BLACKLASH

IRON MAN (TOY BIZ)

Alright, we'll be back with the Toy Biz Marvel!  Look, it's kind of my comfort zone right now, so I'm sticking with it.  I'm back with the Iron Man line, patterned on the cartoon from the '90s.  The show's first season built a classic cartoon roster of recurring villains out of Iron Man's existing rogues gallery.  Admittedly, Iron Man's villains aren't the most notable for the most part, but they did their best.  Whiplash, who was at the time going by Blacklash, was part of the Mandarin's squad of lackeys, and ultimately was never more than a minor player (though he was still a better adaptation than Iron Man 2).  He did at least get a figure out of it.

THE FIGURE ITSELF

Blacklash is part of Series 1 of Toy Biz's Iron Man line, as part of the small batch of villains at launch.  He's based on Blacklash's design from the show, which is in turn based on his Justin Hammer-designed gear from the comics.  The figure stands just over 5 inches tall and he has 7 points of articulation.  His construction is on the simplistic side, and he's notably missing any elbow articulation.  I guess maybe it's to aid in the action feature?  It makes him quite stiff, as does the cape piece, which is large, heavy, and also doesn't stay on so well.  The head's actually pretty good, so good, in fact, that Toy Biz re-used it a bunch, minus the weird ponytail.  It's definitely the best part of the figure.  His paint work is reasonably well done.  It's a little sloppy, but certainly not the worst I've seen from this line.  Blacklash is packed with a whip and nunchucks, which work with his arm swinging feature.  He also gets the ID badge that all of the non-armored figures got.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

Blacklash was the last figures I got from the Series 1 line-up.  For whatever reason, I never got him back in the '90s, and he just never showed up in front of me.  I had picked up a sealed one a while back, but he had weird paint issues, so I never ended up opening him.  One with far better paint got traded into All Time a couple of months ago, so I opted to do the swap out.  He's not the most impressive figure.  He's not the most impressive character, either.  But, he's decent, and good with the rest of the line-up, so there it is.

Thanks to my sponsors over at All Time Toys for setting me up with this figure to review.  If you’re looking for cool toys both old and new, please check out their website and their eBay storefront.

Originally published on February 10, 2025