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Standard Marvel cardboard carton with it’s control art and viewing windows to the front. This pack gets “Variant” displayed down the left hand side of the carton. The side flaps display photos of the Minimates within. The rear of the box features bio boxes of the characters in the 2 pack and a large ensemble photo of the entire wave.

It’s established lore in Marvel continuity that due to his healing factor Wolverine is a very old dude who appears to be much younger. He’s been retroactively written into the wartime Marvel Universe and has fought alongside the World War II-era Captain America. This version of Wolvie was bound to happen sooner or later, especially after the “X-Men Origins: Wolverine” movie line had something very similar released a few months before. 

The first thing I notice about this Wolverine is that he has a much younger looking face, and it’s also a far more clean-cut one. This is fitting for the era the character is supposed to be representing. It’s still recognisably Wolverine though; even with the hairpiece removed it looks like Wolverine. Not a bad effort at all. Talking of the hairpiece, this one is substantially different to what we’re used to seeing. I’m impressed with the level of texture that DST have managed to work into it, especially to the back of the hairpiece which really looks as though Wolvie has slicked his hair back from the sides with hair cream and just let it meet at the back. Nice work. 

Annoyingly the chest piece is exactly the same as that found on the Origins WWII Wolverine from the TRU Exclusive two pack. This has really irritated me. Even painting it olive drab doesn’t disguise that it’s the same piece. Very poor and totally unnecessary. I hate seeing cost savings applied to the variant figure in any wave of Marvel ‘mates. Thankfully beneath the chest piece the regular chest block has been decorated with a fatigue shirt. I think the figure looks much better in this guise but have to admit that overall I do find it quite a dull-looking Minimate. 

The hands have Wolverine’s trademark claws, but as this is pre Weapon-X era they’re his natural claw bones and not the Adamantium slice-and-dicers we all know and love. The bone claws are very well done, all gnarly and irregular. I could almost forgive the re-use of the chest piece, but I won’t because the army helmet that’s been supplied is also a re-use from the Movie version. This strikes me as incredibly cynical on the part of the manufacturer. What’s even worse is that the helmet doesn’t have any hair attached (that sentence looks so wrong!) so essentially when used the net result is baldy Wolverine! I do like the big X that’s been painted onto the front though. 

WWII Wolverine is accessorised with what I believe is an automatic rifle. It’s a big gun with a stock and a strap. I don’t really know a lot about guns. Shows, doesn’t it?

In conclusion: Unnecessary, unwanted (in my opinion) and a cynical re-use of parts. There’s no way this figure deserves to command a premium price.

MMC Score – 6 out of 10

Review and pictures by Rad Kerrigan

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