At first glance, Sony’s recent reboot of their ailing Spider-Man franchise appeared to be nothing more than minor cosmetic changes designed to differentiate between old and new product. (You don’t want to be the kid giving away last year’s superhero valentines, trust me!)
In 2012, Spidey inherited a comic-specific adjective (“Amazing”) and a surprisingly off-model costume featuring golden eyes and silver booties. Thankfully, the makers of The Amazing Spider-Man 2 opted to ditch these uncharacteristic design elements and give fans a web-slinger that hews much closer to his classic comic-book roots. Hasbro celebrates Spidey’s return with this new line that mixes movie and comic-themed figures.
With a new line comes a new sculpt. It’s nice to be able to say that instead of commenting on parts reusage. This Spider-Man is slender; on his own it’s noticeable, but when he’s placed next to another figure it’s appreciable.
Get this guy a protein shake! As you can see, his arms have no discernible muscle tone. Aside from the inside of the bicep, there’s zero definition. Yeah, Spidey is a smaller guy, but his complete lack of shaping here is just unusual. By contrast, the figure’s legs are nicely muscled. The blue areas of the suit feature the sort of repeating texture common to superhero costumes of the big screen, while the red sections are smooth with recessed webbing.
Spidey gets a great head sculpt. The mask’s design is much closer to the comics this time around, with its tight webbing and wide, expressive eyes. More importantly, the proportions are spot-on. Many a serviceable Spidey figure has been ruined by a poorly sized head, so it’s good to see things work out here. I’m not sure how stuffing this into a mask gets you this, but with all superhero premises, suspension of disbelief is key.
Spidey has some weird hips. The problem is easily hidden during posing, but head-on there’s a noticeable gap. Considering their ball-shape, it appears as though the legs should be recessed deeper into the pelvis. The problem seems to be that the pelvis area is too narrow to hold a post long enough to keep the legs parallel. If the hips were set any deeper they’d jut out to the sides, like this poor sap:
With any Spider-Man figure, the real story is the articulation. Spidey has the standard Hasbro ball neck, hinged pectorals, ball-hinge shoulders, rotating biceps, double-hinged elbows, and swivel hinged wrists. There’s a torso hinge, a swivel waist, ball hips, swivel thighs, double-jointed knees, boot swivels, and hinged rockers in the feet.
The pecs are divisive. Their odd shaping breaks up the sculpt and the exposed hinge is distracting. Coupled with the hip issue, Spidey looks overly tall and gangly when he’s just standing around. Fortunately, “just standing around” isn’t one of his character traits. The joints are nice and tight and allow for lots of character-specific poses. The ab-crunch is a little restrictive, but everything else works well.
Spidey’s paint looks okay at first glance, but a closer look reveals some weakness. The figure’s torso has almost no black paint in the sculpted webbing. Natural light helps cheat this by creating shadows, but under bright light it’s more obvious.
The spider symbol is nice and sharp, as is the work around the eyes. There’s no bleed between the reds and blues, which is impressive. These sharp lines compliment the figure’s slender sculpt, giving Spidey some visual oomph.
The choice to mold the arm pins and shoulder hinges in red is frustrating. Mattel showed it was possible to combine two differently colored plastics when it produced the green/yellow power battery in the Toys R Us exclusive DC Universe Classics Hal Jordan vs.Thaal Sinestro 2-pack. Why isn’t Hasbro doing it here? It may seem trivial, but with these figures now costing $20 each, every effort should be made to improve the product.
$20 is a considerable jump from the $15 toy stores were charging for recent 6-inch figures. What does the extra $5 get us? For a start, it allows full-sized Build-a-Figures to return. Spidey gets Ultimate Goblin’s arm and some clip-on fire. They’re nice, but the real story are Spidey’s add-ons.
For a character who climbs, punches, and swings from web-lines, extra hands are essential. Surprisingly, this may be one of the first times Spidey has ever been given a set. Sculpted into the now-iconic “thwipping” pose, the hands provide needed some much-needed options.
It’s nice not to have to chose between set one or the other, and even better not to suffer a figure that splits the difference. As it is, Spidey can throw punches when he’s winning and swing away when he’s losing.
In spite of being a “movie” figure, this is perhaps the best classic Spider-Man figure Hasbro has given us to date. I know he’s replacing my old ToyBiz version on the shelf — but only time will tell if he sticks.
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Jason R Mink is the Man in the Anthill