Enter: Sandman.
After two attempts at Sandman that were both too large for my personal preference, Hasbro is back at it with a third Sandman, this time using that boon to Shirt and jeans dudes, the Netflix Luke Cage body. And this time, Sandman is just the right size.
I liked the Toybiz Sandman quite a lot, because it managed to be free of annoying action features and was just a very well done Sandman figure. But it also has all the trappings of sculpt and articulation of the time. It was time for a new one. It was time for this one.
I didn’t really mind the previous Hasbro attempts, at least to varying degrees. There was a little weirdness towards the boxset one that was depicted as fully sandy, since there was no texture to the body and so it ended being a brownscale Sandman figure. But it was good enough to depict Sandman as if he was just turning his body into sand.
The regular version had the trademark striped shirt and regular colors, but again, it was just too big for my personal “neutral” preferences. He’s a sand dude and can increase his size, but I like having figures in a neutral state.
This figure finally pulls it all together and gives me exactly what I wanted; a neutral Sandman with swappable effects pieces that allow you to portray his power set. I love that they made Hydro Man, but if I could have anything different on that figure its for his powers to be portrayed with optional effect pieces.
This is an excellent “shirt and jeans” body and has the appropriate look and size when put up against a Spider-Man figure. The articulation is all excellent, with decent elbows and knees, adequate hips and a good crunch. Despite the additional weight from the effect pieces, he balances nicely.
The effects pieces are pretty clever, and do well to show off his power. There’s a separate sand piece that pops onto each forearm, and then the hands swap out with either a large spiked sand mace or a big sand fist.
Sandman comes with two different heads, and this might be the only thing that I have a slight quibble with. The regular head is an angry, teeth bearing head, where he looks pretty pissed. And there’s an alternate head with a hole punched into the side. The hole itself is sized almost perfectly to slip the recent retro Spider-man wrist into, and then the hand can be popped on, to make it look like Spider-Man has just punched through Sandman’s head. People have questioned the bored look on his face, but to me it’s more the calm, pissed off look of somebody who is annoyed that this asshole just punched a hole in his face. Of course, now Sandman has hardened the density of his head and Spider-man is trapped, so he’s going to beat the bejeebles out of him at close range. I’m pretty okay with the expression being on the calmer side.
However, having been introduced to Sandman way back in his first appearance (okay, I’m not that old, but I read the original story in the Marvel Tales reprint series and it was my first contact with the character) I’d loved to have gotten a cocky smirk head for him. It’s the kind of douchebag grin a dude made of sand that thinks himself untouchable has until Spider-man…vacuums him up.
Literally.
Sandman was spring-cleaned.
It was the 60s.
Other than that, I love getting what I feel is an excellent version of one of Spider-Man’s villains.
