Originally posted by Darth Thor
Were they? Remember the Mark 42 getting smashed by a bus? Or was it a train?
It was a truck.
Mk42 also crashed into pieces while flying to Tony in the climax. Even in its first scene it broke apart when one of the pieces came and attached too fast. Then that kid broke off one of the fingers. Tony himself smashed it into pieces, though you could say the last two happened when the armor was powered down.
But funnily enough, when the terrorists attacked Tony's house it tanked gunship bullets, concrete blocks falling on it, the gunship exploding near it and then falling into the sea and the debris falling on it. It also protected Tony from handgun fire with no power.
The armors in IM3 varied wildly. Like when one armor Tony was trying to get into got skewered by a thrown metal pipe, but then another one tanked another Extremis guy throwing a metal pipe no problem. One armor got its arms and head torn off by a single guy each, while another one's faceplate was barely broken off by three of them doing it together. The armor which got both arms torn off fired a unibeam at one Extremis guy who was barely knocked back, while another armor oneshotted two of them at the same time with a unibeam. One red armor Tony called to fight Killian got wrecked pretty easily while the next silver one lasted longer. That silver armor also tanked one of its own repulsors to the face no damage.
Talking about tanking own repulsors, the Mk4 in Iron Man 2 came off worse than Mk2 when tanking that repulsor explosion. Tony in Mk4 was also hurt when a firecracker hit his face. But Mk6 tanked the repulsor explosion no problem.