Review: Hasbro Yellowjacket

Avengers month continues with a review of Hasbro's rendition of an Avengers standard: Yellowjacket!

OBQ (Out-of-the-Box Quality): 4 out of 5

Yellowjacket is a figure I didn’t expect to like as much as I do. It doesn’t do anything complex, but it’s a really well-executed generic male figure. Habro took their base body and didn’t skimp on adding extras, like the belt buckle or the shoulder-wings, to make him look good. And I love his logo. Toy Biz might have done as good a job as this, or they might have put out something with an upside-down bee or making him brown instead of black.

So good sculpt on the original parts like the head and wings. Good choice of generic parts that fit the character. Good clean paint applications, even if highlights and shading might make him look better. Yellowjacket is a four-color character, and this is a great rendition.

CP (Customizing Potential): 3 out of 5

Yellowjacket is the basic Hasbro male body, with every major joint cast in yellow plastic. I was able to come up with a huge list of uses for Quicksilver, because there are a lot of superheroes running around in blue. Not nearly as many wear yellow… but when they do, you need yellow plastic! Blue I can get from black, or green, or I might sand down to apply base coats and whatnot, but yellow is the devil color. So yeah, I’m excited about Hank’s yellow shoulders, ab crunch, hips, elbows, knees, neck… he’s a potential gold mine.

Yellowjacket gives me the following customizing ideas:

· Anti-Vision, the 90s Vision costume with the yellow arms and torso. That’s the cool Vision look, because it has his traditional colors but mixes them around so he doesn’t have a yellow cape.
· Golden-age Hourman has yellow legs. And a yellow cape.
· Mimic from Exiles, except I made him already.
· Morph from Exiles. He just got a new costume for the Claremont era, i.e. the last year of the Exiles book. Each new costume gets more and more yellow, up from just the boots in his AOA uniform.
· Golden Age Atom has yellow shoulders. And his kick-ass Mike Parobeck uniform would be cool to do! Because it features pants! On the other hand, if I want to customize a yellow short guy, I should be thinking Wolverine.
· Johnny Quick wears yellow pants. It’s a golden-age color, really.
· There are two speedsters in yellow: the Whizzer and Reverse Flash.
· Booster Gold could be made with a combination of Quicksilver and Yellowjacket. Although I might just use silver base parts for the “yellow” areas, and Tamiya Transparent them up to gold.

Huh. I thought I had more here. I swear there’s more yellow I’m scared of messing with, but I guess it’s in female costumes. Dear Hasbro: please make a Crystal, and I promise to buy one million of them.