Todd McFarlane is currently running a very successful Kickstarter where he funded a fully articulated Spawn figure faster than it takes to type out “Malebolgia.” Since this figure is essentially a super-updated version of the original Spawn figure, it felt like a good time to take a look at that first figure.
It’s impossible to talk about Spawn without talking about those early years in the history of Image Comics. The hype was huge, and inescapable. News about a brand new, creator-owned line of comics dominated the conversation everywhere, and when it arrived, it arrived hard. Like anything of that magnitude, it didn’t come without its share of drama, upheaval and backlash, but there was a definite excitement in the air.
I was at the right age to be susceptible to the hype, and I bought into this brand new world, scooping up those ballyhooed titles and feeling a pang of excitement to be in on the ground floor of something new. It didn’t take long for the excitement to dry up and for me to drop them, but I stuck with it for a little longer than a year. As with any comic universe, there was some good, some bad, and some baffling. In the end, it was an ambitious effort that paid off well and much of it has become a solid part of comics history.
Spawn was one of the larger success stories. The comic continues to this day, breaking all kinds of records and expectations, and Spawn became a multimedia success, spreading to animation, movies, toys, and merchandise out the ass. The basic Spawn figure branched out into variation after variation, all raising the bar for toy sculpture.
In 1994 the only toyline I was collecting was the five-inch ToyBiz Marvel stuff. The heyday of the 80s was over, and there was enough going on in the Marvel line that it took all of my attention. There were enough Spider-Man, X-Men and splinter line that I was more than getting my toy fix. That’s not to say I didn’t pick up a stray something or other here or there, but those were one-and-dones. The bulk of my toy shopping was Marvel five-inchers.
When the first Spawn figure came along, it intrigued me enough to pick one up. I hadn’t collected the comic in quite a while, but I still liked the overall look and concept. Despite being very much “of the 90s,” it still manages to be an oddly timeless design, even with the spikes and the chains. I wasn’t a diehard Spawn fan, but more of an appreciator. When something makes as much of an impact as Spawn, you can’t help but respect it for what it it. Plus, once again, it was something new. Much like when the comics started, it felt kind of cool getting in on the ground floor of something again: a brand new toy company.
The figure itself is a good looking example of where toys were in 1994. It has the limited yet standard articulation of the time, featuring a swivel neck, shoulders and hips, along with single jointed knees. In hindsight, this articulation scheme is unbelievably frustrating and limits pretty much anything cool and Spawn-like you’d want to do with him, but at the time it was the expectation for mass-market action figures. Oddly enough, it was a precursor to the limited articulation scheme that would be found in many many years worth of Spawn toys.
There’s something very simple but eyecatching about the Spawn design, and the toy does a good job in its simplicity. It features rubbery chains that peg into a skull at his waist, and an oversized cape. The figure is well sculpted, with the traditional thick chested hero proportions of the time. The paint is overall fairly clean, except for an off-center green smudge in one of his eyes that I didn’t notice until I was taking pictures of him.
The cape is the star of the show here. It’s a well-sculpted and eye-catching thing that gets across the fluid and dynamic nature of Spawn’s cape very well. Spawn himself is dwarfed by the cape. He’s basically a cape support system, which is, again, pretty accurate to the comics. The cape features a pair of seams that should allow you to “pose” it, but I’ve never done much of that, not wanting to stress the plastic and have it eventually rip.
Even with that mammoth cape, he actually balances quite well if you tilt him forward at the waist a bit. He spent some time in the mid-90s being displayed on a shelf somewhere before being shuffled off into storage.
His only accessory was a chunk of wood with a nail in it. This specific chunk of wood was originally part of the Titanic, and washed ashore after making a deal with the devil in order to take revenge on everything that has terrorized pieces of wood, from wood chippers, belt sanders to toothpick factories. Eternally bonded with a demonic nail called “Horny”, the chunk of wood and Spawn ran across each other and decided to join forces against the forces of evil and power saws.
Since I always like to have a villain with my good guys, I did end up getting the bendy Violator figure to go with Spawn, but that’s where my Spawn toy purchases ended. Other than the earliest wave of Movie Maniacs figures featuring Jason and Freddy and others, I didn’t purchase another McFarlane figure until the Fortnite line. I’ll be putting some money into this Kickstarter though just to be able to buy an updated, upgraded version of this original figure. It only makes sense.
