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Disclaimer: Graphic content warning: Partial Nudity.

Packaging

Wave 72 is dedicated to everyone’s favourite Canadian. No, it’s not Celine Dion. Nope – it’s not Jim Carrey either! *sigh* No, it’s not William Shatner, Drake, or Mike Myers. Stop guessing!
It’s Wolverine. We have a whole wave dedicated to the comic book exploits of Logan. Or James. Or whatever the devil he’s calling himself now. Let’s dive in!

This set also adds to our collection of Mojoverse characters that we have been waiting for ever since DST gave us Longshot and Dazzler back in wave 47.
Mojo and Spiral and by no means villains that are tied strictly to Wolverine. They’re more general X-Men villains, but I’m pretty happy to see them get made, so I won’t hold the branding against them.

From the get go, we can see what a beast of a figure Mojo is going to be. His extra parts are clearly visible through the window, and we can see that some assembly will be required. The rest of the packaging is the standard affair – brightly coloured box, control art on the front, photos of the whole wave and bios of these two characters on the back.

The Figures

Mojo

Mojo has a bit of a history of being a ‘late in the line’ figure. He appeared in the 3rd series of Toy Biz’s X-force series back in 1994. That might not sound so ‘late in the line’, however X-Force was a spin-off of the X-Men series, which had been running since 1991. Mojo also appeared as the build-a-figure in the 14th wave of Marvel Legends back in 2006. Minimates has taken an impressive 72 waves to get to Mojo and give him his 3rd ever action figure, but it was worth the weight…. (see what i did there?).
Mojo has been portrayed pretty consistently over the years; as a fat, yellow, *naked* sack of flesh atop a mechanical, spider-like platform with a huge metal tale. That’s exactly what DST have given us here. Like MODOK before him, Mojo doesn’t have a shape that suits the plain minimate body, so we have a lot of extra sculpted parts to make him work.
The sculpt on him is fantastic. His ‘hair’ has always been shown as a series of wires and cables coming out of his head, giving him a sort of dreadlock effect, and that’s exactly what this headpiece does. It’s a mostly silver piece with a few coloured cables scattered throughout.

His chest block, back support and tail are all one, massive piece. The mechanical details are all painted with a metallic silver paint. While only one colour is used (there’s no wash or painted highlights), there’s plenty of sculptural detail to give depth and definition to these parts. His ‘tail’ has 16 little sculpted tips on its end (which, in the comics and cartoons, has had lasers and such shoot out of them over the years).
His skin is equally well detailed. The loose flaps of neck and chin hang down around his chest, allowing DST to use a regular headblock and keep some of the important minimate feel, while also making him look obscenely overweight. They’ve even made sure that the metal latches around his gut that fasten him to his platform are shown to be digging into his flesh. It’s this kind of disgusting attention to detail that makes me want to give DST a standing ovation.
The whole character is almost completely covered in plain yellow or silver paint. There aren’t a lot of painted details, but the sculpt makes it work.

Mojo also has newly designed hands which gives him long, monstrous claws. They’re a serious departure from the standard minimate hand, but they suit him perfectly.

The printing on his head block is crisp and clean. They show his manic face being stretched into a perpetually wide-eyed, smiling, camera-ready demon.

DST have done a pretty smashing job of creating a piece that a) suits their chibi-esuq aesthetic, b) still looks like the character and c) actually fits in the packaging.
If fitting him into the packaging takes any toll on the look of the character at all, it’s with his legs. As with the rest of the mechanical parts on the figure, there’s plenty of detail to keep it visually interesting, however the legs look significantly shorter and stockier than they might otherwise be. His legs are usually depicted as more spindly and spider-like. Having said that, the style is consistent with the block-toy design of Minimates.
Despite all of his bulked up pieces, Mojo stands a tiny bit shorter than a standard minimate. DST have included a small, clear stand to help add a couple of extra millimetres to his height.
Mojo was one of the characters announced as a possibility back in the wave 50 poll, so we’ve known for some time that DST have some idea about how to create him. It’s great to see him finally make a roster.

While I have a few very minor criticisms, I’m don’t think that a better figure could be delivered in this style at this price point.

MMC Score – 10 out of 10

Spiral

Spiral holds a special place in my heart. She was my favourite character to play is in X-Men: Children of the Atom and Marvel vs. Capcom 2. Just between you and me, MvC2 might just be the finest 2D fighter ever made.
Spiral has had a couple of different looks in the comics over the years, but this is her most well-known and iconic. IMHO, it’s also her best.

Starting from the top down, Spiral gets a newly sculpted headpiece. It’s her silver, samurai-style helmet with white hair flowing out from underneath it. The details are spot on. It’s a perfect recreation of her classic 616 look.

Her face tampo is cleanly done. She’ doesn’t have a very animated facial expression, but I think that suits her. I’ve always read Spiral as a cold, stony, and slightly sarcastic character. I can easily see this unimpressed face delivering a rather dry reply to Mojo before she leaps into battle.

Spiral’s chest tampo is also nice and clean. She’s sometimes represented with a single shade of blue on her uniform, but I’m pleased to see that DST have opted for her two-tone costume. The beading on her décolletage is painted in the same metallic silver as seen on her helmet.
The chest block harness that was used to give Spider-Man his six arms all the way back in TRU 9 is back. Interestingly, I thought at the time that it made Spider-man look too bulky, but I don’t mind it so much here. I think Spirals additional helmet bulk helps to balance the harness out a bit.

Spirals arms are a mixture or bare, human arms, arms with silver bands and cybernetic replacements, just as they are in the comics. DST have stuck very close to the Official Marvel Universe handbook in the placement and decoration of the arms. She’s also wearing a small brown belt piece, which also goes some way towards balancing out the harness.

There’s some simple, but effective detailing on the front of her legs. Her lower legs also have her shaggy, leg-warmers. These might actually be a new sculpt. They’re the sort of piece that look like they belong to First Appearance Sabretooth, except that his were painted on. They look fantastic here. I hope DST gets some more use out of the piece in the future.

She also comes with two hex hands and two swords, so that she can use her magic to teleport while battling foes. DST could possibly have thrown in an extra hair-piece so she could be displayed sans helmet, but I honestly don’t think anyone would use it. And there’s already so many extra sculpted pieces in this two-pack, that I don’t think they’d be able to fit any more in.

If I had my way, DST would have sculpted a new torso block with six arm pegs on it for characters like Spiral and Six-Arm Spidey, but the solution they’ve come up with is the next best thing.

This whole wave has given me everything I love about DST when they’re at the top of their Minimate game: unmade characters, females, villains, great paint apps, classic costumes. This particular two pack is about as close to perfection as this old-timey X-Men fan could hope for.

Here’s to more like this in the future.

MMC Score – 9 out of 10.

Agree? Disagree? Why not vote for yourself below, or comment further over at the Minimate Multiverse MMC Review Forum.

Review and pictures by Nessex.

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