I’m not a huge superhero guy, but if I had to pick a favorite, Spider-Man’s my pick for Marvel, and maybe my favorite by default. I’m not totally sure why, but maybe it has something to do with his having a pretty good track record of movies, or, more likely, the 90’s cartoon just being something I watched a lot of at the time. Seriously, check out this opening, though, it rules. The sheer density of explosions, and the slick electric guitar solo that finishes the thing off is laser-targeted to make a young child get hyped:
Anyway, enough about the 90’s. Let’s talk about when I went back to the 60’s. While I was on vacation this summer, I brought along a Penguin Classics volume of the earliest Spider-Man comics, and found them surprisingly engaging, once you attuned yourself to their sensationalist, hyperbolic wavelength. In fact, they were good enough to make me decide to go after a “first appearance” Spider-Man figure. It’s a testament to how great his costume design is that it hasn’t changed much over the years, or across media, but the earliest issues did do two things differently: His blue suit elements were actually black (this changed to blue without comment after a few issues, I like to imagine the suit faded in the wash), and he had these odd-looking webs underneath his arms (according to my research, those actually stuck around for quite a long time).
The book in question, with the look on the cover.
Luckily, it’s the 60th anniversary of Spider-Man right about now, so there’s a couple versions of this early design out there on the market, called “Amazing Fantasy Spider-Man,” after the magazine his first story appeared in. There’s a big six-inch Marvel Legend…which is either sold out, or hasn’t yet been released in Canada (I’m not used to hunting non-Transformers things), and there’s this little guy, part of the “Marvel Legends Retro Collection,” a series of 3.75 inch figures (so, Star Wars and GI Joe Scale), that say “Kenner” on the box, and are meant to look like vintage action figures, but aren’t actually based on any specific retro toyline. The idea seems to be “ReAction Figures are popular, let’s get in on this.”
Comics and comic-related media chasing trends? Who’d’ve thunk it!
Right off the top, I’ll go ahead and say that this guy’s overpriced, with my local Comic Shop selling him for about $16 Canadian, and the price of this line sometimes going even higher, depending on the retailer. But, well, he looked nice, so I made an impulse buy. So, let’s see how he holds up.
Let’s pretend he’s sealed here.
Before I start, shout-out to this really cool packaging, with a big replica of the Amazing Fantasy cover he’s based on. But, as you’ll see as we go along, there’s a downside to this: I think they seriously thought I was going to leave him in this nice packaging.
The Sculpt
Sure, he looks good *now.*
This Spider-Man’s only slightly shorter than my Power of the Force 2 Empire Strikes Back Luke Skywalker, so you know the scale he’s in.
Luke’s only marginally less of a dork.
Spidey’s completely neutrally pre-posed, there’s no action sculpts going on here, which is how I prefer my figures, honestly. He does feel less bulky, and more slim than most of the figures in this scale that I own, but Spider-Man’s always been more of a lanky athlete, so it fits the character. I particularly like that he’s got defined muscles on him, but they didn’t make him overly-shredded in that way so many heroes tend to be.
I’d say he’s got a swimmer’s build.
To their credit, they didn’t just sculpt a featureless, blank body and let the deco do the work. For example, his eyes are properly sculpted into his head as raised pieces, and not just painted on.
Admittedly, I kind of wish this was sculpted to be the vintage design a little more specifically.
Meanwhile, his left hand is a fist with a hole for gripping accessories (not that he has any), and his right hand is posed in his throwing-up-the-horns web-shooting gesture, which is a good compromise.
It’s also the only pre-battle Tokusatsu pose he can do.
What isn’t a good compromise is how they handled those armpit webs, as you can see above, and it’s here that the whole figure comes apart for me. In the package, they look fine, but as soon as you pose him, you see the problem: They’re sculpted into his forearms, so the second you move his shoulders, they detach from the torso and hang off of his arms, like clunky-looking versions of Batman’s forearm-spikes.
“Well, this is awkward.”
It’s just…not a good look, no matter how you slice it.
“No, that doesn’t work, either.”
I’m not a toy designer, but my reflex would have been to either sculpt them so they’re attached to his torso instead, so they stay under his arms even when those arms are moved, or else just make them removable accessories, so they don’t have to stay stuck to his arms (I understand the 6-inch figure handles them this way). It smacks of the designers assuming I was going to keep him packaged, and never move those arms, so they didn’t need to actually make it work. That, and this is apparently a simple retool of the Spider-Man this Retro line already did, so these webs were seemingly added via replacing just the forearms, so it feels like they took the easiest way out possible, again, because I wasn’t supposed to unbox him.
The Deco
In this issue: The Rhino becomes a hero, to help Spider-Man take on the Scorpion!
On the flipside, his deco is basically flawless, nothing was skipped. It’s the same Spider-Man suit colors everyone knows, only the undertones are black instead of blue, which, outside of being an early comics reference, just looks a little bit nicer to me. He’s got painted netting all over his body, white eyes with a black border, and a blue spider logo on back, to contrast the black one on his chest (an argument for taking him out of the box: Why would they paint a blue logo on his back that would otherwise be invisible?).
JurassicWorld.jpg
Meanwhile, the cursed arm webbing is white with black lines. Again, I’ll admit, the whole paint job’s pretty impressive for a figure this size (and for his price tag, it better be).
Build Quality
“Stand back, small, rubbery child.”
This is another part of the figure that’s weird, and a little off-putting, in terms of the materials he’s made out of. Basically, his extremities are rubber, or just soft-rubbery-feeling plastic. His forearms and hands, shins and feet, and head are all made of this soft material. I’ve never seen this kind of material used on a 3.75 inch figure before, it’s odd, and disconcerting.
It’s soft enough that this toothy fellow wants a big bite.
The only upshot to it is that his accessory-holding hand can grasp a wide variety of objects, due to how flexible it is.
It turns out his Spider-Sense makes him really good at this, and Ben’s having second thoughts over who he should mentor.
He’s actually getting ready to web Vader’s face and run.
Beyond that, his torso and non-forelimbs are solid, at least, and he’s good at staying standing, despite including pegholes on his feet for (non-included) figure stands.
A graceful landing!
Articulation
Shockingly, this isn’t just a barebones five points of articulation. He’s got the usual hips, shoulders and head, but, in a twist, he also includes swiveling forearms, right where the plastic/rubber split is.
The better to shot web with.
It’s a good bonus, because you can kinda-sorta rotate those pesky webs out of the way, and pose his web-shooting hand in different ways. I really wish his lower legs had the same swiveling feature, since the same plastic/rubber split is present. Outside of that, the only other thing to note about his articulation is that his legs can move backwards, unlike Super 7’s Hot Rod and Galvatron, so Spidey can do the splits.
POV: You’ve just challenged Spider-Man to a dance battle.
The theme from Flashdance is playing.
Overall
I was hoping this guy would impress me more, but sadly, he doesn’t, and I keep coming back to him just not being worth the price tag. If he was like, ten dollars or less, maybe, but there’s just not enough going on here to justify the inflated cost, and that’s before getting into the design problems he also has.
“Come back! Us Marvel folks need to stick together!” “Call me when you’re legally able to mention me in your comics.”
Between the rubbery limbs, and, most heinously, the fact that the underarm webs just straight up look bad in any pose but neutral, this feels like it was designed to never be removed from the packaging. That’s hugely disappointing, because I’m not into figures that aren’t designed to be played with. Maybe I’ll have better luck with the 6-incher, if I can ever find it. As for this guy, I guess he’ll hang out among my 3.75 figures, and I’ll try to ignore the fact that his arms have to stay down to look decent. At least he made for some fun photos.
“You were expecting another Black Cat, comrade?” “Y…N…You know what, never mind.”
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