Age of Apocalypse has a wealth of characters worthy of the Marvel Legends treatment. Based on their ease of availability on shelves these days another wave might not be in the cards, but at least we got one relatively well done set culminating with the Build-A-Figure Sugar Man.
From a sculpting and absolutely unique presence on the shelf, I see the appeal with this guy for Hasbro. It’s more that he’s not necessarily the biggest name from that event and his BAF spot could have gone to a more significant character like Nemesis, Colossus or even Sabretooth. Despite my lack of excitement for him, Hasbro proved up to the challenge. Let’s see if I’ll eventually get sweet on this figure.
Packaging: You know the deal by now — no packaging for BAFs although I would have loved to have seen package artist David Nakayama’s take on Sugar Man.
Likeness: Sugar Man is probably the most terrifying of all the characters in AOA. His visual is the stuff of nightmares for children and this might be one of the absolute most spectacular sculpts we’ve seen in the line.
The massive arms are defined with veins and random bumps. Give it up for the sculptor actually sculpting all that hair on his arms for even greater detail. Some of his arms have rings and the open hands have sharp nails. Sugar Man is essentially a head, arms and legs.
His head sculpt is what stands out the most with the demonic ears, bushy eyebrows, boils, fanged teeth and curled tongue. The tongue is especially gruesome with its snakelike curvature that’s accentuated by the wide mouth and intentionally misaligned teeth.
Sugar Man was originally drawn by Chris Bachalo, one of the more stylish artists for Marvel during the 90s making for an even bigger challenge to nail the comic likeness.
Even the smaller details like the buttons along his suspenders, the buckles and loops came out really nice. This is a really exceptional likeness however and one that makes me wish Hasbro added a credit on the packaging so we knew who was responsible for such great work.
Scale: Sugar Man is huge — both in terms of height and girth. The biggest issue with him is how he’s going to be a massive display space hog.
Paint: There’s a ton of paint apps here from the red eyes, the deep purple around his eyes, the blackened mustache, multi-colored buttons, silver rings and buckles.
There’s only one area on the main belt buckle where the silver doesn’t fully cover. Given all of the requirements to make this figure look good I’ll cut Hasbro slack on that as well as the missing arm hair.
Articulation: Due to his massive size and awkward body makeup, he will tip over quickly if you don’t find his balance sweet spot. He does have some waist movement although the suspenders restrict that to some degree. You’re not gonna get running poses out of this guy, but his forearms allow for some fun posing options especially with the right AOA X-Men.
Sugar Man has:
- ball-jointed shoulders
- elbows
- wrists
- waist
- hips
- thighs
- knees
- ankles
Accessories: Sugar Man comes with his hammer. He also used an axe, but I get he probably maxed out the budget with his forearms and sheer amount of plastic.
Worth it? This was basically a $20 figure since the only one from this wave I wasn’t really looking forward to getting was the X-Man figure. I just saw an auction on eBay for $70 making Sugar Man one of the more affordable BAFs these days. His lack of value might come from the fact that there’s not a ton you can do with him since Hasbro didn’t make any of the Generation Next characters who specifically went after him in AOA.
Rating: 9.5 out of 10
I’m not sure what else Hasbro could have done with this guy short of adding the paint on the arms. It’s an impressively disgusting figure and Hasbro knocked him out. Hopefully we get some Generation Next figures to match up with him.
Where to get it? You can still get the full set from Amazon or Entertainment Earth.