The Amazing Spider-Man 2 Marvel Legends Spider-Man Review

Hello Crawlspacers.
It’s been a while since I’ve done a review. I asked BD about doing action figure reviews, and while I’m quite busy lately (Have you seen Spidey-Dude.com lately? I’m trying to out-Bailey Mike Bailey!) I’ve also been lax on posting Clone memories. Between work, life, and George leaving burning hoodies every time I posted a memory, I felt it best for my house and home to not have it catch…on fire from the flames. Nevertheless, I’m presenting to you a new feature here at the old Crawl-Space where we will be reviewing one of the recent line of Marvel Legends Spider-Man Figures. Couple of things I do want to point out however:
1) This is infrequent, not a weekly look back or anything, just when I can get the time to squeeze in some pictures and this review hammered out.
2) I will not be posting any reviews of two of the three chase figures unless I come upon them. (If you’re wondering, Boomerang, Toxin (The Not-as-cool-as-the-original version) and Spider-Girl (The NOT Mayday) were the variants and I was only able to get Boomerang and Spider-Girl. I had the chance to grab all three but I didn’t have the cash on me at the time. If I find them loose on eBay I’ll try to snag them but for now, I’ll just stick to the ones I have. More after the jump

So here’s the order of which I will be reviewing the figures.

1) The Amazing Spider-Man
2) Marvel’s Electro (Don’t ask me why it has ‘Marvel’s’ in front)
3) Black Cat
4) Carnage
5) Boomerang
6) Superior Spider-Man
7) Ultimate Goblin
8) Spider-Arana

Okay, so with all the caveats out the way, allow me to get to the review.

Backstory: Late last year, before the movie had started to trickle in with Previews, the 2013 Toy Fair in New York showed us the future of Spider-Action Figures and debut the line that coincided with the release of the new movie. In the past, Movie Lines were always…. always separate lines from the comics. Over the last several years however the trend tends to mix and match. In the case of this line, there are only two movie figures and the rest are comic figures. This trend was in effect for the first ASM movie Legends line with characters like Miles Morales in the fray. Perhaps the most interesting thing is that there isn’t a Rhino or Green Goblin figure in spite of them being large parts of the promotional campaign for the film.

So with all of these reviews I’ll be breaking down the figure by several categories: Design, accessories, packaging, and overall grade.

PACKAGING:

With this line of figures, Hasbro debuted a new style of packaging that reminds me a lot of the Mattel DC packaging. It’s a mini display case for every figure, and looks incredibly sharp. (To the left, I have a picture of the Beetle still in card as an example.) If you’re a fan of the Amazing Spider-Man Spider-Chest-Logo, the top of the packaging has the movie title, with the Spider Emblem on top from the film, while the comics figures have a more comic book spider. This is shown to your right, a promo image from Hasbro. (Thanks to Marveltoynews for the image)

When Toy Biz (still… owned… by Marvel…. I will never understand why they sold the rights to Hasbro but that’s another day) did the Spider-Man Classics line, you had to kill yourself to get the thing open because of the ‘clam shell’ way of the packaging. Good luck getting that comic that came with it because you would likely cut yourself on the shards of plastic just getting the thing out of there. Luckily, Hasbro has make this relatively easy to remove from the packaging. So between it’s display and ease of access, they hit a home run.

GRADE: A

DESIGN

The design of the figure is excellent. If you want your Spider-Man to look like the Andrew Garfield version that you liked at the theater, this is the figure for you. Now, I will admit that there is the Marvel Select and the HotToys versions out there, but for the cost, this is an excellent sculpt. The two spider-emblems are very prominent and with this new figure they brought in a completely new sculpt into play. The old sculpt was not bad, mind you, the last one to use it was the Scarlet Spider version 2.0 figure and you’ll see my review of that on Spidey-Dude soon but this one blows it away in terms of being able to pose the guy how you want him. The pattern could be a bit darker, but from film to figure, it’s a very accurate representation of the Garfield Spidey, outside of a few nitpicks such as the eyes.

Head- the head swivels very well and looks good at most angles, but the eyes are just not quite right. They’re not wrong, but they could be a bit bigger and rounder. The Marvel Select achieved this in terms of getting it right, but the eyes bothered me after I got ahold on the figure, but from the side, it looks good.

Upper body- Moves well. The shoulders move like they should and it’s fairly easy to re-create your favorite falling scene from the trailers in the film. The mid-section flexes well. My only complaint is that on the elbow joints the joints have red knobs that stick out when you look at them. Outside of that, it’s very good. The back is nice with it’s pronounced Spider-emblem.

Lower Body- The feet and legs move really well. The ability to stand on it’s own is something that you would think would taken for granted, but I’ll explain soon when taking about other figures.

SIDE NOTE: One of the cool new feature that was brought into the Spider-Figures this time was the ability to change the hands of the figures. There are two sets of hands that come with the figure: a set of fists and a set of ‘thwipp’ hands. These are fairly interchangeable and easy to pull in and out. The picture 

I do want to note for those who do have little ones, that this is a potential choking hazard. Use caution if you buy this for the kiddos.

GRADE:A

ACCESSORIES:

A number of years ago, Marvel, ToyBiz and Hasbro began putting out build a figures. This was to try and ensure you would get the whole line, since you don’t want to just have ¾ a figure. It was also designed to reward someone for paying a lot of money for a whole set. Needless to say, this time we have Hulk-Goblin. So there is very little in terms of accessories for this one. Outside of the hands, you get the Flaming right arm of the Ultimate Green Goblin. 

Translation: You’ll get enjoyment when you go get the rest of them.

GRADE: D

Hope you enjoyed this one as much as I enjoyed writing and playing with this figure. To wrap it up, Hasbro has really stepped up their game each year since bringing back the Legends in 2011. After they got the rights to do Marvel’s toys, they seemed to lose their way in terms of the development of the figures in the Legends line. While they consistently knock things out of the park in the scale that is their wheelhouse, the 3 3/4” scale, it took them awhile to get things right for the toys in the Legends line. It was worth the wait to be sure.

FINAL GRADE: A-

Excelsior!
Zach

Zach Joiner has been a contributor to Crawl-Space for 12 years as a poster on the message board, Co-Founded the Podcast with Brad and Kevin in 2006, former reviewer of the Spider-Girl Mayday Parker series as well as numerous other titles, such as Scarlet Spider and Spectacular Spider-Man. He currently Administrates the site with the staff and handles the Message Board and front page with his feature irregular Clone Memories.

Like more Zach? He’s the owner/webmaster of the Spidey-Dude Podcasting Network: Listen to him on his shows the Clone Saga Chronicles,where he talks clones and 90s stuff, Spectacular Radio where he talks about the Spectacular Spider-Man cartoon with pros like Greg Weisman and he’s a frequent guest host of Mayday Mondays. All these shows can be found on his website, Spidey-Dude.com.