Not every supervillain Stan Lee and Jack Kirby created went on to become a mass merchandising juggernaut and household name. Some just became classic characters who show up every now and again in minor comic book appearances and have merely mild fandoms. Such is the case with the subject of today’s Marvel Legends review: Psycho-Man was one of the better Toybiz 5” Fantastic Four figures back in the day—can the Hasbro Marvel Legends Psycho-Man Fantastic Four Retro 6” figure top it?

He may be a Lee & Kirby creation, but the Microverse’s dictatorial scientist, Psycho-Man, is not exactly a big deal [no, that was not a purposeful size joke—sorry.]. If he didn’t appear in a 90s Fantastic Four cartoon episode [God, the voice acting in that cartoon was bad] and get an action figure in Toybiz Fantastic 4 Series 4, I probably would have forgotten who he is entirely.

As far as Microverse villains go, Annihilus is definitely on another level of notoriety above poor Psycho-Man. But nonetheless, 25 years after Toybiz, Hasbro decided to unleash their own Psycho-Man Marvel Legends figure. Should you snatch one up…?

I try to keep my ugly face off-screen in my Marvel reporting, but I did video a short unboxing and review of ML Retro Psych-Man, which you can suffer through below if you so choose. Be advised: I was never especially good at these sorts of video reviews before my strokes, and I’m even more clumsy in them now that I’m mostly blind.

If anyone enjoys this sort of “content” by me and wants to see more in future reviews, do leave a comment and let me know.Anyway, Marvel Legends Psycho-Man comes in the awesome Toybiz homage Retro Fantastic Four packaging that genuinely does look like an upsized reincarnation of the Toybiz line’s. It was a real shame to rip this toy out of the cardback, because it just looked so damn good sealed.

Even the back of the packaging is a faithful callback, showing off the other characters in the wave. Bless Hasbro for these retro lines.

The Toybiz Psycho-Man was one of the best-looking figures in their FF lineup [though the bar was kinda low with many terrible figures in that series], but Hasbro has one-upped them here in virtually every way.

Whereas the Toybiz Psycho-Man was basically a 5POA statue [that admittedly looked quite nice], Hasbro has incorporated an almost complete super-articulation scheme here despite the character’s bulky “astronaut”-looking costume.

While it may look like Psycho-Man’s head should be limited to a swivel by the character design, Hasbro cleverly used a great ball-joint that allows his whole head and neck-piece to move silkily.

But that’s not all! There’s no unsightly ab crunch or pin joints either—the ball-jointed upper torso is amazingly smooth and the pin-less double-jointed knees and elbows also work lovely. There aren’t that many action poses I’d want to put a scientist like Psycho-Man into, but if I did, I’m confident this figure could achieve most of them.
Other integrated articulation includes ball hips, swivel-hinge shoulders, swivel biceps/thighs and swivel-hinge wrists.

Despite the tubing running down his legs and feet, even the hinged feet and ankle rockers work well (although the swivel thighs are rendered functionally useless).

The detailing is also notably superior to Toybiz’s. Whereas Toybiz used very basic white and teal colors 26 years ago, Hasbro went with a dark metallic green paint that looks suitably science fictional and a glossy white plastic that definitely stands out as being anything but “spandex”.

The emotionless portrait works swell for this character, and all of the sculpted tubes/wires go above and beyond and look spectacular.

Perhaps the biggest improvement to this figure over the vintage Toybiz release is the inclusion of Psycho-Man’s signature “weapon”, the emotion-manipulating “Control Box”. For whatever reason, Toybiz opted for a half-assed giant magenta “Emotion Detector Platform” base instead of this much smaller, simpler and more accurate book-sized device.

“Fear”, “Doubt” and “Hate” are all represented here and clearly printed on the Control Box. A truly essential pack-in for this character. Which brings me to my biggest [okay, only] frustration with this fantastic Four Legends Psycho-Man figure:the Control Box is the only accessory we get.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not greedy—but the choices Hasbro made for the hands really kind of necessitate alternate hands that we don’t get. Neither hand is ideal for use with the Control Box, as the left hand’s grip is so tight it’s exceedingly difficult to get the box into the hand at all—and the right hand is bafflingly a fist that will only allow Psycho-Man to fist threateningly toward his death-gripped Control Box.

I think these hand choices were ill-conceived—particularly the fist, as Psycho-Man shouldn’t exactly be throwing punches at the Fan 4 anyway. A pointing or gesturing right hand (or both!) would have complemented the Control Box and vastly increased my appreciation of this toy.

Overall: I feel like I’m doing a bit of a disservice to this figure by grading it an ‘A-‘, but the situation with the hands bugs me that dang much. Great paints and sculpting, along with smooth as butter super-articulation makes for an almost perfect, outstanding overall action figure. Some foresight with the hands would have been nice, but this is otherwise the definitive Psycho-Man action figure. Definitely worth a pickup if you’re a fan of this character, and he can thankfully be found on Amazon now for a couple bucks below MSRP shipped.

GRADE: A-