Iron Man "Exclusive"?

Posted in Action Figure Chatter

Went to Wal-Mart today and picked up an Iron Man "Stealth Operations" (War Machine) figure. There was a sticker on the blister pack stating that it was a Wal-Mart Exclusive. I don't recall ever seeing any photos of this one in the pre-production line-up pics. Oddly enough, Wal-mart had plenty of these while there were none from the rest of the series. From what I can tell, this basically looks like a repaint of the Iron Man figure with additional removeable hardware. The articulation is decent, but the head, shoulder pads, and hardware pop off very easilly, also as has been stated before, the head joint is a massive ball which is O.K., except that it limits the range of motion. One nice feature is that the shoulder mounted guns rotate to the back, however they are unable to turret around. The overall sculpt is pretty good, but the paint job on these figures was pretty shoddy as I looked at at least a dozen of them before I found one that did not have a messed up face. There is a black wash over the silver parts that seems unevenly distributed and the Stealth-Black parts are (for the most part) just raw plastic. I would have also liked to have seen some articulation on the hands. Overall, I like the figure, but for me (as well as any other discriminating collector) a little work is needed to improve this one. As it is, I would give this figure a 3.75 rating, but with a few changes, it could be a 5!