The X-Men have been dominating comic books since their debut over fifty years ago back in 1963. The original team was made up of Cyclops, Marvel Girl, Angel, Beast, and Iceman; all of whom remain some of the franchises most popular characters today! That makes it no huge surprise that Marvel has decided to bring the series some fresh blood by giving readers a taste of the past by bringing the original teenaged team of X-Men into modern times! That’s right, in their ongoing series ‘All New X-Men’, Marvel has brought the original teenaged versions of Scott Summers, Jean Grey, Warren Worthington III, Hank McCoy, and Bobby Drake, from 1963 into the future era of 2014! Never ones to be far behind with creating awesome stuff, Diamond Select Toys has decided to use this awesome new story as the basis for their new series of Minimates! Let’s take a look at Marvel Minimates Wave 59, ‘The All New X-Men’!

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!

Head straight on into this All New Minimates Wave of All New X-Men, as with most Minimate waves, the figures have been released in figure two-packs, with this series in particular being comprised of four different two-packs of figures.

Cyclops with Marvel Girl

Beast with Angel

And then we’ve got two slightly similar yet awesomely different two packs, with each pack containing Iceman and a Sentinel figure! So what’s the twist? Well, in each of the packs you will receive either an Iced-Up or De-Iced version of Iceman…

And in each Iceman pack you will receive a Sentinel army-builder figure! It’s a win-win to pick up both versions of Iceman just to have two Sentinels!

Each figure two-pack comes with their own individual accessories based on the figures included, and each figure includes a clear display stand.

Cyclops

First up we’ve got Cyclops! He’s Scott Summers, the X-men’s classic team-leader! Cyclops here comes in his brand spanking new ‘All New X-Men’ costume, which is a nice change from the original yellow and blue outfit they actually wore in the 60’s version of the comics! The different shades of blue make for a really nice clean and interesting paint job on the figure, with the white of his costume standing out very nicely.

Cyclops comes sporting his iconic red and gold visor in the package, but includes two alternate hair pieces. One is a basic hair piece, which allows you to show off Cyclops without his visor on, although he has his classic red sunglasses painted onto his face, so no worries about random optic blasts!

Or, alternatively, if Optic Blasts are your thing, then you’re in luck! Cyclops also includes an ‘Optic Blast Effect’ hair piece that showcases the character in his visor while allowing a blast of red optic energy to shoot out! Overall, Cyclops is a pretty awesome figure in this set.

Marvel Girl

Next up is Cyclops’ pack-mate and girlfriend, Marvel Girl! Jean Grey also comes in her fancy new duds from the comics, with a bright green and black outfit that translates wonderfully into a Minimate. Overall, she’s pretty much a basic Minimate, and looks great. She comes sporting her classic red hair in the package, but includes an alternate head and hairpiece with ‘phoenix force’ abilities.

While the translucent fiery red hairpiece and angry glowy eyed face are fantastic, the really amazing pack-in for this figure is actually the piece you’d least expect- her display stand. Marvel Girl comes packed with what at first appears to be a basic clear flight stand, which is all well and good, until further inspection. The stand she is packed with actually attaches around the figures mid-section (in between the legs and upper torso), and has an articulated swivel, so you can angle Marvel Girl different ways and make it appear as if she’s flying. Why is this so amazing? Because now you’ve got that display stand for pretty much every other Minimate you own too! It’s great to add in sweet jump effects or acrobatic abilities to your other display figures as well as Jean herself!

Angel

The next figure we’re going to look at is The Angel himself, Warren Worthiington III! Angel is pretty basic, sporting a costume that looks like an updated version of his old red X-Force gear. His wing attachment is really nice, and his wings do have articulation to them where they attach to his back piece. His wings also have a really nice feathery texture sculpted onto them, which makes all the difference for a character like this. It adds a whole nother level of quality to the figure design!

Much like the character this figure is based on, there isn’t much to Angel’s look, so he’s kind of bland looking beyond the wings. If this wave had to have a weak figure, it’s probably Angel. He comes packed with a flight stand, but not much else.

Beast

Beast is just that… a BEAST! This Minimate came out amazingly! It’s been a while since we got a not ‘blue and hairy’ version of Beast, so this figure is great! His new costume looks fantastic, with dark blue’s and a orange-gold like trim to it. He’s even got a pair of translucent orange goggles attached into his hair piece to pull the whole look together!

Hank McCoy here comes packed with his huge, bulky limbs, which is just as Beast should! He’s got this just great ‘largeness’ vibe to him that makes him seem so much more imposing than other Minimates in this set (and in general for that matter). Here he is showing off that wonderful articulated-stand that came packed in with Jean that we discussed earlier!

Beast here comes packed with an alternate head and hair piece sporting a bit more of a relaxed face with glasses than the angry face he comes packed wearing. The alternate hairpiece is a basic one so that the character is not forced to wear his goggles all the time. Overall, Beast is one of the coolest figures in this set, and definitely makes his two-pack worth picking up!

Iceman

Okay, so here’s where things get a bit tricky. We’ve got two completely different figures of the same character here to look at! Both versions of Iceman have their own special qualities that make them great, and neither one is a bad choice if you’re only picking up one version!

Iced-Up Iceman is a solid figure, sporting an almost entirely white paint job with light blue and minor black detailing throughout most of the figure. It’s really neat how they use the light blue outlining to show his X-Men uniform outline beneath the ice itself that forms all over the characters body.

Iced-Up Iceman comes packed with an ice-blast effect that makes it look as though ice is shooting out of his hand, as well as an ice-slide for him to ride on! It’s as if he’s surfing on ice itself! The ice-slide effect accessory is great, and easily one of the best things about this figure. It allows you to recreate all of those iconic comic book moments with Iceman sliding in to save the day on a wave of ice!

De-Iced Iceman, aka Bobby Drake, is probably my personal favorite version of the figure. He comes in a two-tone light blue uniform that looks great as a Minimate. It’s really nice to see him as just himself, as Bobby Drake is rarely presented as a figure in his non-iced form. He just looks really nice as a figure!

Bobby also comes packed with an ice-blast effect, so no worries, he can still freeze up some bad guys! Rather than an ice-slide effect, Bobby Drake comes packed with an ‘ice-up’ effect piece that allows you to make it look as though he is freezing himself up to turn into the iced version of Iceman, or you can put it on his enemies to make it look as though he is freezing them solid!

Personally, I’d say it’s really worth picking up both versions of this pack to get both Iceman variants. They’re both pretty cool in their own right, but the real clincher here is that they both have awesome accessories to make one solid Iceman experience. You can combine their items to have Iceman on an ice-slide with a two-handed ice-blast effect freezing a Sentinel into a block of ice! It’s not hard to see why these figures are going to be some of the most sought after of the set!

Sentinel

The Sentinel is arguably the perfect army-builder figure for any X-Men fans, so it’s great that he’s been packed in with not one, but two different figures in this wave of Minimates! The Sentinel itself is pretty basic in design, and DST didn’t stray to far from the formula on these guys.

The Sentinel’s look like their basic classic selves, although this new ones look a bit nicer than some of the previously released Sentinel figures from DST (not that those don’t also look awesome). It’s great to see that Diamond Select has decided to release a new mold for the Sentinels, rather than rehashing an old one. It’d be really easy to just re-release the same Sentinel figure over and over again, but as always, DST has gone a step beyond with this new sculpt! The glowy effects in their eyes look fantastic and capture the real essence of the Sentinels of the comics.

The Sentinels come packed with capture arm-tentacles that are removable if you don’t feel like using them. They also have a ‘rocket booster’ flight effect that makes it look as though they are blasting off and flying above the ground! These effects in particular are really nice.

Final Thoughts

Looking at this series as a whole, Diamond Select Toys has really blown it out of the park with this Wave 59 of Marvel Minimates! ‘All New X-Men’ was a great choice for a wave theme, and each of the characters was represented in the best way possible. It’s always fun to see the whole original team of X-Men in one wave of figures, and these new Minimates capture everything splendidly. My only gripe, if there had to be any, was the lack of any kind of jump stand for Beast (although I suppose Angel’s flight-stand doubles as a jump stand, but then Angel wouldn’t be able to fly). It’s sort of the trade off, some figures have AMAZING accessories and details (both versions of Iceman, Cyclops) while others get the short end of the stick (Angel and to a lesser extent, Beast).

Wave 59 of Marvel Minimates ‘All New X-Men’ is definitely a series worth picking up as a whole. If you’re only going to buy one set, make it the de-iced Iceman set, as he’s not likely to get another figure released of him anytime soon. That said, I’d highly recommend the entire wave here as a nice basic X-Men team for your collection!