When it comes to Doctor Strange merch, astral form repaints of the good doctor are cheap, easy-to-create, and justifiable repaints—which is why we have numerous of them from Hasbro, Diamond Select Toys, Funko and more. So it was not exactly an eyebrow-raiser when Hasbro debuted the new Marvel Legends Doctor Strange Astral figure in the Multiverse of Madness movie Rintrah Series. Does this figure improve over the original iteration released six years back? Here’s my review…

One of the realities of making collectibles for an upcoming, highly secretive movie is that sufficient resource materials aren’t always available during the design phase—and consequently, sometimes we get action figures that just aren’t quite right.

Such was the case with the Marvel Legends 2016 Doctor Strange Astral Form movie figure, which Hasbro had already prototyped before knowing precisely what it looked like in the movie.

 

And so, while I did think the opaque, pearlescent white-ish action figure we got over half a decade ago looked cool, it was far from authentic. But hey, at least there’s a fresh movie hitting this spring—Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness—to give Hasbro momentum to take another crack at astral Benedict Cumberbatch.

Unlike its predecessor (see above photo), this 6” figure is fully cast in colored translucent plastic (primarily clear and blue), giving it a more film-accurate look this time around. The figure has a ghostlike quality to it that does seem more representative of a spirit than the “Mattel Secret Wars Iceman/WandaVison White Vision”-looking movie toy from a few years back.

The colored hair and eyes give this Stephen Strange a more human feel, and also help differentiate this from the old Star Wars Jedi hologram figures that mostly only I liked (I love me some colorways).

This has a different head than the previous Astral Doctor strange Legends figure, and I think it’s a decent representation of Cumberbatch—at t least, for a translucent 1:12 scale portrait, anyway.

As the actual body mold for this figure is being used elsewhere by Hasbro for more standard movie versions of the character, so it has excellent articulation even if there are no logical dynamic action poses for this six inch figure— and certainly no cool accessories to utilize all those joints.

The articulation scheme includes:

• Ball-hinge head and shoulders
• Ball-jointed upper torso and hip
• Swivel biceps, thighs and boots
• Double-hinge knees and elbows
• Swivel-hinge wrists
• Hinged ankles with rockers

The plastic skirt definitely inhibits lower body movement, and I wish there were butterfly swivels on the shoulders (although Dr. Strange can still just barely clutch the Eye of Agamotto in his hands from the end of his necklace).

I love the smoothness of the ball-jointed upper torso’s movement, but it’s truly not that practically useful for posing this particular character version who’s arguably best posed just standing around doing nothing.

Doctor Strange comes with two pairs of interchangeable hands, a removable Eye of Agamotto necklace that flops around endlessly, a lamp and the green minotaur Rintrah Build-A-Figure head. There’s no Cloak of Levitation, but this variant really shouldn’t include a cape, so that’s A-OK.

The magic lamp looking thing (that looks suspiciously like a genie lamp to me) is the most unique add-on for this figure, but Hasbro let me down big-time by not including a single hand that can hold the lamp in a natural pose.

I really wanted Strange to have the lamp relaxing in his palm, but I had to settle for jamming its nozzle into a grasping hand to get Stephen to hold it at all. Bummer. This takes away the #1 pose I thought would be fun to do with this figure, although I did derive some joy from making it hold the severed head of the Rintrah BAF by the horns.

Overall: This is a nice “make-good” for the 2016 Marvel Legends Astral Form Doctor Strange figure, but it’s not really a compelling figure otherwise. The lamp is a neat unique accessory that suffers from proper hands to hold it not being included, and many collectors will be forced to buy this Astral Strange just for the BAF Rintrah head. Even so, I’m not sure this will be a must-have for anyone but the die-hard Dr. Strange fans. An improvement accuracy-wise over the previous release, but I wouldn’t have lost any sleep if this new and sort of improved version wasn’t made.

GRADE: C+