One of the advantages of living north of Boston is that it’s a short jaunt up to sales tax-free New Hampshire. This pays off for me pretty frequently (shocker: I buy a lot of stuff), and it had the potential to pay off once again today, as I made a quick trip up to a NH Toys R Us with this week’s 20% Off coupon. I had designs on picking up a Marvel Legends All-New X-Men Box Set for a reasonable price, and I had the opportunity to pick from three sets at the store. In the end, though, I decided to pass and save my $71.99. Here’s why…

Back when the All-New X-Men Marvel Legends set was announced as a Toys R Us exclusive a couple months ago, I was very resolute when I set my target price at $85 for the set. I fervently refused to pay more than that amount, and as a result I wasn’t entirely sure I’d ever have a chance to own the 6″ Marvel Legends Original X-Men figures at all. As fate would have it, I had that chance today–and opted not to buy the figures.

As reported on by virtually everyone who’s found and purchased (or not purchased) the Toys R Us exclusive Marvel Legends All-New X-Men sets, the paint deco quality-control on these figures is simply awful. While Iceman is a translucent figure and largely free of QC issues (though he is on the awful Klaw mold), the other four figures aren’t nearly as lucky.

From a distance the Marvel Legends Original X-Men figures look great, but the closer you get to them in-person, the worse they look. The torsos of the three main male figures (Beast, Cyclops and Angel) have all been cast in yellow plastic and painted over. As a result, there’s spots of yellow poking through the blue paint all over the torsos of most of the figures and it looks awful.

Even on figures where this isn’t as apparent as it could be, there tend to be other paint deco problems. Most of the Marvel Legends Beast figures I’ve seen have had sloppily-painted masks with uneven lines on them, which is quite jarring.

Most of the Marvel Legends Angel figures I’ve seen in the box sets have terribly-painted X’s on their belts that look like they were painted on by a toddler, and his eyes have been applied in a cross-eyed, inebriated manner. This poor, drunken-looking Angel figure has to be one of my least-favorite interpretations of the character ever.

One of the three sets at my Toys R Us looked almost good enough to purchase–right up until I discovered that the Jean Grey had faint blue splotches splattered across the front of her crotch (which unfortunately don’t show up well in my in-store photos of her). Now, I don’t know what precisely Jean was doing that she ended up with this “dirty crotch” syndrome, but it’d be way too distracting to have in my collection.

Thus, in the end, I left all of the Original X-Men Marvel Legends action figures sets sitting on the shelf at Toys R Us. At $89.99 plus tax, I wouldn’t even consider this set, personally. But even at the discounted price of about $14 per figure, I just couldn’t bring myself to purchase such sloppy poorly-produced action figures. Sorry, Hasbro.

I’m curious, Marvel collectors–how many of you out there have found the Hasbro Marvel Legends All-New X-Men set and are satisfied with the paint quality control on the set? Did any of you purchase the set despite the QC drawbacks, and are you happy with it anyway?