Iron Man 3 Assemblers Striker Iron Man action figure review

The incredibly popular Iron Man movie series has spawned some pretty neat looking movie armors. Striker Iron Man is one of the new suits that you actually see in the movie's final battle and is a construction suit of sorts with two jackhammer arm attachments. We now have a figure of him and it's part of the Assembler series where you can mix and match all four limbs and heads of the figures to create different combinations. Packaging is the same as all the other Assembler figures and you may miss the new series if you don't look closely as they're just now hitting. How will Striker strike you as a figure? Let's find out.

Sculpting for Striker Iron Man is pretty decent. The head looks detailed with the armored tech plates on it as does the chest with the arc reactor partially protected by the breastplate sections. The arms have large jackhammer units permanently attached there and while the sculpt is a little soft looking they still look pretty dangerous. Unfortunately these aren't the super detailed super articulated Iron Man 2 movie figures as Big Retail has dictated to toy companies they want lower a lower unit cost and they had to cut just about every corner there was to cut. Still the legs/feet look neat with their knight-armor scaled sections and large heft to them.

Articulation is immediately disappointing as is the case with all the Assemblers so far with one exception that I'll get to later. Striker has a ball head, ball shoulders, T-crotch hips, and thaaaaat's it. We're back to 1980's articulation folks and it's that way with all of the Hasbro/Mattel movie-themed 'kids lines'. His head is the only thing that can give him personality when posing and since his jackhammer arms are slightly bent they can't even be aligned for a punch. Striker's jackhammers are glued on to the arms so in theory a customizer could tear them off and affix them to other more articulated arms.

Paint application is general mass-market quality with some sparkly darker gunmetal sections, green ports, and the bright yellow arms. The black caution stripes are cleanly applied as is most everything but there's some bleed or transparency to the yellow here and there. Striker's base plastic is a really nice dark silver which feels the same as what the Iron Man Legends figures are made of.

Action features for this line are "25+ interchangeable armor combinations" according to the package. The head, arms, and legs are all easily removable and can be swapped among the figures. However because this is a kid's line the legs and arms come off very easily and will do so just posing him. You also get two extra arms and two plug-on missile attachments. The missiles are nice looking and could be used for anything. They plug on to the arms, legs, or back.

The accessories are those two arms and the missiles. One of the arms looks like a Gatling wrist cannon and the other one looks like a Plasma blade from the Halo series and even has the crackling energy around it. It also has an elbow joint. Yep. Why only one arm? It allows Striker (or whoever you affix it to) the extra posing options but no other limb does. The arms have paint bleed from the black/white/gold contrasting paints especially the Plasma-arm.

So what's the verdict here? If you're building a movie-themed Armor Vault he is one of the onscreen suits you saw and standing still looks pretty neat. I actually like the fact you can swap everything out and 'customize' your looks. But the lack of joints really kills this line especially since here we see they can add them. If you're looking for Striker to customize his parts onto a better body you can snag him from Amazon pretty cheap along with other new Assemblers like the cool looking Crosscut Iron Man. Hasbro, if you're listening, we would buy the hell out of these if they were only decently made (or just make a 6" line for us!) because these designs are just eye candy.