Phoenix Custom's 1974 (Original Appearance) Wolverine! (Patreon)

It has been a VERY long time since Phoenix had tackled a classic comic-based figure and they did not disappoint! 

All in all there are things I like and dislike about this fig. I love love love that cowl! But the hair is just terrible! Don't worry though! We’ll get to all of that in good time! Because as far as the overall print and design work is concerned, I like… most of it!

There's something about the cell shading that's a nice touch for the torso. But when the same concept is applied to the legs, they end up looking waaaay to busy. All those knee bumps and thigh muscles are cramped within a super tiny yellow space on the legs. Frankly it’s not a good look below the waist. If PCB would have removed at least one of those two yellow shades I think it would have done a world of good for the lower half!

Also while I’m complaining, the black line down the center of the boots doesn't connect at the toes. We’ve seen several other customizers print on toes the last few years now, so it’s strange to see that area of potential ink missing from a fig with a popular brand like PCB behind it.

That being said, the torso and everything from the hips up? Perfect! The cell shading doesn't bother me nearly as much because it all has space to breathe!

As for the rest of this fig’s print, the belt is nice with that bronze-y ink (I do wish it would have been gold tho). The 360° print quality for the arms (and legs) are great otherwise! But uh… why didn’t they torso get the same treatment?

Wolvie’s suit thrives on those underarm tiger stripes! To leave blank yellow sides of the torso looking like that just feels like canvas unused in my mind 🤷🏻‍♂️

But where the print-design is lacking, the custom parts elevate this fig to something special… sorta...

I was most curious about the claws and man are these things huge! I love the idea of them. and I was honestly shocked at just how long they are! But like other Wolvie Figs before this, these claws were all smooshed again!

Whoever keeps having the bright idea not to ship the claws in their own separate bag or clamshell is bonkers! They always get squished like this when packed together with the fig in a bag like this! It drives me nuts how often this happens with custom Wolverine figs 🙄

It took me several anxious days bending them outward with spacers to get them back into shape without them snapping 😬

In the end, once I got them straight they looked great! But you can see some of that silver is already starting to chip away because of the unfortunate casulties of the bending in either direction.

Their design is interesting though! They’re actually molded into the hands, making them fully custom! While the claws were rather malleable, the hands themselves were properly hard ABS Plastic (as far as I could tell)

But, as this fig seems to keep yo-yo’ing in its design concepts, why do these custom molded hands have thicker wrists? Was this an intentional design choice or an engineering one? Are these hands gonna break on me in two months? 

Who knows! 🤷🏻‍♂️

Oh also while we’re at it (because I’m just that much of a stickler) I’m pretty sure this original Wolverine had some (cat-like/bird-like) thick curved claws...

Not the straighter long and thin claws he had later towards the 80s...

Like look at this and tell me they don’t actually belong to KO’s Wolverine instead!

Whatever! We're movin on! We have more to chat about!

The collar piece is a bit thick. It fully eliminates the neck in favor of getting those tiny shoulder pads instead.

Shoulder pads that (in my personal taste) should have just been attached right to the arms themselves. Something more akin to Abnormal's magnetic shoulder pads from a while back. That way it wouldn’t have restricted the arm movement at the very least.

Mind you, this is the maximum rotation forward and back for those arms and… it’s fine.

There’s just something about the thick neck collar thing we’ve got going on here that’s just weird… I mean just look at it’s thickness next the official 90s CMF, and KO’s recent Wolverine

It’s weird right? They should have just had the head pinch the element in place, not insert into it… I’m not the only one thinking that, right?

What we ultimately got here was certainly a choice. Certainly the obvious one none the less and not the least bit clever. But hey! At least they printed the stripes over the yellow so the color blocking still holds up… everything else about them though… I’m on the fence. They look good, they look weird, they needed it for the shoulders, they coulda printed/attached them on the arms… yadda yadda yadda… idk

Moving on!

The hair is funky, but I like the idea that it makes the head print still usable in other contexts. The hair makes me (again) think back to Crosscheck’s recent Logan and how that hair included the mutton chops too. But CC styled the entire piece to flow back and away from the head. However in PCB’s case, they centralized the “ears” of the hair and it looks really funky and flat from most angles.

I even tried to spice it up a little with an official Lego headprint and yeah… this hair sucks. The chops are too wide, the little coif on the forehead looks silly… it’s just bad.

But that cowl!

Oh man oh wow oh my gosh it’s good! It’s got the whiskers! The ears aren’t too big! You can even use it with all four heads and still have the eyes line up! And it’s really clean on the inside, which makes for easy removal! It genuinely feels like a real lego piece and I couldn’t ask for more!

Last thing to chat about is the compatibility... do you hate the hair like I do? Well here’s some official Lego (and Crosscheck) alternatives!

Or how about a head swap with Crosscheck’s hair and an official lego head?

(I really like this combo)

Man, this review is getting too long, I gotta wrap it up! 

As classic Wolverine figs go, it’s pretty slick (but it could have been better in some places). Despite all my yapping up there^ I actually really do like this fig a lot! It’s a rare thing to get a comic book based fig from Phoenix and this fig in a lot of ways checked several boxes for me (again mostly that cowl bringing it all together)

For $100, I’d say I’m happy with it! Could it have been a better fig without the hair for a cheaper price? Absolutely! I’m not blown away by what we got, but I’m still quite pleased to finally have this version of Logan’s suit in the collection :)