It’s Marvel Monday, folks, and I’m turning back the clock and digging up three figures from 2014’s Marvel Legends Ultimate Green Goblin Wave, which have been buried at the bottom of my Toy Closet for a while. And no, I won’t be looking at the Build-A-Figure yet, because I’m still missing one figure from this wave. Got a Green Goblin head? I have a new waffle maker! Mail me the Gobby Head and I’ll mail you a waffle!

These fellas were all part of a wave that was tied to Amazing Spider-Man 2, a film which I’d be more than happy to never be reminded about again. Much like the recent Guardians of the Galaxy waves, this one was a mix of comic and movie-based figures. As I stressed last Monday, I’m not a big fan of tossing a bunch of Legends figures into one review, but I’ve got waves of these goddamn things piling up, so I can’t afford to go back and do this trio individually. Let’s start with Boomerang!

There’s so much I want to like about this figure and yet so much that I don’t like about this figure. Boomerang is built on a black buck with white plastic used for the buccaneer boots and and the gauntlets, but the rest of the white details of his costume are painted on and they look pretty shabby. The black bleeds through, particularly on the stripe across his chest. It’s a real shame, because the contrast between the white and black plastic otherwise looks great, and even the paint used for his belt isn’t too bad.

I really dig the piece Hasbro provided for his back. It holds the four boomerangs that he comes with, one large pair and one smaller pair. Yeah, it looks kind of ridiculous, like he’s wearing an old TV antenna on his back, but it suits him. It’s also removable if you decide you don’t want it. Boomerang’s left hand is perfectly suited to holding either the large or small boomerangs. Unfortunately his right is not. At first, I thought they tried to make it different so that it could hold the bigger ones better, but upon closer inspection, it’s clearly a gun hand. The smaller boomerangs won’t stay in there at all and even the bigger ones have issues falling out. It’s hard for me to believe Hasbro didn’t have a better right hand lying around to use with this figure.

Grrrr…. Boomerang is wearing the exact expression I had when I first saw this head up close. I hardly ever say this about a Marvel Legends figure, but the portrait on this figure is a mess. It looks like it was fashioned out of sculpting putty and the paintwork is an atrocity. Seriously, it’s like someone’s first attempt at a custom job. Hell, it’s like I attempted a custom job… and I’ve got no skills whatsoever. This line has had some truly spectacular head sculpts and Hasbro usually injects a lot of effort and personality into the villains especially. I don’t know what happened here, but it looks like they just didn’t care.

Boomerang’s articulation is standard stuff. The arms have rotating hinges in the wrists and shoulders, the elbows are double hinged, and there are swivels in the biceps. The legs are ball jointed at the hips, have double hinges in the knees, and there are swivels in the thighs and at the tops of the boots. The ankles are hinged and have lateral rockers. There’s a swivel in the waist, an ab crunch, and the neck has both a hinge and ball joint. The joints all feel good and he’d be fun to pose if he weren’t so f’ugly.

In the end, Boomerang is a huge disappointment. I was looking forward to finally getting him onto my shelf of Web Head’s enemies, but this figure is such a train-wreck, I’m not even willing to cross him off my list. With all the Spider-Man themed waves coming out each year, it may not be to out of line to hope for a do-over on this one. The joke is, since he shares a slot with Ultimate Beetle, I didn’t even need him for a BAF part. What a shame… let’s move on to Beetle…

Beetle! BEETLE! Hasbro seems obsessed with Beetle! It was just last year that we got Janice Lincoln as Beetle, and the classic version of Beetle will be part of the Spider-Man Homecoming wave that’s beginning to hit stores now. Well, this here is Earth-1610’s “Ultimate” Beetle. Unlike Boomerang, I have absolutely zero history with this version of the character. Also unlike Boomerang, this figure is pretty damn good! I take it this is supposed to be a fairly powerful suit, and Hasbro did a wonderful job with this sculpt. It has a ribbed underlying body suit fashioned in red plastic, with sculpted armor bits that are painted over with a particularly nice shade of silver. The combination looks great, although this is unfortunately that same somewhat dubious feeling plastic that Hasbro has used for some of the Iron Men armors.

The wing assembly simply pegs into the back and you get some more of that lovely silver paint connecting them and some pretty trippy metallic green paint on the front insides of the wings. It all makes for a very distinctive looking figure.

The head sculpt furthers the cyber-bug motif with some huge compound eyes, a silver painted face plate, and a pair of blade-like antenna. The paint around the eyes slops over onto the silver quite a bit, which I didn’t really notice until I got in pretty close. It does give it a little bit of a glowing effect, but I don’t think that was intentional on Hasbro’s part. Honestly, I don’t think it hurts the look of the figure much at all.

Beetle’s suit includes what I presume to be blasters of some kind sculpted into the forearms. Again, I have next to no involvement with this character. The Ultimate books just aren’t my bag. The blasters do, however, look cool and feature some nice yellow paint hits. The nit-picky among you may notice that Hasbro didn’t shell out for the dollop of silver paint needed for those knee pegs. Annoying, but I can live with it.

Beetle’s articulation makes him a nimble bug and lots of fun to play with, although this type of plastic doesn’t have the strongest of joints. They’re a little gummy, but nowhere near the worst that I’ve seen from Hasbro 6-inch figures. Certainly not enough to spoil my fun. The legs feature ball jointed hips, double hinges in the knees, and swivels in the thighs. The ankles have both hinges and lateral rockers. The arms have rotating hinges at the shoulders and wrists, the elbows are double hinged, and there are swivels in the biceps. The torso has an ab crunch, there’s a swivel in the waist, and the neck is both ball jointed and hinged.

As much as Boomerang was a disappointment, Beetle was a wonderful surprise. No, this is not my Beetle, and I’ll go so far as to say that I think the design works beautifully as an action figure, but maybe not so much on a comic panel. The figure has a few issues, but overall I’m calling it a win. And while I’m not about to run out and start buying up Ultimates comics, I have had tons of fun fiddling around with this guy on my desk during my downtime the past few days. He’s a very cool design and he will most definitely find a place on my Spider-Man Legends shelves. And that brings me to… ugh… Electro from Amazing Spider-Man 2.

I make it no secret that I did not like the Amazing Spider-Man movie, but there were at least moments in it that I enjoyed. The sequel, on the other hand, well I hated every frame of that one and I’m so happy that incarnation of the film franchise is dead and buried where it belongs. As a result, I’m not going to spend a lot of time on this figure, because it’s not really fair. It’s not aimed at me, and the only reason I have it is because he was part of a BOGO deal and he had a BAF part. The bottom line is that I think Electro was terrible in the movie, to no fault of Jamie Foxx who I’m sure did the best with what he was given. With that having been said, this figure is not without some redeeming qualities.

The design that I hated on screen actually sort of works for this figure and Hasbro certainly put some work into it. You get all new sculpting for the body with a lot of nice detail and texturing that adds some interesting qualities to what is a nearly all black buck. Electro does have some blue paint spray on the shoulders, chest, and forearms, but I don’t know that it really comes across as it should. If I was totally unfamiliar with this character and somebody handed me the figure, I’d be more prone to say he’s supposed to have some kind of ice powers as opposed to electricity. The articulation is similar to what we got with Beetle, but the legs on this figure don’t like to cooperate. I blame the sculpted cuffs on the ankles, which really curtail the range of motion there. Every time I try to get him in a wide stance, he just looks awkward.

Electro comes with two head sculpts, and I can say the same about those looking as much like ice as it does electricity. That having been said, I think the first head looks good, but the second one with the effects on the eyes, not so much.

Now, Electro does come with the electricity shooting hands, and with these in place, I think they add the needed context to make the rest of the figure fall in line. I know that’s not a ringing endorsement, but to be honest I think Hasbro tried with this figure, a lot more than they did with poor Boomerang. The sculpt is solid, and the effects hands and extra head give some welcome display options. I expected to hate this figure, but I really don’t. On the other hand, he really doesn’t have any place in my collection either. Yeah, I could put him beside my Amazing Spider-Man 2 Spidey, but while I wasn’t a fan of a fan of Andrew Garfield as Spider-Man, at least I really loved the look of the costume, here not so much.

And that trio of reviews takes care of some long overdue business. It feels like it’s been a long time since I had this much negativity toward anything Marvel Legends related, but one out of three ain’t a great record. It’s pretty bad when the one figure I can endorse here isn’t even the version of the character that I know or care about. As for the Build-A-Figure, Ultimate Green Goblin isn’t a figure that I really need to have on my shelf, but right now he’s just missing a head. If I ever find either of the “Spawn of Symbiotes” figures at anything close to retail cost, I’ll happily pick one up to complete the wave, but I’m just as content to let it go. While there were some really solid figures in this wave, particularly Black Cat and Superior Spider-Man, the truth is that this is the first wave of Marvel Legends since it’s return that I did not feel overly compelled to complete. Next Monday, I’m going to detour to take a look at one of the many Marvel statues that I have piling up and then I’ll be jumping back into Marvel Legends with the second wave from Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol 2.

It seems like forever since I last looked at a Marvel Legends figure. For 2014, the line has been rebranded as “Infinite” and will be tied in to the Marvel movies. The first two assortments to hit the pegs are “Amazing Spider-Man 2” and “Captain America: Winter Soldier.” In the case of the Spider-Man figures, I’m going to be really picky about which ones I buy and not worry about the Build-A-Figure. I wasn’t a big fan of the first movie and I doubt I’ll even go see this one in the theaters. I can’t get into any the re-designed bad guys and it feels like they’re making the same mistake as Spider-Man 3 and overloading it with too many villains. What I do like, however, is Spidey’s costume in the new movie, so I was more than happy to pick up the figure.

The new branding includes a totally new package design. Gone are the comic bookish cards and bubbles and in their place a compact little window box that is actually collector friendly. Spider-Man comes with the Green Goblin BAF parts to his right and his swappable hands to his left. As much as I liked the fun and outrageous stylings of the other Legends packaging, I think these new boxes are an improvement. It’s worth noting that the packages are more or less the same style for the Cap movie figures. Sure, it’s all Marvel, but I find it really odd to have one cohesively branded line of figures based on two different movies from two different production companies. Infinite has to be a first in that regard.

So, first off I need to say how much I love this new buck. It’s not perfect. I think the hip joints are way too broad and pretty ugly, but finally we get a Legends Spider-Man that feels like he’s properly scaled. Stand this one next to the buck Hasbro used for the Big Time Spidey, Future Foundation Spidey, and Scarlet Spider, and it really exposes the sizing issues with those other figures.

Spidey’s costume utilizes a surprising amount of fresh sculpting to convey all that delicious detail in the new costume. The entire web pattern is part of the actual sculpt and a good deal of it is panel lined as well. The blue parts of the costume are also textured in that basketball grip style that is all the rage with a lot of Super Hero costumes these days. Suffice it to say there’s very precious little space on this figure that isn’t in some way sculpted or painted. That having been said, it’s a shame that the pins in the elbowss didn’t make the cut. The red pins against the blue part of the costume is at least on the inside of his arms, but you’ll still see it when posing him.

In addition to continuing the sculpted webbing, the figure’s portrait is dominated by two huge eyes. It’s one of the things I love the most about the costume design in general and this figure in particular. My only gripe here is that the eyes are painted with a pearlescent white and I thought the costume’s eyes were still going to be gold. I haven’t really had a good look at the costume yet, so I may be totally off base there. Either way, it’s a very comic book style portrait and I totally dig it.

The articulation here features just about everything that I could want. The shoulders have the extra hinged crunches in addition to the hinged ball joints, there are swivels in the biceps, the elbows are double-hinged, and the hands have swivels and hinges. The legs have those big, dopey ball jointed hips, swivels in the thighs, double-hinged knees, another set of swivels in the lower legs, hinges in the ankles, and lateral rockers. Nice! The torso swivels at the waist, features an ab crunch hinge just below the chest, and the neck is ball jointed and hinged. Even with all this articulation, the figure feels remarkably solid, well-balanced, and stands on his own beautifully.

While Spidey comes packaged with fists, he actually comes with a replacement set of “thwipping” hands. I can’t remember the last time I got swappable hands in a Legends figure, so this was a nice surprise. You also get the right arm for the Green Goblin BAF and an effect part for the same. The Goblin looks like a cool figure, but unless I can find figures like Electro for really cheap, I won’t be getting all the parts to build him.

All in all, I’m really pleased with this figure. If you can keep from staring at Spidey’s crotch area, than I think this figure does very little wrong. The coloring and sculpt are quite good and the articulation and balance makes him lots and lots of fun to play around with. On the downside, Hasbro seems to be upping the price of these figures to $20 at most retailers. You can still find some of the more common releases for less online, I got this one for $15, but that also means that the chase figures will likely go for a lot more. I did pick up one other figure in this assortment, so at some point next week we’ll check out Superior Spider-Man.