It’s taken me a while to dip back into some of the Marvel Hot Toys I have left to review here. Most of the ones I still have on deck are Spider-Man related, and while I can’t promise a straight shot through all of them, I am going to try to look at both of the figures I have from Far From Home over the next couple of weeks. Let’s start out with Mysterio!

Once again, The MCU did a little bait-and-switch by giving us a very familiar villain with a very different twist. The Mandarin from Iron Man 3 sure pissed a lot of people off, although I don’t think Mysterio ruffled quite as many feathers. Or maybe he did… I can’t keep track of what new thing fans are pissed off about these days. I honestly didn’t mind either character treatment, but of the two, Mysterio was my favorite. I was happy to see him get to be a villain, even if it wasn’t the kind of villain I expected. I had no intentions of picking up this figure until I re-watched the movie a little while back and then decided that the suit looked so damn good, that I had to add it to my collection to keep Spider-Man company. The packaging is pretty standard stuff. The art design is slick, but it’s still just a flimsy window box with a sleeve on it, so let’s get him out and dive right in.

Quentin Beck comes out of the box more or less ready to go. You just have to clip off some plastic wrap that protects his cape and extremities. He comes wearing his fishbowl helmet And looking all sorts of awesome. This suit is something like The Vision meets Doctor Strange. The figure is clad in a fairly tight fitting textured green bodysuit, which feels like the same thin vinyl that Hot Toys uses on most of these super-suits. There’s a little bit more give in the crotch and upper-body than we usually see, and there’s plenty of room to move in the elbows and knees. I found him to be a bit more fun to play with than a lot of these figures are, but there’s still some restrictions here.

The golden armored pieces of the costume include a cuirass, which is intricately sculpted with various overlapping plates, ornate scrollwork, and even some reflective panels that will illuminate under black light. His forearm bracers aren’t quite as chunky as the comic version of the suit, but they still make for a nice homage. I actually like the designs on these a lot! They look like they’re comprised of tightly wrapped coils held and compressed together by four rods, as if they are for conducting his powers to his gauntlets. He has a pair of mismatched cuffs around his thighs, and finally a pair of high boots with knee pads. The feet are made of regular plastic, while the rest of the boots are soft, pliable material, which offers decent mobility.

The cape is an absolute work of art! It’s comprised of a fairly thick purple cloth and pleated into several segments. There’s some green embroidered trim around the edges, and gold diamonds scattered about, both inside and out. Like the panels on the cuirass, these diamonds are reflective under black light. The cape attaches to the front of the cuirass with a pair of triangular fixtures with occult eye carvings and it does that cool levitating effect off the shoulders as it plunges down the back. The garment is removable, and you even get an extra set of those eye-pieces to clip back on if you happen to display him with the cape off. The helmet is a thing of majesty. The dome is painted to give it a swirly blue and purple effect, while there’s also a sculpted cloud inside to give it that extra mysterious look! The dome can only turn left and right a little bit, but I suppose Beck just turned his head inside it. It can, however, angle up and back a bit. The only downside here is that there’s a seam running up the sides.

There’s a light up feature inside the dome, which is activated by pulling the dome up to expose a switch in the neck. It looks cool, but I think maybe they went a little too bright with it, as it does tend to drown out some of that beautiful painted detail on the globe itself. Still, when combined with the black light effects on the suit, it does look quite striking! It’s difficult to capture the effect on camera, but I really love that they added this feature.

You also get the unmasked portrait, which swaps out with a completely different neck. I remember seeing some criticisms of the likeness early on, but I think it’s a pretty solid Jake Gyllenhaal. As usual, the realism on display here is pretty eerie. The paintwork from the skintone to the lifelike eyes is Hot Toys at its best. I’m especially impressed by the paint and sculpt that went into creating his beard. Facial hair is not something that’s easy to get right, but somehow Hot Toys manages to nail it. When I get to reviewing Spider-Man, I’ll have to see if the EDITH glasses fit him. I doubt I’ll display him with this head a lot, but it’s great to have that option, and swapping the heads is fairly quick and easy.

As for extras… there are two swirly illusion effect parts, which can be placed at Beck’s feet for some added mystery. These are semi-translucent green plastic with some frosting to give them the look of mystical smoke. They aren’t mind-blowing, but they do make for a nice addition to the display.

You also get two energy effect parts, which fit onto a special pair of Beck’s hands. These are translucent green energy triangles with occult eye emblems sculpted into them. They can be a little tricky to get attached to his fingers, but once I got everything to line up, I found that they held fast and look great. In addition to the spell casting hands, Mysterio comes with a pair of relaxed hands and a pair of fists. That’s not a lot of hands by Hot Toys standards, but still more than I’ll ever need.

As always, our last stop is the figure stand. Mysterio comes with a hexagonal base with a heavy bendable post that holds the figure with a gripper. This configuration allows the figure to be posed in flight, which is always a nice option. These have got to cost a lot more to produce than the regular crotch-cradle stands, so they definitely add some value to the box. The base itself is illustrated, and while I like it, it’s kind of annoying that it doesn’t match the Spider-Man figure’s base, but that’s a nitpick for my next review.

Mysterio took a little waffling back and forth before finally deciding to pick him up, and I am most definitely glad I did. The suit design looked great on screen and it looks great here as well. The sculpt, paint, and tailoring are all top notch, but the high points for me have to be the cape, the cuirass, and the paintwork on the globe. The smoke effect parts were probably not necessary, but when you’re paying $260 for a figure, every extra bit in the box is a welcome addition to justify that price point. Oddly enough, Mysterio is back to Pre-Order status on Sideshow’s site, so I’m not sure if they decided to produce more to meet demand, or maybe they’re still taking delivery on the original production run. Either way, he looks great next to the Advanced Suit Spider-Man, and I hope to have a review of that figure for the next Marvel Monday or the week after.