The day that Guardians of the Galaxy fans have been waiting for for over two and a half year has arrived at last: the second-ever set of Guardians of the Galaxy Marvel Legends figures has now arrived! I received my GOTG Marvel Legends case I ordered from EE in the mail today, and while I had planning to start my reviews with one of the most hyped figures such as Angela or Yondu, I’m surprising even myself by kicking off with a review of a figure that exceeded my expectations: the Marvel Legends Titus Build-A-Figure!

The Right:

Disclaimer: Ordinarily, I absolutely loathe taking indoor Light Box photos for my reviews, as you can see photos of that sort from hundreds of other reviewers out there–and frankly, I just don’t have fun taking photos of that sort.

But ordinarily we also don’t have literally two feet of snow on the ground that I’m not willing to traipse through for natural setting photography, so please excuse the generic nature of most of the photos in this review.

Now then, on to the figure…

Few Marvel Legends figures being revealed over the course of the last half-decade have elicited the overall reaction of “WTF” that poor Titus got when he was revealed at SDCC 2016, and as such, there hasn’t been a whole lot of hype for the relatively unknown modern character.

But while I’ll admit that I absolutely was not excited about the prospect of buying six other figures to assemble the Marvel Legends Titus Build-A-Figure, that certainly doesn’t make him a bad one. In fact, this Titus Marvel Legends figure is actually pretty great!

For those who don’t know him, Titus is as close to an “arch-enemy” as the modern Nova, Sam Alexander, has. He’s only appeared in a handful of comics (and cartoons), but thankfully Titus appeared in this month’s issue of Nova to make him a little more recognizable.

As you might be able to tell at a glance, the white cyborg Tony the Tiger wannabe is largely composed of reused pieces from last year’s Space Venom Build-A-Figure, which is very obvious when you look at his legs, feet and arms.

But while the molds for these parts may be recycled, they look “right” and make logical sense for this figure. As far as reused pieces go, this gets a thumbs up.

But where this Titus BAF really shines is the new pieces: namely his head and hands. The head looks every bit as cool as you’d expect a killer cyborg anthropomorphic Bengal tiger head to look: nicely texured with lots of great detail and ferocity sculpted in. Love that cyborg eye!

Meanwhile, Titus’s left hand is a fuzzy tiger hand flexed into an intimidating battle pose, and his right hand is a four barrel blaster cannon (because why the hell not?). This character design is absurd, but also incredibly toy-etic and hugely amusing to pose and play with.

And speaking of play value, let’s talk articulation: Titus features a ball-jointed head, upper torso ab crunch, ball-hinge shoulders/left hand, ball hips, swivel waist/biceps/thighs, hinge elbows, double-hinged knees and hinged ankles with ankle rockers.

The lack of a swivel boot and articulation to rotate the cannon arm is a bit baffling, but otherwise Titus is a very flexible anthropomorphic tiger man.

The paint deco on Titus is mostly simple, but effective. While the organic tiger parts of the figure are beautifully painted–as is the metal cyborg arm–Titus’ costume seems a bit bland by comparison in its mate gold and navy blue. This is a flaw of the character design and not this toy, but it still brings down the visual appeal of what is otherwise an immensely compelling action figure.

The Wrong:

As cool as this toy may be, it’s of a character that maybe 1% of casual Marvel fans out there have ever even heard of. As the first wave of a series tends to be heavily-ordered and on shelves for most of the year, I’m not sure Titus was a good choice  to push what’s likely to be the highest-produced set of 2017.

As far as the figure itself goes, my only real disappointment is that Titus doesn’t have an articulated jaw. There’s only a couple pieces of new tooling on this figure to begin with, so having a tiger jaw that can open and close seems like a no-brainer.

Overall: This is a very fun toy of a very unknown character. I actually think that demand for this particular Build-A-Figure may go up a little bit as more folks get him and see how cool he is. While his body is mostly made up of Space Venom BAF parts, the original pieces (the cannon arm, tiger hand and cyborg tiger head) are all top-notch. This is an outstanding figure of a character that pretty much no one was asking for. Hasbro did a stellar job making the first-ever plastic representation of this character, with the only real drawbacks being Titus’s somewhat bland costume and low overall level of public recognition.

GRADE: B+