The Fog of War Machine! Hasbro's Iron Man 3 Cover Up!

The action figure market isn't what it used to be. Major companies have eschewed fickle man-child collectors to focus on cutting-costs and appealing to actual children. This means that we are no longer seeing mainstream retail lines with screen accurate sculpts or extensive articulation. This has been particularly felt in Hasbro's Star Wars line with the recent announcement that the next waves of collector focused figures have been cancelled for now. We've gone full circle back to the eighties were cheap and simple rules the shelves.

But then Hasbro releases the following image of their new 3 3/4 inch War Machine figure for Iron Man 3. Looks pretty cool, right?

WRONG! There's a very good reason that War Machine here is photographed in the dark and has a huge hunk of debris obscuring him. This tactic is terribly transparent, Hasbro. To see what Hasbro is trying to hide... join me after the jump!

What follows is a picture of what the actual figure really looks like, as posted earlier by Cool Toy Review. He's part of their upcoming Iron Man 3 Iron Assemblers line which have detachable extra parts and weapons so that kids can mod and customise their figures. And he's not nearly as impressive without all that deliberately obscuring debris...

We've got the ridiculous, giant-size, projectile accessories, body parts and weapons that have ZERO paint applications, and worst of all, look at that (lack of) articulation! War Machine can only swivel at his neck, shoulders and hips just like a seventies Star Wars figure! Brother doesn't even have elbows or knees! Now, that action shot above gives us the illusion of elbows but we can see here that they've merely swivelled his gun and obscured his hand. 

And this isn't a one-off either. Look at this product shot of Iron Man in which they've also applied an effect to obscure how crappy the figure is....

So even the smart marketers at Hasbro know that these are a disappointment and will raise collectors' ire, and rather than make them better they're trying to hide it! What a bunch of sneaky buggers!

Look, I think it's both fine and appropriate that a mainstream line is aimed at kids. That's the way it really should be. As an adult, if I want to collect something from Iron Man then I'll grab the high end Hot Toys 1/6th scale figure and be done with it. So I don't have a problem so much with these things existing (although it is a shame kids that aren't getting cooler stuff when we know full well that Hasbro is capable of making it). No, my issue is that Hasbro has made a lame attempt to have it both ways by releasing these sleight-of-hand images to try and fool collectors. And we caught them red-handed!

It's 2013, guys. Give him some elbows!