Hasbro was still finding its footing when it released the Target-exclusive Red Hulk series in 2008. Sure, it was a huge improvement over their freshman efforts, but the company had yet to work out all the bugs… err, so to speak.
In a series that included long-demanded but relatively obscure characters like Union Jack and Adam Warlock, throwing in a version of Spider-Man probably seemed like a safe bet. After all, ol’ Web-Head is what the industry calls an “evergreen” property: the character is high-profile in the eyes of both the public and retail, and he sports a number of alternate looks that can be produced with simple paint applications. Basically all Hasbro needed to do was pop a new head on a decent base body and viola! Instant A-lister to anchor the series. Unfortunately, that was easier said than done in 2008.
Hasbro was still using its version of the ToyBiz Bullseye body when this particular figure was released. In fact, three of the six figures released in this wave were using it. Now, judicious reuse of previously sculpted parts can help ensure that your store-exclusive series comes in under budget, but when the parts are mediocre at best, the product will suffer. While Spidey looks good enough at first glance, there are issues that really hold the figure back.
For a start, the new head is tiny. There’s barely any differentiation between it and the neck, making our hero look more like a cotton ear swab than an actual human. Exacerbating this issue, the figure’s trapezius muscles are oddly sloped and draw attention to the substantial gap between them and the deltoids. Coupled with the weird butterfly articulation of the shoulders and the figure’s bull neck, and our ordinarily lithe and agile Spidey looks bunched up and slumped.
The torso is seriously overworked, with some painfully defined oblique muscles set up against a set of almost cartoonishly simple abs. All of this is stacked onto a comically underdetailed and oversized pelvis. Apparently Spidey has yet to graduate to big boy pants.
The legs are attached via a set of ball joints, but these ugly relics are de-emphasized by the figure’s all-black deco. The sculpt of the legs themselves is acceptable, but the weird fat calves are not. Thanks to the boot-top articulation, the slightest rotation away from their neutral placement misaligns the muscle grouping, throwing the whole sculpt out of whack. The ankles terminate in a goofy, featureless set of duck feet. In short, Hasbro’s Frankensteining of new and old parts results in a figure that’s not quite fish or fowl, but a freakish and ungainly combination of the two.
Spidey’s paint scheme is hit-or-miss, which is notable considering the bulk of the figure’s color comes from being molded in black plastic. The white eyes of the mask are cleanly done, but the large spider deco on his chest has some issues. The coverage above the torso crunch is good, but is weaker on the abs with some of the black plastic showing through. The edges of the spider’s legs get fuzzy towards the top of the chest with some chop along the aforementioned obliques.
The work on the back is even sloppier; the spider’s legs don’t line up along the torso seam and have some considerable smudging to boot. The figure was given a blue over-spray, but this was done without taking into account the movement of the limbs — turn an arm or leg slightly and it no longer lines up.
On the articulation front, Spidey is fairly standard for a figure from this period in Hasbro’s development. The figure’s head is a ball/hinge combo, but the neck is so thick the movement is inhibited. The shoulders are ball joints on a butterfly hinge, which allows for some characteristically spidery poses. There’s a swivel at the biceps, a double-hinge at the elbows, as well as glove-top swivels over hinged wrists.
The figure’s ab-crunch offers a nice range of movement downwards, but locks past the top set of ab muscles due to the sculpting of the back. The waist rotates, the hips combine a ball-joint over upper thigh swivels, with double knee hinges, boot-top swivels and hinged ankles. There’s no rocker joint in the ankles, meaning any deep stances Spidey takes are going to have him standing on the edges of his feet.
The Red Hulk was the BAF for this series, and Spidey came packed with the left arm. This series came right around the time the MSRP of Marvel Legends jumped to $14.99, so there was a lot of griping in the collector community about getting less for your dollar. Little did we know, huh? When all is said and done, this figure is was mediocre effort on Hasbro’s part, but it makes for an acceptable stand-in for the Eddie Brock “Spider-Man” persona from Norman Osborn’s Avengers team. At least, he’ll do until something better comes along.
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