‘X-Men: Days of Future Past”s reign over the summer box office may have ended, but it has certainly not been forgotten! This is the film that brought the ‘X-Men’ film franchise back to it’s glory days, combining the characters and worlds from both ‘X-Men First Class’ and the original ‘X-Men’ trilogy into one cohesive world that makes more sense as a whole. They may have corrected the mistakes of ‘X-Men: The Last Stand’, but when it comes to awesome toys, how did ‘Days of Future Past’ really hold up? Today we’re going to take a look at the all new Marvel Minimates Wave 58 ‘X-Men: Days of Future Past’ from Diamond Select Toys and find out!
So first off, for the uninitiated, what’s a Minimate? Minimates are DST and Art Asylum’s ongoing line of mini-figures that are based on anything and everything you can imagine! Each figure (well, most of them) stands 2-inches tall and has interchangeable parts that work with almost every other Minimate, making these guys great for customizing and making your own original figures! Minimates have been in production since 2002, so with over a decade’s worth of figures on the market, it isn’t hard to see why the line has such a huge fan base!
Diving right on into Marvel Minimates Wave 58, much like with most Minimates series we ave four sets of figure 2-packs available to us;
‘Past’ Logan with ‘Past’ Professor Charles Xavier
‘Past’ Magneto with ‘Past’ Mystique
‘Future’ Wolverine with ‘Future’ Storm
‘Future’ Professor Xavier with ‘Future’ Magneto.
Each set of figures comes compete with their own individual accessories and interchangeable parts, and includes a small clear plastic display stand for each figure.
Future Wolverine
Let’s start off with a look into the future of the ‘X-Men’ series, Future Wolverine! This Minimate captures the look of the character perfectly! The ‘Future’ movie costume translates wonderfully into Minimate form, and there are enough subtle differences in the facial design to differentiate him from his younger ‘Past’ counterpart. The grey speckles in his hair are also a very nice touch. It would have been nice to see some kind of bulk padding on this figure to showcase the armored look a little bit more, but ultimately he looks pretty awesome as is. Future Wolverine comes with no accessories beyond his display stand.
Future Professor Charles Xavier
Okay, so this one is pretty much perfect. This ‘Future’ rendition of Professor X translates the iconic Patrick Stewart into Minimate form with effortless detail. The facial design looks great, and his costume looks especially cool this time around. One of the best things about this wave of figures is that we are finally getting movie versions of characters like these that we’ve seen on the big screen for years. Patrick Stewart as Professor X has been a long time coming, and this rendition in particular is certainly worth the wait!
‘Future’ Professor Xavier comes with one of the coolest accessories of the wave, a hover-chair! Just like in the comics, this film introduces audiences to the concept of Professor Xavier in a hover-chair rather than a traditional wheelchair. It looked amazing on film, and looks even better in tiny plastic form.
Future Magneto
It’s Ian McKellen! Seriously, it is! Except this time he’s ‘Future Magneto’! Future Magneto is unfortunately one of the weaker figures in this series. It’s tough, because there’s just so much to love about him (like the fact that he’s Ian McKellen!), but if I had to pick a weak spot in this line up, it’s him. He lacks the ‘flight’ or ‘hover’ accessories that you’d kind of expect him to have packed in at this point (his ‘Past’ self even has them!), which doesn’t help the fact that he’s essentially an action figure of an old guy.
Make no mistake, this figure does have an amazing look facial design, and his costume looks great! This Minimate is by no means bad, he’s just the weakest offering in this set (and realistically, someone always has to be). His big flaw comes int he form of his really sweet looking cape (which sucks, because it looks REALLY cool). The issue with it, is the way the cape is molded, it hinders almost all of his arm movement, so aside from bending his arms at the elbow and jamming them in the space between his torso and the cape, his arm movement range is nonexistent. This lack of movement ranger makes him a bit of a tough figure to love, but again, he looks really great, so it’s hard to hate on him too.
Future Storm
It’s kind of funny, because Storm was probably the figure people wanted the least from this wave, but she might very well be the best figure of the entire set! This is the second time we’ve gotten a movie version of Storm (hence her being less in demand than other characters we haven’t gotten movie versions of yet), but this one really blows the old one away (pun wholly intended)!
The face design here is spot on, looking unmistakably like actress Halle Berry! Aside from the main figure herself, Storm here comes packaged with a flight stand, lightning effect attachments for her hands, and an additional head that was whited out eyes for ‘storm powers’ effect. Honestly? It’s the accessories that make this figure hands down the best of the wave. While most of the figures here do come with some sort of accessory or another, Storm has them packed on, and it really benefits this figure of her character. Combine that with the unmistakable character design, and you’ve got an amazing Minimate!
‘Past’ Professor Charles Xavier
Now it’s time to dial things back a bit into the past, with the ‘Past’ rendition of Professor Charles Xavier. This guy has… seen better days. In between movies, this characters life has pretty much fallen apart, and it shows. This Minimate encapsulates that look perfectly, with the figure coming off kind of like a really well dressed homeless man. It’s hard to believe that this version of the character could ever evolve into the version we see Patrick Stewart portraying (see ‘Future’ professor Xavier above!).
‘Past’ Professor Xavier comes packaged with a classic style wheelchair, which is kind of a neat accessory all on it’s own. The character used it kind of sparingly in the film, so I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little disappointed that he didn’t come with a Cerebro helmet like the one from the film. His retro-styled clothes are pretty standard and look pretty nice, so they would also make great custom fodder for other characters in the future. That factored in with the wheelchair accessory and the different take on the character make this version of Xavier a solid pick up for sure!
‘Past’ Wolverine
Okay, so being upfront, ‘Past’ Wolverine is just plain COOL. He looks great, captures the entire essence of the character, and comes with a bunch of interchangeable parts that make him into a complete badass! This is the younger 1970’s version of Wolverine, so the figure comes with his retro ‘bone claws’! He also comes in some truly ‘Wolverine’ styled 1970’s civilian clothes. It’s really interesting to see the stark contrast between the head sculpt on ‘Past’ and ‘Future’ versions of Wolverine; both of them really capture the look of actor Hugh Jackman really well, but both are really easily distinguishable from one another. It’s a really difficult feat to pull off, but the designers at Diamond Select Toys have accomplished it masterfully.
Because the figure itself, ‘Past’ Wolverine comes packed with an alternate shirtless torso, complete with bare arms and non-clawed hands so that Wolverine can blend in a bit more. The design of the shirtless torso is really interesting, in that it has been riddled with bullets! This did occur in a shirtless scene in the film, but still stands out as an odd design choice (not that it is in any way a bad thing!).
‘Past’ Magneto
While ‘Future’ Magneto is kind of a dud, ‘Past’ Magneto excels at being awesome! This Minimate of the 1970’s version of mutant terrorist Magneto is a great update of the character since his last Minimate from “X-Men First Class’. He comes decked out in his purple and black costume complete with purple cape and Magneto’s iconic psychic-proof helmet (which is notably missing from the ‘Future’ version of this character’s figure). Besides the helmet, he also comes with a scruffy short hair-piece for the un-helmeted look that the character sports in the film. He also includes a sweet flight stand for a ‘hover’ effect.
Ultimately, he’s a really great little Michael Fassbender Minimate that is probably the best movie version of Magneto yet produced as a Minimate.
‘Past’ Mystique
Regardless of the fact that this is ‘Past’ Mystique, this particular Minimate version of everyone’s favorite shapeshifting mutant could easily stand in as the definitive movie-styled Mystique Minimate. She’s pretty basic, but the simplicity here is what makes her work so well. This version of Mystique would work with literally any X-Men movie-styled display or set up you could possibly come up with, which is what makes her one of the ‘must-own’ figures of this set.
Mystique here looks remarkably like actress Jennifer Lawrence in her facial design. The scaly look of her skin comes across really well on this figure, although it’s entirely painted on effects rather than any kind of physical bumps or scales. Either way, she looks great! That, combined with the poseability of a Minimate completely unhindered by restrictive clothing means she has the full range of movement that the character in the film does! My only gripe with this figure is that she didn’t include any transformation pieces or alternate parts, or even any kind of jump stand or anything. She’s just a figure on her own with a standard clear display stand. Luckily, that doesn’t take away from how great DST pulled off this character design!
Final Thoughts
Wrapping things up, Marvel Minimates Wave 58 ‘X-Men: Days of Future Past’ is a great wave of figures, but isn’t without it’s flaws. That said, for every figure in the set that’s a bit on the weak side, there is a counterpart figure that makes the whole set worth picking up. The only real issue with this wave is that there were so many double characters (x2 Wolverine, Professor X, and Magneto), so the characters included were fairly limited. In a wave of figures based on a film jam-packed with so many lead characters, it’s a little rough to see the characters chosen to be made as figures kept to such a small range. There are usually good reasons for this (hooray licensing!), and I’m sure DST did all they could to make the best lot of figures for the fans! But still, it would have been pretty sweet to get a movie version Sentinel, or maybe Quicksilver, Blink, Shadowcat, or ‘Past Beast’, as they all played such pivotal roles in the story. I’d say this wave is definitely worth picking up if you’re a big X-Men fan!
