The price increase of the beloved Hasbro Marvel Legends 6″figures line to $19.99 per action figure ($24.99 if you’re crazy enough to shop at Toys R Us) left a pretty big void out there for moderately-priced 6″ action figures that parents could buy for their kids. To fill this gaping chasm, Hasbro has just revealed and solicited an all-new line of low-priced 6″ Marvel Avengers All-Stars figures. The price is low–and as you’d expect, so are the detail and articulation…

Let me preface this by saying that these Marvel,figures are not for us. No, these 6″ Avengers All-Stars action figures aren’t aimed at us collectors at all–they’re for kids. Kids with extraordinarily bad taste. At least, as far as the Avengers All-Stars 6″ figures go. The 4″ Avengers Assemble All-Stars Wave 2, though… That I kinda dig.

6″ Avengers All-Stars Wave 1 consists of four action figures, and they’re basically “the usual suspects”: Thor, Hulk, Iron Man (red and yellow), Captain America and Spider-Man. I’m never a fan of Spider-Man being an Avenger, but kids will buy him, so whatever. Hasbro must really have no faith in poor Thor, though, to omit him in favor of Spider-Man who’s only quasi-related to the Avengers.

Each of these figures is packing a mighty four points of articulation–swivel arms, swivel waist and swivel neck. The Hulk looks puny and has a terrible overall sculpt, but otherwise these 6″ Marvel action figures look perfectly acceptable as something you’d get for rock-bottom prices.

I think it’s rather crazy that the price of action figures has spiked so rapidly that these Avengers All-Stars figures will be selling for $6-$7 when a decade earlier you could buy vastly superior Marvel Legends figures for that amount, but the figures are at least mediocre (and better than the Marvel Titans figures). I think a lot of younger kids will be satisfied with these six inch figures.

Avengers Assemble All-Stars Wave 2, on the other hand, is slightly more than mediocre. This series includes two new figures: Avengers All-Stars Hawkeye and a wacky radioactive-looking neon yellow and blue Iron Man. The Hawkeye head sculpt somehow manages to actually look more like Hawkeye than the $50 Kotobukiya ArtFX+ Hawkeye statue does (forgive me, Koto), and I get a huge kick out of the garish neon Iron Man 6″ figure.

I have zero intentions of collecting either of these lines (as I imagine most of you do as well), but it’s within the realm of possibility I might impulse buy the 3 3/4″ Avengers All-Stars Wave 2 Iron Man with his psychedelic color scheme if I ran across it under the right circumstances. What about you, Marvel collectors? Is anyone else toying with the idea of picking up one (or more) of these Avengers All-Stars figures?