Hasbro has some something similar here, but used one corner instead of
the entire bottom section. You'll have to be very careful to pull it
off successfully, but these can be removed and replaced if you want it bad
enough.
Sculpting - Spidey ***; Doc Ock, Venom **1/2
The Spider-man is easily my favorite sculpt of the three. The style
might not be to everyone's taste however, particularly with the oversized
head.
I like the angular sharp lines, and the scale is 6", rather than the
obnoxious 5" movie scale. Peter, behing a junior high kid in this
show, stands 5 1/2" tall. Yea, he's big for his age. He's
also taller than the other two, although they are both crouched.
The webbing lines on his suit are all sculpted in, and there's no
texturing to the blue areas. The body proportions fit the style of the
show, with a large head, hands and feet and thin sharply muscled body, but I
think it's an interesting look that works fine.
My biggest sculpt issue with Spidey is his hands. The right hand is
in the traditional web pose of course, but his left is in a gripping pose,
very much like a gun hand. Both hands are sculpted palm up, and
there's no way to turn them. No bicep cut, no wrist joint, zippo.
While that leaves one good pose for the left hand - "ptthbbtt" - it
leaves really nothing for the right. Perhaps that hand is supposed to
look like he's got that web hand loaded, cocked and just about ready to
fire...but it ends up looking dopey in just about every pose.
When checking out Venom and Doc Ock, the first question that came to mind
is "what happened to the head sculpts?". The character designs for
these two have clearly changed - radically.
In the case of Venom, that's not a good thing. The head sculpt on
the back of the package looks terrific - the one on the figure looks like a
smooshed beetle. There's something about the jutting lower jaw, narrow
head and nubby teeth that takes all the bite out of his appearance.
He has the reverse head/body proportions from Spidey, with a tiny head on
a huge, heavily muscled body. He's sculpted into a deep crouching
stance, but surprisingly enough, he stands fine on his own. It's in
one stance only, but the huge feet keep him quite stable.
The technical execution of Venom's sculpt is fine, but the design of that
goofy head just ruins the figure for me. Venom, in his deep crouch,
stands about 5" tall.
Doc Ock actually gets better points because of the design change.
On the back of the package, the head sculpt looks like it belongs in an
animated version of an Old Navy commercial, with tussled hair and upper
middle class good looks. But the final head sculpt has a very sharp
definition, with a smooth hair cut and hard lines around the jaw and nose.
It's still not a terrific look for Ock, but it's certainly better than the
original design.
My problems with Ock are less around the head and more around the body.
He has less articulation than the others, so you're pretty much stuck with
the sculpted stance. The wide stance with the huge feet have him
almost in Rescue Hero land. He's not quite there, but he's bought a
ticket for the bus.
But if those were the only problems, I would have given this guy another
half star in the category. Nope, I had one more major issue that
pulled him down.
His tentacles have a pretty interesting action feature that involves
little cables inside each arm, designed to close the pincers. However,
the arms aren't bendy, or articulated, which means that you're pretty much
stuck with the sculpted pose unless you resort to the hot water/cold water
treatment. The tentacles come out of the package flat against each
other in a truly uninteresting pose.
And Doc Ock is also crouched, coming in at about 5" tall. His
crouch isn't nearly as deep as Venom's though, and he's really more in a 5"
scale - or a really, really short man. With Peter supposedly in Junior
High School, and still as tall or taller than this guy, he's pretty short.
Paint - Spidey ***1/2; Venom ***; Doc Ock **1/2
The paint work on all three of these is mass market expected.
There isn't too much slop, but the number of ops are fairly minimal, there's
plastic molded in the color where possible (like the blue on Spider-man's
costume), and bright solid colors are the predominate feature.
Spider-man's web lines are fairly well done, with only a little slop here
and there or the occasionally missed section. The eyes aren't bright
white, with a bit of a greenish tinge to them, and the red spider on his
back is a bit more Egyptian beetle than mutated spider, but it's done
cleanly.
Venom has a very clean paint application, with each of the ops done
fairly precise. The white is particularly impressive, with clean
symbols on the back and front, as well as nicely done eyes and claws.
My biggest issue with Venom is one of style, not execution. You may
not have this same issue, since it depends more on taste, but I'm not
feeling the bright metallic blue highlighting. Calling it highlighting
is even a bit of a misnomer, since there's so much of it. And it's so
metallic. He looks like a 1982 Special Edition Firebird I once owned.
I loved that color on my car. Not so much on my super villain.
But Ock gets the worst paint score. As I mentioned earlier, some of
the colors are molded plastic, but on the other two it's not as obvious an
issue. With Ock, his green suit (the majority of his outfit) is molded
green, with that shiny finish that you always end up with when you skip the
paint. His face and hands are molded in flesh, his tentacles are
molded in gray...all of this gives him a much cheaper appearance.
Articulation - Spidey ***; Venom **1/2; Doc Ock **
If you're expecting Marvel Legends levels of articulation, you'll be
disappointed. These have more than the basic five points, but there
are some important omissions.
Spidey has a neck joint that might be a ball joint up under that big
head, but works like a cut joint. There's no tilting or
forward/backward movement here. He has ball jointed shoudlers, but
they are only jointed on the torso side, so the arm itself can turn relative
to the ball. The hips are true ball joints with joints on both sides
of the ball, thank goodness. The elbows and knees are single pin
joints, and there's the familar 'rocker' pin joint at the chest. It
rocks about as much as your Grandma though, and works more like a cut joint.
He does hold poses well though, and the joints are tight but fluid.
The huge omissions are the cut wrists and cut biceps (or adding the joint on
the other side of the ball shoulder). Without these, the hand arm
positions are much more limited. I found myself quite frustrated when
I was posing him for photos. Cuts at the top of the boots would
have been a nice to have, but not a necessity.
Venom has the cut neck, ball jointed shoulders (again, only jointed at
the torso), cut hips and cut waist. The waist joint is actually used
for his action feature, so it doesn't really function as a point of
articulation i.e. you can't use it to pose him.
Poor Doc Ock ends up last place again. He has a cut neck, but only
cut shoulders this time. He also has but hips, but the left hip is
used for his action feature, and like Venom's waist, can't be used to pose
him.
Oddly enough, he has cut wrists. They help him a little, but with
the arms sculpted in extreme poses and only cut shoulders to move them, it's
not like the cut wrists were going to make a huge difference here.
The saving grace for Doc Ock is the articulated pincers on the ends of
this tentacles. The top two work with the action feature, but the
bottom two merely move when you press in on the center. You can press
them against a victim and they'll move around him. Since you can't
actually pose the tentacles, this is a lot less cool than it sounds.
Accessories - Spidey **; Doc Ock *; Venom Bupkis;
For a kids series, this line is sorely lacking in accessories.
Spider-man comes with a rubbery hunk of webbing that can be attached to
the wall with suction cups, and he can hang from it. The left hand
does work in this way, but not great, and it could have been sculpted in
ways that would have better facilitated posing him on the webbing.
Venom gets zippo. Yep, the poor guy doesn't get a damn thing.
Doc Ock has his tentacle backpack, which once attached isn't really
supposed to be removed, so it isn't much of an 'accessory'.
Action Features - Venom ***; Doc Ock **1/2; Spidey Bupkis;
Spidey's suction cup hunk of webbing probably counts as his 'action
feature', which thankfully means he has no other gimmicks to gunk up his
sculpt or articulation. This is one of those unique categories where
getting a bupkis isn't such a bad thing.
This is a kid's line though, so I'm not surprised Hasbro found the need
to add action features. Venom has the old reliable 'twist and punch'.
He has a spring in his waist so that when you turn his torso, it snaps back
to center, delivering a deadly blow to any opponent. The nice thing
about this action feature is that it doesn't interfere with the sculpt, only
minimally hurts the articulation, and actually works pretty well.
Hasbro actually got pretty creative with Doc Ock. Once the back
pack is attached, you can press his left leg inward, and the pincers on the
two top tentacles will grasp inward. This is accomplished with some
small 'cables' that run inside the tentacles. It's a pretty nifty
idea, but like most of these nifty ideas, it looks better on paper than in
reality. Get it all lined up just right, and the pincers move a
little, but don't expect Spider-man to crap his shorts when he sees it.
Kids would have had more fun with bendy tentacles without the action
feature.
Fun Factor - ***
The figures are actually pretty fun for kids, with reasonably unobtrusive
yet enjoyable action features. The articulation could be better, and
the collector may find some of the colors/designs annoying, but kids would
have fun battling it out between the young Spidey and the young Venom.
I'm assuming he's young, of course.
Value - **
Ten bucks? Ouch. With kid related movie lines for Star Wars,
Star Trek, Prince Caspian and others coming out in the 3 3/4" size and $7
price range, Hasbro is going to have a tough time convincing Mom that these
guys are worth the extra $3.
Things to Watch Out For -
Not much. Expect mass market quality - massmarkuality - and you won't
be disappointed.
Overall -
Spidey ***; Venom **1/2; Doc Ock **
While Spidey is clearly a better figure in many ways than the other two,
they all fail with limited accessories and a high price point. Had
these been around $7 - $8, another half star might have been possible.
But even then, Ock wouldn't have been saveable. He just has too
many issues, from the cheap looking molded plastic to the wonky articulation
and small scale.
Venom had potential, and had we gotten the nasty looking head sculpt on
the back of the package, he would have scored much better. Instead
they gave us this Fischer-Price version of the head sculpt, sucking the
venom right out of him.
Spidey scored the best, but even then is just barely above average.
This isn't going to be a series that wows anyone.
Score Recap:
Packaging - ***
Sculpt - Spidey ***; Doc Ock, Venom **1/2
Paint - Spidey ***1/2; Venom ***; Doc Ock **1/2
Articulation - Spidey ***; Venom **1/2; Doc Ock **
Accessories - Spidey **; Doc Ock *; Venom Bupkis;
Action Features - Venom ***; Doc Ock **1/2; Spidey Bupkis;
Fun Factor - ***
Value - **
Overall - Spidey ***; Venom **1/2; Doc Ock **
Where to Buy -
Hit the big retailers for these, including Target and Toys R Us.
Target seems to be getting them first, but I bet the others aren't too far
behind.
- Related Links - I have more Spider-man based
reviews than you can shake a tentacle at. Head over to the
Search Reviews page to find them all.
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