Spider-man Origins Iron Spider-man review
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Hasbro has had the license to produce mass market action figures for the various Marvel properties for a while now. And to
their credit, they have made an effort to continue in the foot steps of Toy Biz and keep most of their lines going. While
the Marvel Legends figures attracted more attention from action figure fans, the Spider-man line is continuing as well under
the new name: Spider-man Origins. Ironically, the Origins line is almost completely devoid of originality and consists mostly
of previously released figures. But there are a couple of new figures including Spider-man in his new Iron Spider-man
costume and a new version of Spider-man 2099. I passed up on Spider-man 2099 since with the exception of the metallic paint
finish, the KB exclusive version from several years ago seemed like a better figure. But I did finally pick up Spidey in his
new Tony Stark designed duds.
Packaging - 8/10I have to say, I like the new packaging design and I suspect MOC collectors will as well. The bubble and cards have an irregular angular design. Combined with the various comic images used for graphics, it looks as though it is made of a collage of random comic panels. It would be nice if the images used for the card were actually of Spidey in his Iron Spider-man suit, but they did at least use Iron Spider-man images for the bubble insert. The back of the card has a nice design as well. Particularly welcome is the fact that the written description of the character given actually does explain the origins of the Iron Spidey suit rather than just being a generic history of Spider-man. There are the usual photos of the other available figures, though they only show half of the figures available under the Origins line. And of course there is a photo of the figure itself. But the excellent paint work on the prototype in the photo makes the actual figures look bad in comparison.
Sculpting - 3/10The Iron Spider-man costume isn't very complex, so you would think that it would be fairly easy to translate it into an action figure. Apparently you would be wrong. The figure suffers from quite a few issues. The most obvious one is the spider symbol on its chest. The second set of arms is suppose to wrap up over the top of the arms and around to the back. but there is a gap between the section on the front and on the shoulders. The alignment is so bad that if you didn't know they were suppose to be part of the spider legs they would look like random stripes. The chin is so pointy that the head barely looks human. The guards on the wrists are pretty rough with a lot of stray plastic along the seams. The guards on the ankles aren't much better. I would expect the articulation to create a slight gap. But the foot is noticeably slimmer than the bottom of the legs. They did at least get the basic design of the arms correct even if they are lacking in detail.
Paint - 2/10The paint work on the Iron Spider-man figures are bad. The figure I bought was the best of about five or six in the store when I bought it and there is still a lot of sloppiness. The yellow for the spider symbol doesn't line up with the sculpted edges. But at least on my figure they are close. I've seen many that were worse. The eyes are equally problematic. The best I was able to find was a figure that didn't have any over spray. Another issue which isn't apparent until you get the figure out is that the metallic red paint is very easily chipped. Just freeing up the joints ended up damaging the paint on my figure. It would also have been nice if they had painted the claw arms to bring out the detail in the sculpt. But they were left completely bare.
Articulation - 8/10Iron Spider-man has forty-eight points of articulation:
Accessories - 2/10The only real accessory for Iron Spider-man is a base. It is the same round base with two foot pegs that Toy Biz has been using for well over a year. But this time it is cast in red plastic with a Spider-man Origins logo. While this is not a character that really requires much for accessories, it would have been nice if they had designed the claw arms to be removable. As it is, the arms can be pulled out by the ball joints at the back, but they leave a big glob of plastic on the figure's back. Ideally they should have designed the base to be removable and still leave a clean looking figure.
Value - 4/10Iron Spider-man is a figure with quite a few issues such as the sculpting and paint. When you combine those problems with the dollar price increase over the Amazing Spider-man line at most stores, it doesn't provide the kind of bang for your buck that it should. If you are fortunate though, you may be able to find the figure on clearance as stores drop the Origins line in favor of the Spider-man 3 movie merchandise.
Happy Hunting:I bought my figure at Target. Though just about all of the stores that carry action figures carry the Origins line, or at least they did prior to the release of the Spider-man 3 merchandise. Some stores still stock the Origins line along with the movie figures though. Of course there are online options. But to be honest, the paint issues can be so hit or miss on this figure that even I wouldn't recommend buying one sight unseen. And I'm not usually a harsh critic of paint problems.
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