Marvel Legends: Mysterio

 

 Illusionist/hypnotist/special effects wiz Mysterio is one of those figures that sent a shiver through the Coffin from first photo reveal to finally having one in-hand, and was highly sought after. Looked for everywhere, and found nowhere, this copy came to me thanks to eBay, and remains the single physical sighting of the figure that I have had. All of that to say that Mysterio here is highly desired and hard to come by, but man, what a cool figure.

Body-wise, Mysterio isn’t doing anything different from any other Legends figure in terms of joints and such, containing the usual set of movement points. Elbows, shoulders, knees, ankles, ab crunch, wrists. He head is ball-jointed as well, for whatever that adds, as in this instance, it does not add much. The head is encased in the large fishbowl helmet, which itself is slightly cloudy, so you could turn the head underneath but you won’t see if very much through the helmet.

The head is a marvelous translucent but very cloudy white skull with a snake wrapping its way between eye socket and mouth, and is honestly pretty unsettling for an action figure head. Beneath the helmet, the head makes you squint just enough to see it, in that classic horror movie trope, where you really have to focus on something in order to figure out what you’re actually seeing, only to find that it’s too late once realization has set in. That may sound a little overly dramatic, but it is the best way to describe the effect, and for me at least, it works really, really well. We had company a few weekends ago, and I was showing Mysterio off to a few people who we also really impressed by the way the head and helmet combo works, so I’d say that this is not just the enjoyment of a single simpleton concerning a toy. The helmet is molded onto the figures’ cape, and the entire part is removable, although without the helmet and cape, Mysterio is just a man in a jump suit with an exposed skull.

The cape and helmet are a single piece, and that is a little bit of an issue for the figure. There is a peg on the inside of the cape that plugs into the back of Mysterio, and the entire piece fits and sits rather well; but the cape is a soft plastic, so it’s a bit heavy, and will pull back and down on the figure, which means if the peg is not firmly and squarely inserted, the helmet will creep towards the back of the figure, which throws off the balance, which makes Mysterio lean backwards a little bit. Proper posing will solve this, and even if the figure is leaning backwards, the cape is so long that it doesn’t need too much lean to have the cape contact the surface the figure is standing on, which stops the leaning and supports the weight of the figure. So does leaning Mysterio forward a little via the ab crunch.

The figures’ suit is excellent, being a detailed green jumpsuit decked out in a pattern of squares, with gorgeous toxic waste green boots and gloves, the latter having the large rectangular forearms. The accessories are a pair of translucent green tentacles, which wrap around the legs as effects parts, and add so much to the total look of the figure. They help give that Bloodborne kind of effect, of tentacles from some unknown being reaching up from beneath the ground to wind their way around the figure, simultaneously answering Mysterio’s call and ensnaring him for having called to them. The only issue with these effects parts is that there are only two of them, and I think it’d be totally awesome to deck Mysterio, or other figures, out in them, having spectral tentacles hanging from every limb. They are such excellent effects pieces, so much better than those lame circles that signify magic that a lot of other figures come with. That’s probably a micro-rant for another day, however.

Mysterio is an awesome figure, absolutely an addition to a shelf that will draw attention and always look great. It is an example of an action figure that, among other figures that do a generally great job of capturing the persona they are meant to represent, stands out as being a near-perfect example of capturing the persona it is meant to represent.

I have never seen this figure in the wild. I had checked every toy aisle at every store every time we went for months, and never found anything. I’d scoured the figure pegs at our comic shop each time we were there for months, and never found anything. Usually reliable etailers never seemed to have orders for the figure available, and perhaps not even orders for the full case. Not that I would have bought the case for Mysterio, but generally, orders for cases indicate that some individual figures will shortly follow. Nothing. Still, months after its release, nothing. I walked the dealer area at C2E2 for two days looking for Mysterios, at that time content with just seeing one, knowing that the asking prices would likely be too much for my liking, just to confirm Mysterio was real. I think there’s a neat irony in that idea right there. But then I took to eBay, and actually found several Mysterios, nearly all of them too pricey for me. But, it only took one acceptably priced sample for the search to reach its end, as it did.

Of interest, there is apparently a chase variant of Mysterio that has a translucent green head beneath the helmet, and at least one person in the world has taken to make, probably via 3D printer, replacement green heads for the figure, if that was something you were after. I think about buying one from time to time, I suppose just to see what it would look like beneath the fishbowl, but as of now, have not followed through.