MAFEX Iron Man Mark 45 Action Figure Review

Iron Man lends his design to pretty awesome toys. So much so, that you'll be hard-pressed to find a toy company who doesn't make Iron Man action figures! One such company is Medicom, whose MAFEX division announced a new Iron Man a year ago, Iron Man Mark 45 from the movie Avengers: Age of Ultron. Pictures got me hooked. It looked damn good! But what sets him apart from all the Iron Man figures already out? Read on to find out!

MAFEX Iron Man Mark 45 comes in a huge box that displays practically everything the figure comes with. It's a nice display piece, but knowing that Figuarts Stone Cold's box can contain pretty much the same amount of stuff with him at half the size, I was hoping it would be a bit more compact. It's 2017, let's avoid using too much unnecessary plastic and paper, yeah?

Taking it out of the package, I immediately felt my first red flag: MAFEX Iron Man Mark 45 is incredibly light, with practically no heft in it. It feels fragile and hollow, like the bare minimum amount of plastic was used to cast it. I don't know if it's a negative in the long run, though.

Upon trying out his articulation, I came across my second red flag and one of the constant complaints about MAFEX: it's a floppy piece of shit. There's too little tightness to the knees and elbows and waist, and it feels really flimsy as a result. Thank goodness there's a stand included, because Iron Man Mark 45 will topple without it if you so much as look at it funny.

MAFEX Iron Man Mark 45 requires a lot of fiddling to pose, like pulling legs and arms apart to reveal extending mechanisms for maximum articulation, and it works really well, floppiness considered. With a little fudging, he could even do the true test of Iron Man articulation: the three-point landing!

The knees and hips have a good range of motion, but places like the waist, elbows, and shoulders are limited by the sculpt. Be very careful, though, as the overall looseness of the fig makes it hard to know when you're bending or pulling on a joint too much. At more than 70.00USD, this is a figure I literally can't afford to break.

I mean, let's be real, joints that don't flop is kind of like the minimum requirement for action figures? So from the get-go I'm hard-pressed to give this a failing grade...

...if only it weren't so goddamn beautiful.

Medicom seems to have been possessed by a muse, because MAFEX Iron Man Mark 45 is a miniature piece of art. The sculpting is screen-accurate and amazing, the paint work is so superb they make it look like a mini-Hot Toys, and its entire silhouette looks like it was plucked straight out of the Age of Ultron movie. My pictures don't even do it justice.

The prerequisite alternate hands are included if you wish to do different poses. There's also an alternate head with an open face plate revealing a headsculpt of Robert Downey, Jr. as Tony Stark. Like the rest of the figure, it looks amazing (as it should. You get what you pay for) but be careful as it's an absolute bitch to switch heads, since the head is on a ball joint that doesn't seem to want to stay in the neck, but will require the strength of 10 men to pull out of the default head.

There are also blast effects included, quite similar to what Hasbro is packing with their Marvel Legends figures. Two of them peg under his feet to simulate thrusters, while two more peg to special hands to make him go pew pew.

I've owned my fair share of Iron Mans, but this is unequivocally the best-looking one I've ever had. MAFEX Iron Man Mark 45 is a touch frustrating to pose and play with, but the trade off is a truly gorgeous figure that could be the centerpiece of any 6" Iron Man collection. Provided that, after you display it, you don't touch it ever again.

I pre-ordered mine from Onegai Oniichan Hobby Shop, so it's probably out in your favorite hobby shops. If you don't like floppy, loose joints on your toys, you've been warned. But if you're a fan of MCU Iron Man, this is probably the best it's going to get at this scale.

I hope this review helped and I hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I did writing it! Comments and suggestions go to the comment box below. Thanks for reading!