Sealed Judgment: Onslaught — Finally the One I Wanted

I have wanted this version of Onslaught for a very long time. Not just an Onslaught. I already had one of those. What I wanted was the huge red-and-purple monster who looked like Magneto had been redesigned by someone who thought Magneto simply wasn't badass enough. The classic Onslaught design is pure mid-'90s Marvel excess, and I mean that as a compliment. Oversized armor, enormous shoulder pieces, that helmet and enough red and purple to make subtlety completely irrelevant. Hasbro finally put that version on an oversized Uncanny X-Men retro card, and before we go any further with this Sealed Judgment, I can save you some suspense: I love it.

Onslaught himself came from one of the darker moments in the relationship between Professor Charles Xavier and Magneto. After Magneto ripped the adamantium from Wolverine during Fatal Attractions, Xavier entered Magneto's mind and psychically shut him down. The darkness Xavier encountered there mixed with his own suppressed anger and eventually became Onslaught, a psionic entity containing the worst parts of both men. Marvel kept escalating the threat until Onslaught was powerful enough to pull the Avengers, Fantastic Four and much of the Marvel Universe into the fight, culminating in the 1996 Onslaught story that led directly into Heroes Reborn.

My history with the Marvel Legends version goes back to the Toy Biz figure from 2006. Onslaught was the Build-A-Figure for Marvel Legends Series 13, and Toy Biz did something that disappointed me immediately: they made his later monstrous form instead of the classic armored version. The figure itself was ambitious, with 39 points of articulation and a sculpt that still looks appropriately huge and bizarre, but it wasn't the Onslaught I wanted. Even contemporary collector coverage acknowledged that frustration because Toy Biz had chosen the character's later appearance rather than the design most associated with him.

The funny thing is that I eventually learned to love the crab. That strange second form stopped being the figure I had settled for and became my Onslaught. Then I got divorced, the collection got broken up and he was sold. Hasbro took another shot at the character in 2016 with the Red Onslaught Build-A-Figure, and later included a classic Magneto-style Onslaught head with Kitty Pryde that could be attached to that body. It was a clever way to finally give collectors something much closer to the classic version, but I never got it.

That brings me to 2026. Hasbro has essentially taken that later Onslaught body, given it the classic red-and-purple presentation it always deserved and put it on a giant retro Uncanny X-Men card. The figure stands about eight inches tall and originally retailed for $39.99 as a Target release. This isn't Hasbro completely reinventing Onslaught with brand-new modern engineering, and collectors who open everything may have more to say about that. I'm looking at something different. I'm looking at an enormous classic Onslaught staring through a clear bubble surrounded by one of the best packaging presentations Hasbro has given Marvel Legends in a while.

Getting mine became more involved than simply stopping at Target after work. There wasn't one available anywhere near me. The closest store showing one was more than an hour away in Historic Colonial Williamsburg, Virginia, so my beautiful wife and I decided we were going to get Onslaught and make a day out of it. We ate some mediocre barbecue, took the ferry across the James River, saw the Jamestown landing and drove through a tunnel under the Chesapeake Bay. It became one of those days where the thing you originally left the house to do stops being the most important part of the day. Still important though, very important.

That matters to me when I look at this figure now. The original Onslaught started as a disappointment, became something I eventually loved and then disappeared along with a lot of other things during a rough part of my life. This one came home at the end of a wonderful day with my wife. I know none of that changes the sculpt, paint or articulation, but collecting has never really been just about sculpt, paint and articulation for me. Sometimes an object ends up carrying the day you found it, the person you were with and whatever else happened along the way. This Onslaught already does.

It also helps that Hasbro absolutely nailed the sealed presentation. The giant yellow-and-green Uncanny X-Men logo dominates the top of that deep red card, the Marvel Comics corner box immediately sells the retro look, and the illustrated Onslaught artwork running beside the bubble makes the whole thing feel much closer to a piece of comic-book art than ordinary action-figure packaging. Then there's Onslaught himself. He's large enough to fill the blister instead of getting swallowed by it, and the red armor against those massive purple shoulders gives the entire package ridiculous shelf presence. Even the back works, switching into the cleaner modern Marvel Legends presentation while giving Onslaught room to dominate that side too.

There's also something satisfying about finally getting the Onslaught I wanted twenty years ago without having to build him one limb at a time or buy another figure just to get the correct head. Hasbro didn't create the ultimate all-new Onslaught here, and I'm not going to pretend they did. What they did was take a good existing foundation, finally present it as the classic character and understand that for a release like this the packaging is part of the collectible. As a sealed piece, this is exactly what I wanted Onslaught to be. The crab and I eventually made peace, but he was never this guy. This is the Onslaught I saw in my head when I heard the name, and it took me twenty years, a trip to Williamsburg and some thoroughly average barbecue to finally put him on my shelf.

If you want another Marvel Legends figure that works unusually well as a sealed display piece, my Sealed Judgment on Skaar is sitting right next to this one in Collector's Corner. They are very different figures, but both show how much the package itself can matter when the box is staying closed.