Hasbro's Marvel Legends line moves on, and in spite of never having taken to the X-Men side of Marvel in comics, I ended up buying Marvel Girl Rachel Summers. Actually I gather she goes by Rachel Grey nowadays, but to judge by the bio on the packaging her origin and history is the usual convoluted mess, so I can forgive them being a bit vague. As a rule I've found Hasbro's Legends to be more toy-like than ToyBiz's ones were, which has its benefits and its drawbacks, and Rachel is a good example of this in all areas. She's sculpted cleanly, with good proportions, quite a nice degree of muscle definition - she's clearly a woman who can handle herself physically, rather than just some random teenager in a costume - and a rather pretty face. Her face, while we're on the subject, makes her look rather animated, in the cartoon sense - not in a childish way, more in the vein of anime, with the small pointed chin and delicate features, and especially the somewhat stylised fashionably ruffled hair. She wouldn't look out of place among other Marvel figures, and it's not unlike how she appears in comic book art, but there's a definite difference in the fine detail between her and previous Marvel Legends women. Her paint job is eye-catchingly colourful, but again more cartoony than realistic - her cast-in-colour skin almost glows compared to the old ToyBiz figures, though she'll fit in well enough with similar Hasbro efforts. The paint on her costume is decent, though not above a bit of slop here and there on the delineation between green and yellow, but the fine details of her face, and on her necklace (which is a separate piece) are quite crisp. Her articulation is adequate, but includes one new innovation I'd rather Hasbro give up on. Like She-Hulk in the previous wave (not counting all the in-between Fantastic Four stuff) she has ball joint elbows, rather than peg elbows and swivel biceps - that's all well and good, since there's not a lot of poses that truly require the flexibility of double peg elbows, and the ball joint is much smoother and less visible - and requires fewer parts, hence cheaper for Hasbro to make. But they've given her similar knee joints as well, and that's a bit of a problem. The legs do need a double peg joint, I think, because there's a lot of action-y poses that rest on being able to bend the knees quite far - crouches and all that jazz. Rachel just can't do that, which puts her at a disadvantage compared to her sister figures. Also with the knees bending back, the edge of the joint is at the front of the figure, and therefore highly visible in a way the elbows aren't - bend her knees and it looks like she's got flat-topped kneepads under her skin, which isn't an attractive look. And finally, her skirt would have hidden double-sided ball joint hips, so - unlike swivel biceps - there'd have been no impact on how she looked by giving her that kind of articulation. Yes, it's no doubt cheaper for Hasbro to make her this way, but unlike the elbows, I'd say this is an instance where it's more valuable to Hasbro to spend the money to make a better toy. Otherwise, as I said, she's adequate: ball joint neck (with rather limited tilt ability), ball joint shoulders and elbows, swivel wrists, a mid-torso ball joint hidden beneath the edge of her top (nice concealment), ball joint hips, knees, and ankles. She can't take very deep stances thanks to the knees, but she's by no means as limited as a DC Direct figure. It's worth noting that - unlike ToyBiz figures a lot of the time - I believe Rachel would stand up excellently to being played with, rather than just posed and put on a shelf. She's built to endure the rigours of being owned by a child and come out looking as good as the day she was bought, and though I'm a bit more careful with my figures than that, I appreciate this about her. She comes with three accessories, one of which is the Build-A-Figure piece, the torso of a Brood Queen - this is sculpted and painted quite a bit better than Rachel herself, with intricate detail and subtle airbrushed shading, which goes to show that one area where Hasbro's not cutting corners is its Build-A-Figures. The other two accessories are for Rachel herself - flames that fit over her hands, cast in soft plastic, transparent red/orange. Her left hand gets a fireball covering her fist, which sits in place very snugly, while her right - matching the hand sculpt - is a flame burning from her palm, with bits curling around her hand, and it's a bit looser. They're nice enough, but with no colour difference in them they don't look very flame-like - even with the difficulty in painting onto soft plastic, a highlight of light orange and yellow would have gone a long way. It sounds like I've mostly spent the time listing ways she's not that great - but the fact remains that I bought her, and am glad I did so, even though Marvel Girl is barely on my radar so far as comic book characters go. She's a toy, rather than a collector's figure, but she's a pretty good toy in the end, and her drawbacks are mostly the result of what she's meant to be, rather than ineptness in design or manufacture. Judging by preview photos Hasbro is going to continue with the ball joint knees - for girls at least - for the next couple of waves, but even with that, I'm still happy they're handling the Marvel Legends.