink into your brain a bit.). there are still some errors here and there, though it doesn't take away too much from the figure. they successfully captured the "real world-y" gloss colors of the Granov design and put it into three dimensions. what else can i say, this thing is beautiful!--from a design translation point of view.

as with all iron men he comes with a wrist-mounted repulsor blast:

and like the newer hammerfiles figures, a stand with his name and number:

the overall rating i'd give this figure, even with my own bias towards Iron Man is a solid 9 out of 10. what i don't like about it is that it's so well done i'm afraid of posing it too hard and scuffing the paint, which is very hard to match when you try to repair minor flaws. you will be left the only option of repainting the entire thing then. another point is that this figure is part of a wave that never reached the philippine stores because MU's are hardly bought off the shelves these days. in fact i had to get mine from singapore via another collector who was kind enough to accommodate me and many others.