A Colossal purchase.

Actually I lied.  It isn’t a colossal purchase.  Just a colossal TOY! 

I must say that Colossus is my favourite X-Man character.  Hmm, Hulk, Juggy, Colossus.  All stupidly strong characters, see the theme there?  I bet there is a psychological reasoning for this somehow…  But that’s enough self psychology thanks.  This here is a review of the Diamond Toys (maker), Marvel Select (series) Colossus (character).  I bought this guy when I bought Juggernaut, because he was well priced and much like Juggernaut, is one I have seen and wanted but never really bothered looking for. 

I also thought, since the Marvel Selects have a tendency to be larger figures, he would be a rather nicely scaled figure to go with my recently acquired Wolverine.  So after all that effort, does he actually fit in to my newly started 6 inch Marvel characters line well?


I am pleased to say that he does fit rather well.

Another blister on thick card package.  Even though he is not as heavy as Juggernaut if hung, the hanger piece certainly wouldn’t last long.  The back has the awkward stance of other characters available and a quick shot of the comic book cover which seems to have inspired the diorama piece, which according to the Diamond toys website can be put together with Cyclops’ and Gambit’s pieces to make a Danger room. 

Nice little bio on the back.  I noticed this too late for the Juggernaut review, but the inside of the box has an assortment of various comic panels in it.

Firmly secured in the package.

Out of the box he is an impressive looking dude and sexily shiny. BLING.  Almost too bright for the flash…
Sculpting is fantastic.  The muscles look marvellous and the the lines that are the trademark of Colossus armoured form are all crisp.  Anyway before I get on to all of that, I bought this guy to go with Wolverine so let’s put them together.

Although he looks a bit tall, doing some maths, using Wolverine as being in scale for his measly 5ft 3in (160cm) and Colossus at his 7ft something inches (26cm, I forget the inches tall he is), then these two are scaled close enough to what they should be.  Sadly it turns out my Juggernaut isn’t in scale any more since he and Colossus are the same toy height, but Juggy would have an extra 2ft over Colossus in the comic.  Meh, but scale changes in situation, artist and direction.  I am happy with hoe Juggy is chunky and Colossus looks muscly and not obscenely so.

I was discussing this with some pals online and even though mathematically Colossus is in scale, to the eye, he looks a little too big, especially next to my new Thor.  However I personally, I don’t think he looks ridiculously so and am happy with him as he is.  I guess making him crouch a little would make him look less taller.

Articulation is surprisingly good.  I was really shocked to see that he actually comes with double jointed knees!  A hinged ball joint in the hips and shoulders, calf and bicep swivels, single jointed elbow, swivel hinges in the wrist.  No waist, but he has a very adaptable diaphragm joint that can bend forwards, backwards, left and right.  Very useful that one and covers the lack of a waist joint.  His neck joint is also very nice, after pulling it off, I discovered that it is connected via a ball joint, both in the neck plug area as well as the head.  It allows L/R/U/D from the neck, but also from the base of the head, so it is possible to angle his head in a quizzical nature.

Balance is pretty good, the hinge in his ankles are enhanced by his rocker joints allowing for some wide stances.  They are pretty sturdy too.  The knees elbows and shoulders have ratchets in them which I think would be required.

In an interesting move, his shirt can be taken off, showing a fully and nicely sculpted Colossus back and chest, yet if you do he still has the bottom of the shirt covering his stomach.  Which is a bit weird looking so he can’t quite pull of a shirtless setup.
  Unless you want him in Grandpa pants.

Although I must admit he has a very nice belt buckle!

Even though his articulation is damn fine, I do wish they had included one more point.  He could have really benefitted from a thigh cut swivel as the thigh pieces get hindered by the pants when you raise the legs up, so to get some good leg height you need to twist the thigh sideways a bit, but then his legs are, well, sideways.  In other words, he cannot sit or crouch down very much.

Sculpting is all round beautiful.  You can obviously see the lines all about him.  Check out his fists!  Mmm mmm!  The detail on his costume is pretty cool as well.  Nice fabric crinkles moulded in, and the paint applications are all clean and well defined.  I am not sure why exactly, but his wrist bands are a metallic red, while the rest of the red is a matte red.  It appears to have been done deliberately however and by no means looks bad.  Only the silver on the sides on the piece above the belt is a little sloppy, but it is such a small section it’s no deal breaker, but considering how everywhere else seems pretty good, it does seem a bit of a let down.

The head sculpt is also pretty nice and has a lovely jubbly flat top hair cut.  This guy is so metally, it can be tricky to get the details on the smooth bits, but here we go.

One little detail that I dig are his eyes, they are a light blue with a bit of eyeliner around them and it looks fantastic.

He comes with a spiked wall thing that combines with the other Select X-Men.  It’s light weight, pointy and looks pretty authentic when compared to the images in the older X-men comics, which is nice.  however by itself it’s kind of useless.

The piston things at the back of the which are pretty well detailed kind of adds to my questions for this piece.  Admittedly it’s better than Juggernaut’s mini-diorama, but still.  It does add a few possibilities for play though, that aren’t completely useless.

Like proving how tough Wolverine is.  I guess you can also make up a Danger Room scenario as well

What I actually found about this figure that I really like though is his size with Wolverine and you can do their Fastball Special.  I managed to do this with no extra aides such as gum or sticky tape.



Oh damn, that is pretty cool.

And he looks good enough to try and go up against Juggernaut!   Even though he doesn’t look as beefed up as he does in COTA, I prefer the slim-muscularity of the figure.  It’s much more ‘strong guy armoured up’ rather than ‘Big ass tank guy’ that he is in the game if that makes sense.

So as you have probably worked out, I quite like this Colossus.  His sculpt is damn fine, the articulation, while not perfect is pretty damn good.  Balance is surprising and he looks good with the other characters from the 6 inch line too.  However when compared to say, a Thor figure from the 6 inch line, I can se that Colossus might be too large.  However, if Thor is 6ft 6inch as a Marvel Wiki tells me, then an armoured up Colossus should still be taller…So Maybe he fits in better than I thought.  EXCELLENT!

So essentially, as a fan of Xmen, I suspect this guy will fulfil your needs quite nicely.