With Spider-Man: Homecoming hitting theaters this upcoming week to generally positive word of mouth, there’s a more-than-decent shot you or someone you know might be looking for some screen-accurate toys to commemorate the occasion. And offhand, it sounds simple enough to collect them all, as there are only three Hasbro Marvel Legends specifically based on the movie: Spider-Man, Homemade Costume Spider-Man, and Vulture.
But there’s a catch. Unless you want your Vulture grounded, and looking only like this…
…you’re going to have to buy four more figures to build his wings. Say hello to the full wave.
We’ll get to the comic-based guys in a moment. First, let’s ask ourselves the question: is it worth buying the Vulture figure by himself without the wings? I’ll say this: I wish he came with a Michael Keaton head. As is, he’s neither fully flight-geared nor the completely grounded look. Which is not to say he isn’t nicely detailed, and suitably creepy.
But my guess is you’ll be wanting to create scenes like this:
Or this:
And for that, you’ll need this. For what it’s worth, there’s a lot of articulation in this wing set, with rotating VTOL engines and folding wing joints.
It even looks a bit like a bird face without the human attached.
Now, let’s take a look at the Spideys.
The detail on the main Spidey figure is great, but I’m not crazy about the way they pulled off the web wing effect, with two plug-in pieces that fall out easily, and took me literally 30 minutes to find again. (Kids, don’t play outdoors with clear bits that aren’t stuck in good.) You probably won’t want to use them much, though they look good in basically one pose:
He comes with two sets of hands (thwip! and fists) and two heads (wide-eyed and narrow-eyed). The narrow-eyed head looks more like what we’ve seen so far, though mine had an odd white swab on it. I mostly got it off with my fingernail, but still, weird.
As you can see, he also has the extra Spider-Man “inward flex” pec joints, and is the only figure in this series to do so. However, he lacks the mid-thigh “boot cut” joint, probably because his boots have angled tops that can’t conceal articulation as easily.
I’m not crazy about the homemade costume, but I will say Hasbro went all out for such a simple design, with textures and shades.
Not to mention alternate hands, and two different hoods. Seems dangerous wearing fingerless gloves if you don’t want to be “printed,” but he is a reckless kid.
So now, let’s look at who else you have to buy to make the Vulture soar. Tombstone is fairly basic, but the raised seam on his jacket is a sculpted detail and not just paint.
Beetle has an iridescent finish that’s pretty and shiny.
He also has multiple wings that pop up, but gravity does not always hold their weight fully aloft (look closely at the ones on the left side of this pic relative to the right).
And this guy is packaged merely as “Spider-Man,” which will confuse the hell out of parents. In fact, to comic fans he’s more often called Captain Universe, a role that has been filled by more than one person.
There’s Peter Parker with Captain Universe powers, and bearded Peter Parker from Earth 13 in Spider-Verse.
And then there’s Ted Simmons, the Chicago cop who briefly held the role. All three heads and the blue metallic paint really make the rather generic body pop.
Finally, Moon Knight comes on his own unique card due to his popularity as one of Marvel’s darker characters.
I’m not sure what the point is of the smaller “Moonerangs”–he can’t hold them and I don’t think they clip on anywhere. The big one works, though.
For me, as a collector of primarily movie stuff, I don’t know that I’d buy a wingless Vulture or all the extra figures to build his wings. There are Vulture figures with wings in the more kid-centric lines, though, so you have options.
If you’re building a perfect movie set of Avengers one by one, however, rest assured Spidey looks good in the team. (Also, Hasbro, please give us newer Legends of Black Widow and Hawkeye.)
The Spider-Man Marvel Legends will run you around $19.99 each, and should be hitting stores any day now.
Images: Luke Y. Thompson
Talk toys with Luke on Twitter @LYTrules