Did not expect.
The concept of the Spider-Mobile is been a funky, wacky piece of comic history that has taken on a weird life of its own. What may have once been thought of as a one-off gag, the Spider-Mobile refuses to stay rooted to its 70s origin.
Created by Peter Parker and Johnny Storm, the original Spider-Mobile didn’t last long. But some concepts are too awesome to die. They grow. They expand. And eventually, if you’re lucky, they become sentient.
More on that later.
Disney’s Toybox line has been something that existed on the periphery of my knowledge without me feeling the need to really take a hard look at. Despite how it seems, I can’t buy everything, and these looked a little too kid-aimed to really appeal to me, with stripped down designs and limited articulation. Now, I say that having grown up with toys that had five points of articulation, so there is the knowledge there that kid-me would have killed for toys this articulated. But I’ve been spoiled by Marvel Legends, so I had no interest.
Until I saw the Spider-Mobile.
I knew the Toybox figures were smaller than ML figures, so I waited until I saw a few size reference shots. It looked halfway decent, and the Disney Store was running on of their sales, so I took the gamble. Despite a fervent hope, I am pretty sure that Hasbro will not be cranking out a Spider-Mobile of their own, and this one looked pretty damned good.
Being the brainless simpleton that I am, I grabbed a Toybox Boba Fett to go with my Spider-Mobile purchase. Might as well make the shipping worth it, I thought. It’s Boba, I could stay with one.
Yeah, so I ended up buying the rest of the Star Wars OT Toybox offerings after having Boba in hand. The damn things are pretty cool.
But that’s an entirely different psychiatric bill. The main point was the Spider-Mobile.
This is a damn fine automobile.
For the strictly Toybox crowd, it’s a total winner. This is one of those things that should be sitting underneath the Christmas tree of every junior (and in many cases, senior) Marvel fan out there. Kids should be racing this thing across the living room carpet, dodging shredded wrapping paper and scaring the family dog. Little Timmybilly should be driving his parent’s nuts with the push-button sounds.
But for the Marvel Legends crowd that are in the market for a Spider-Mobile, you could do a lot worse.
The vehicle itself is nice and sturdy. The wheels roll smoothly, and two buttons, located on the hood, that activate the sound chips are inconspicuous. One button gives you a handful of Spider-Man phrases (“My Spider-sense is tingling,”), and the other button gives you some vehicle sounds: an engine starting, some skidding tires, a zooming noise. They’re quite loud. I accidentally hit the buttons a few times while I was taking pictures and scared the crap out of myself.
The only bummer is that the headlights come on while the noises are activated, but turn off when they’re done. I wish there was a way to have the headlights independent of the sounds, but then I guess that would kill the batteries.
It also has a real working winch in the back that retracts with the push of a button. The rope is very short.
The detailing is very nice, even if fairly simple. I don’t plan to, but I’d imagine if somebody wanted to paint the sculpted web-lines black it would really take the overall appearance to the next level. Even more if they wanted to give it a few more “metallic” touches, some grime, a bit of weathering or scuffing. But it’s perfectly fine as is, which is how I intend to leave it.
The included Spider-Man fits in very well, obviously. Spider-Man himself is articulated nicely, with a ball jointed head, disc-jointed shoulders and hips, swivel-hinge elbows and knees, hinged wrists and ankles and a waist swivel. You can’t go super-nuts Spider-man crazy with him, but it’s better than I was expecting.
But if you’re like me, you’ll be buying this to use for the Marvel Legends Spider-Man. Surprisingly, despite the slight cartoony nature of it, it fits right in, mainly because the original Spider-Mobile design is so over the top as it is.
The “Pizza” Spider-Man does fit inside. He looks very slightly oversized, but it’s not deal-breakingly so, especially since buggies like this are pretty form fitting. You’ll have to do some creative bending of the legs to get them to fit in there. But it can be done. I was pretty satisfied with how everything looked once he was inside.
A smaller, teen-sized figure like Miles Morales will fit in even better. There was a smaller “Ultimate”
Spider-Man that used the teen body, (I have it somewhere, I just couldn’t find it for the photo shoot) that might look even better than the full sized Pizza Spidey.
Bonus: if you’re building a Spider-verse shelf, you’ll need this to fit in as—and I want to pause right here to make sure you’re paying attention to a name that is so awesome I want to marry it—the sentient, Speed Buggy-ish Spider-Mobile with the secret Identity of “Peter Parkedcar.”
Peter Parkedcar.
Peter Parkedcar!!!
That is canon.
Comics are awesome.
But yes, there is an alternate Marvel earth where Spider-Man is a sentient vehicle, so this will fill out that shelf nicely. An as a bonus if you’re into the whole Peter Parkedcar thing is you don’t have to worry about the size of the driver…it can just drive itself.
The Spider-Mobile is roomy enough so you can fit two side by side. Again, slightly cramped, but not terrible. Perfect for date night with MJ.
If you can’t tell by now, for 25 dollars, I am very pleased with this purchase. While I wouldn’t say no to an official Marvel Legends Spider-Mobile from Hasbro, that urge has diminished quite a bit with the purchase of this one.
This is currently available at shopdisney.com
