Tag Archives: no way home

Mar 18 2024

Marvel Legends (No Way Home): Deluxe Doc Ock and Green Goblin by Hasbro

Hey, how about a Marvel Monday for old time’s sake! I’ve been picking up a lot of Legends lately on deep discount and I may do a couple speed reviews of some of those waves, but before even considering any of that I wanted to swing back and check out a couple of Deluxe releases that came out late last year. I have to imagine that it was a general malaise over the recent MCU films that caused Hasbro to drop their bucket back into the Spider-Man: No Way Home well and produce some new figures based on what was probably the last MCU flick that really hit home with the fans. No pun intended. We got a wave of retro-carded figures and these two Deluxes, which had me excited for MCU figures for the first time in a long while.

Both figures come in fully enclosed boxes with some nice artwork and shots of the figures. I don’t mind the enclosed boxes for these Deluxes, but I am getting tired of tiny accessories wrapped in tissue paper just begging to be accidently thrown away. Interestingly enough, Doc Ock is billed as being from Spider-Man 2 (the second Raimi film), while Gobbie is billed as being from No Way Home. Obviously the Goblin figure design is very specific to that movie, but Octavius could really work for either film. I’m guessing it was maybe a licensing issue, similar to the one that put the Andrew Garfield Spidey figure on an Amazing Spider-Man 2 card. Anyway… let’s start with Doctor Otto Octavius.

I’m starting with Ock, because I don’t have quite as much to say about this figure, but that’s not to say it isn’t fantastic. He comes out of the box with his articulator arms permanently attached. The body features a textured black top, black trousers, and brown shoes. He’s got some double trench coat action going with a brown one layered under the green. The brown coat has a set of gold zipper tracks while the outer coat has buttons and lapels with some tiny sculpted stitching. Wrapped around his waist is the silver harness to secure the arms to him. It’s a fairly basic costume design, but the figure handles it well with the different muted colors and some very subtle textures.

The head sculpt is pretty solid likeness to Alfred Molina. I really love the hair sculpt and the way the glasses turned out. Lord knows it ain’t easy to do decent looking specs in this scale, but Hasbro certainly pulled it off here. It killed me to turn down the Hot Toys figure, but that head sculpt just wasn’t working for me in terms of likeness or expression. Certainly not on a $300+ figure! So, at least Hasbro came through on the $40 version. I also dig the dour expression.

The articulator arms are cast in a very dense, but pliable plastic and they do a fairly good job of holding the shape you bend them into. They have a sharp, segmented sculpt and you get six sets of claws to work with: Two flat ones to act as feet, two grasping claws, and two articulated claws. Octavius himself even comes with two sets of hands: Fists and grasping hands.

And I have to say, posing the arms is lots of fun, especially when mixing up the different claws. There was certainly an issue of compromise here between durability and playability, and I think Hasbro made the right call by allowing just enough from each column. It was nice to really give the arms a workout without worrying about breaking or tearing them, even if that meant they weren’t always going to stay put exactly where I wanted them.

The arms are robust enough to act as legs and support the figure, but that stance does start to widen as the arms slowly attempt to pull back to their original configuration. I will likely use a clear rubber band to hold them closer together so I can display Ock with them supporting him. Although, I suppose a display stand supporting the figure would also do the trick.

Octavius turned out great! He’s one of those figures that takes up residence on my desk for a while after I opened him because he’s just so much fun to mess around with. I’ve wanted a figure like this ever since I first saw Spider-Man 2, and now that I have him, it’s nice to see he doesn’t disappoint. Let’s move on to Green Goblin!

So, unlike Octavius, who can work for either film, Norman Osborne is decidedly based on his appearance in No Way Home, where his armor is all kinds of messed up and modified. It’s an interesting look, which brings the design a bit closer to some of the comic book beats and away from the Power Rangery flavor of the original Raimi film design. Personally, I never had an issue with the older design, but this one certainly makes for a more interesting action figure. And boy is there a lot going on with this sculpt! Parts of the suit’s covering have been ripped away to reveal the internal supports and framework, painted in both gold and silver. He’s added a belt with shoulder strap and satchel as homage to the comic look, and you get the remnants of his purple hoody, cast in plastic and sitting on his shoulders. The green paint for the suit has a nice metallic sheen to it. He’s also has sculpted rockets on his both forearms and extended blades on his left. This is undoubtedly one of the most complex sculpts I’ve seen on a Marvel Legends figure and it looks fantastic!

Osborne does come with the Goblin mask head, even though it gets smashed fairly early on, but I’m happy to have the option to display it and it certainly maintains the quality found in the rest of the figure. The deep set eye globes are painted gold and if you look into the mouth you can see the mesh screen that covered Norman’s mouth on the costume. There’s a bit of swirl in the plastic here and there, but it doesn’t bother me. The only thing here that’s kind of off-putting is the lack of a neck piece for when he’s wearing the mask, so you just see his exposed skin. That looks kind of weird, but I don’t think this figure is really intended to be regularly displayed with the masked head. It’s probably more of a bonus.

Because you also get the unmasked head with goggles and hood, which is represents Gobbie’s new look for No Way Home, and Hasbro did a really nice job on this head sculpt! Willem Defoe certainly has a unique look about him, so I’m thinking that may have given the sculptors more hooks to hang their sculpt on. Either way, it turned out to be an excellent likeness, right down to his maniacal, toothy grin. And once again, the hair sculpt here is just pitch perfect! The goggles fit over the head pretty snug and the head goes into the hood and is secured around the neck hole. As much as I love the Goblin head, I’ll likely be displaying the figure unmasked and with the Goblin head somewhere on the shelf in front of him.

Of course, you also get the glider, which is a pretty fine piece of kit all on its own. The sculpt is pretty complex with panel lines, hydraulics and various mechanical bits and bobs all over the place. The bulk of the glider is painted in a metallic gray while the panels on the wings are textured and painted purple. The glider connects to a transparent stand via a ball socket, and this is the same type of stand that Hasbro uses for their Star Wars Black Series speeder bikes. The wings also articulate independently of one another. The only thing to watch out for here is the blades on the front of the glider, which are made of slightly bendy plastic. If you plan on storing this in a tote, I could see them getting bent or warped pretty easily.

Gobbie attaches to the glider by slipping his toes into the stirrups and pegging his heels into the pedals. The pedals are pegged into the glider, so they can swivel to accommodate different positions. It also helps to make securing him easier, as I preferred to pull out the pedals, attach them to his feet and then peg them back into the glider. A little balance is required when getting the ball socket on the stand to support his weight, but I was able to make most poses work out. I think a little nail polish might help make the socket connection more firm and supportive.

Green Goblin’s final accessory is a tiny grenade, or what passed for a pumpkin bomb in the films. It’s just a tiny orange ball with a green light painted on it, but it fits perfectly in the right grippy hand.

Goblin feels like the more substantial offering of these two figures with a crazy complex sculpt, extra head, and the glider, but considering how awesome Ock’s articulator arms are, I think everything balances out in the end. As for the quality of the figures, there’s not much to complain about here, as I think Hasbro knocked each of these right out of the park. I can distinctly remember the moment I saw that these guys were coming back for No Way Home and thinking about the opportunity for new Marvel Legends figures, and sure enough here they are. And at $39.99 each, I think the pricing is actually right on point, as they both feel like premium releases. I don’t really have any interest in a No Way Home Lizard or Electro, so displaying these guys with the Sandman from the retro wave gives me all the MCU Spidey villains I wanted!

Jan 8 2024

Marvel Legends (No Way Home Wave): Spider-Man, Spider-Man, and Sandman by Hasbro

What’s this? Marvel on a Monday? A sort of… Marvel Monday? Yeah, well don’t get used to it. I do have more Marvel Legends reviews planned for the first half of 2024, but I’m not ready to bring back Marvel Mondays. I am, however, ready to dig into the second half of this No Way Home themed wave of Marvel Legends! On Friday I checked out the Tom Holland Spider-Man along with MJ and Matt Murdock and today we’re checking out Tobey Maquire Spider-Man, Andrew Garfield Spider-Man, and Flint Marko, aka Sandman!

As with last time, this assortment comes carded rather than boxed, but the standout oddity here is having Garfield Spider-Man appear on his own movie card, Amazing Spider-Man 2, as opposed to following the No Way Home theme like the rest. I’m sure this had to do with some kind of Fox-Disney rights issues, but it’s still odd to see. If you think multiverses are confusing to navigate, try corporate copyright law! And yes, the No Way Home cards are still inaccurate as they feature the wrong suit for the Holland Spider-Man. There are no BAF parts in this wave, as both the heavy hitters, Doc Ock and Green Goblin, were released as higher priced boxed Deluxes, and I’ll be getting around to them soon! Let’s start with Maquire Spidey…

I still adore the Raimi Spider-Man movies and can even find something to love in the mostly awful third outing, so it’s really cool to get this suit as a modern Legends figure. While the other two suits in this wave could very well stand in as a modern comic look for me, this one will always be totally unique to these movies and so I love the design as it’s own thing. The basic suit colors are very traditional with the bright red and dark blue looking as classic as ever, but it’s the addition of the silver webbing pattern that makes it so distinctive. Sure, thanks to the PlayStation games, Spidey has almost as many suit variants as Iron Man, and I’m not a big fan of that concept, but back in the early 2K’s this variant was a big deal to me and I thought it was totally bad ass. The execution is great, with the webbing and emblems all part of the sculpt and in this case the blue parts of the suit are textured as well as the red.

The head sculpt looks wonderful and the paint on this one fared better than what I got on my Holland figure. The silver on the lenses isn’t quite perfect, but there’s nothing here that is easily noticeable with the naked eye. Also, I really love the way that chest emblem is layered on top of the raised web pattern.

Of course, you get the unmasked head as well, and this one is not the slam dunk we got for the Holland likeness. I can definitely see a bit of Toby in there, but that’s with a bit of squinting and a lot of imagination. Less nose and more cleft chin would have been the way to go. Granted, I was a little shocked when I saw how much Toby aged in No Way Home before I reminded myself that at 51 I’m practically an old man and I’m not one to talk.

There are no surprises in the articulation, other than having to heat up the figure to get the ball joint in the chest to loosen up. The poseability is identical to the Holland figure, and the pinless joints are always welcome in my Spider-Mans as unpainted pins were often an eye sore on these figures. This guy is just tons of fun to pose and play with.

Toby Spidey comes with the same two hands as when he was first issued in that three-pack, so you get one pair of thwippy hands, a right fist, and a left graspy hand. And here’s the biggest disappointment, as it sucks that Hasbro couldn’t pony up for the same three sets that came with the Holland figure. That’s especially true when you consider this is the second time they are selling this figure, albeit with the addition of the unmasked head. Regardless, it’s a great figure and a much needed replacement to my horribly dated 2003 magnet-hands Toy Biz figure. In truth, I’ve been waiting for a figure like this for a long time, and I am thrilled to have it! Let’s move on to the Garfield Spider-Man…

It’s no secret that I hated the Amazing Spider-Man movies. Someone actually gifted me the Blu-Ray as a misguided, but well intentioned, Christmas gift, and that’s the only reason I ever watched it. I only begrudgingly made it through the first one with a scowl on my face and the trailers made me not even want to try to watch the second. I’ll concede that the problem was more the writing and bad creative decisions than it was Andrew Garfield, but he still got his share of the blame from me. I wasn’t looking forward to seeing him show up in No Way Home, but I have to admit, he was great in it, and he really sold me on how likeable he could be given the right framework to hang his performance on. The suit design was one of the only things I liked about those movies, but I kind of feel this figure misses the mark. The sculpt is fine, but the colors are so dark. I shot this figure with the exact same lighting as the other two Spider-Mans and it just managed to absorb it and still come out way too dark. Also, I got more of an electric blue vibe off the screen used suit which just isn’t conveyed here at all. At least the texturing looks really good.

The head sculpt is fine. I like the pearlescent paint used for the lenses, but they didn’t convey the compound-eye style of the lenses. Maybe that’s asking a bit much for this scale.

The unmasked head doesn’t reach the heights of the Holland likeness, but I think it’s more on point than the Tobey likeness. The hair sculpt is a little chunky, but they got his outrageously tall pouf down pretty well. All in all, I’m pretty happy with the way this sculpt came out and the printing on the facial features is pretty solid too.

As for articulation and extras, I’ve got the same praise and nitpicks as I did with the Tobey figure. The poseability is excellent, once I gave him a bath in hot water to loosen up that ball joint in the waist, however, it actually tightened up again the next day and manipulating it makes me feel like I’m going to twist it off. And, like Tobey, he comes with the same two sets of hands that were included when he was first released in the three-pack. This isn’t a bad figure at all, but it’s by far my least favorite of the three web-heads. But to be fair, some of that has to do with the suit being my least favorite as well.

Our final stop for this assortment is Flint Marko as Sandman. I wasn’t all that excited about this figure based on the solicitation shots, but in hand he’s actually surprised me quite a bit. The sand texture that covers the figure is extremely well done and it’s bolstered even more by some excellent paint work. This would have been an easy figure for Hasbro to cheap out on, but the the final product feels like they actually put some work into it, especially for what is likely to be a one-off body. The pinless body features some solid articulation, but it does lack the shoulder crunches and ab-crunch hinge that we got on the Spider-Mans. Still, the lone ball joint under the chest is perfectly serviceable.

The portrait manages to convey the character likeness while still being just a sandy facsimile. It actually does a remarkable job of recreating what the CG looked like in the film and that’s pretty cool.

While Toby and Garfield were hands poor, Marko makes out big time with two regular pairs and a pair of enlarged hands with adapter pieces for the forearms. So, you wind up with normal sized graspy hands and fists, and the bigger graspy hands too. I actually would have preferred one large graspy hand and one large fist, but I guess beggars can’t be choosers. I don’t really have much else to say about this figure other than this Sandman came out really good. I was initially surprised they didn’t make him a BAF release for this wave, but in the end it worked out just fine.

And that’s the Marvel Legends No Way Home wave! All around, this was a solid wave, and really the only figure I had a lot of gripes with is Garfield Spidey, and that’s probably mostly due to personal taste. Sure, I would have liked to get an extra set of hands with the Sony Spider-Mans, but it was nice to see the extra big hands with Sandman. Also, I sure am glad I didn’t pony up for the No Way Home three-pack, but it’s not going to stop me from chastising Hasbro for re-releasing three figures so soon with bonus heads. That’s a really shit move and it just punishes collectors for running out and buying your figures. Probably not something you want to do, when a lot of people are already inclined to wait for clearance when so much Hasbro product is hitting discount stores. I have both the Deluxe Green Goblin and Doc Ock on deck for the near future, but I don’t know when I’ll get around to doing another complete wave of Legends. I did buy a bunch on deep discount late last year to complete some BAFs, so maybe I’ll run some speed reviews of those in the coming months.

Jan 5 2024

Marvel Legends (No Way Home Wave): Spider-Man, MJ, and Matt Murdock by Hasbro

I only looked at two complete waves of Marvel Legends here on FFZ last year, so let’s check one out in this first week of the New Year! Hasbro rolled out this No Way Home wave during one of their Fan Channel steams, which kind of worked like a Hail Mary Wave, because it actually got me excited to buy some Marvel Legends figures again, rather than just bottom feeding when they hit the clearance bins. It was a smart move to go back and revisit this film, because besides Guardians Vol 3, it was one of the few MCU films in the last few years that didn’t fall flat and had the appeal to sell merch. I think there are a lot of factors that go into Hasbro’s current financial woes, but you won’t convince me that Disney’s mismanagement of Star Wars and Marvel aren’t a huge part of it. Neither one has the gravitas they did when Hasbro signed the licensing agreements.

Anyway… This wave was released on cards rather than in boxes and there is no Build-A-Figure, so what you see is what you get. The assortment consists of six figures: All three Spider-Mans, MJ, Matt Murdock, and Sandman. The cards are heavy stock, which should please mint-on-card collectors, and the art is pretty enough, but there’s no retro charm here that makes me sad to tear into them. Also, it’s kind of odd that the art they chose for Tom Holland Spider-Man isn’t wearing the same suit as the figure we got, but I’m cool with that because the figure features my favorite suit from the films. Let’s start with Spider-Man!

Oh yeah, this is peak MCU Spidey for me right here. The classic blue and red deco looks so gorgeous! You get a fully sculpted web pattern on the red bits, a raised spider emblem on his chest and back, and some nice texturing on the red, while the blue is left smooth. The spider emblems are sculpted on, although it’s weird how the one on his back is so much more prominent than the one on his chest. Still, with all the gimmicky suits that have been showcased over the years, between the movies and the games, this is quite possibly my favorite and it’s great to see it released on the updated body.

You get two heads, one masked and one unmasked. The masked head is standard stuff in terms of sculpt, but has some issues that I didn’t notice until I punched in close with the camera. The white on the right eye bleeds into the top edge of the lens, while the center of the web pattern is offset toward the right eye. The first issue doesn’t bother me, as it’s not that noticeable with the figure in hand, but the second issue is pretty annoying, but it’s not going to ruin the figure for me.

The unmasked head is quite spectacular and it really shows how good these likenesses can be when Hasbro is on their game. Everything about this noggin is just wonderful from the sculpt to the printing and even the color in his cheeks. I even love the disappointed dachshund look he’s got going on, which is pretty faithful to some of Holland’s emotes on screen. The hair is a separate sculpt, which creates a clean hairline and looks fantastic. This is quite simply one of Hasbro’s best likenesses at this scale.

The body is built with the new pinless engineering, which is a huge win for a Spider-Man figure as unpainted pins are often an eye sore on these the Spideys. You do get a little of that still evident in the armpits, but it’s still a big improvement. Otherwise articulation in the arms and legs is standard stuff, and you do get the standard Spidey shoulder crunches. The combination of a hinge down in the waist and the ball joint in the chest is pretty cool. It’s definitely a fun figure to play with. Sure, the pattern of the suit breaks up when you work the ball joint in the chest, but it’s kind of unavoidable.

Spidey comes with three sets of hands, and you probably can guess what they are: You get a pair of fists, splayed wall-crawler hands, and thwippy hands. About the only thing missing here are any web effects. Hasbro experimented with these a bit in the past, but it sure would be nice to get a couple thrown in now and again. I didn’t buy the No Way Home three-pack Hasbro put out a short while ago, but as I understand it this is the same figure but with the new unmasked head included. Needless to say I’m glad I waited. This turned out to be a great figure and definitely my favorite version of Holland Spider-Man to be released so far. Moving on to MJ…

I believe this is the second version of MCU MJ in Legends, with the first being released in a Homecoming two-pack. I certainly don’t remember getting one from Far From Home. Either way, we get a bit of recycled parts here from that Homecoming release, mostly from the waist down with repainted pants and repainted socks. Instead of wearing a jacket, this time she’s got on a striped sweater, which is layered onto the figure, giving it some nice depth, and having the sleeves sculpted onto the arms. Because the legs are reused they have pins in the knees, while the newly sculpted arms are pinless. Unfortunately, the arms go with rotating hinges in the elbows, rather than the double-hinge elbow and bicep swivel, which I prefer.

You get one head sculpt, which appears to be entirely new. It’s not quite the total slam-dunk that we got with Peter, but I think the likeness is still pretty damn great. Once again the printed features are very much on point and I like the way they sculpted some strands of hair dangling on each side of her face. While I still quite like the heads included with the Homecoming version, I think this one is technically better in just about every way.

Michelle comes with two sets of hands, fists and open, which I assumed were going to be reused from the previous MJ figure, but the open hands are actually different and much more natural looking. She also comes with The Machina de Kadavus, the cube that Dr. Strange used to contain his wonky spell. It’s a pretty complex accessory and definitely a welcome addition to the figure. On to our last stop… Matt Murdock!

Murdock’s cameo in the film was a total surprise to me and I really got a kick out of it, and it’s pretty cool to have a figure of Netflix Daredevil in full-on lawyer mode. Yeah, it’s just a suited body but I was surprised to find that it was pinless, as I wasn’t aware that Hasbro had invested in a pinless suit body yet. Or is this the first? Sorry, but I just haven’t been paying very close attention to Legends this past year. The suited body looks great, but I don’t have a whole lot to say about it. I like that the tie is sculpted separately to hang down and the sculpted arm sleeves do a passable job lining up with the jacket.

The head sculpt is definitely the weakest likeness of these three figures, but I don’t think it’s a total miss. I’m not sure I could recognize Cox in there if you just handed me the head, but knowing who it’s supposed to be I can definitely see it. The glasses are pretty well done for this scale and the tinting looks pretty good.

Murdock comes with two accessories: His mobility cane and the brick that was thrown through Parker’s window. I like the idea of having him do all sorts of crazy Daredevil combat with the cane. The brick is pretty well done for what it is and is almost certainly my first vandal brick accessory, so I can cross that off my bucket list.

So far, I’m enjoying this wave quite a bit. As much shit as I give Marvel Legends these days, it feels great to get some figures that I’m interested in again. The Holland Spider-Man is definitely my favorite of the trio, being the best representation of the character in my Legends display. MJ is a nice upgrade from what was already a pretty solid figure. Murdock is fun. I probably could have gambled on him turning up on clearance, but it was just easier to pre-order the whole wave. When I come back on Monday, we’ll check out the second half of the wave with the other two Spider-Mans and Sandman!

Oct 17 2022

Marvel Legends (Armadillo Wave): Black & Gold Suit Spider-Man by Hasbro

Today I’m checking out the penultimate figure in the Marvel Legends Armadillo Wave, and I very nearly skipped it. Since I’m pulling back on Marvel Legends, I have been asking myself, why bother reviewing an entire wave if you aren’t buying everything anymore anyway? But in the end, I decided that if I bought all the figures in a wave, I might as well check them all out here. And that brings us to Black & Gold Suit Spider-Man.

There was a lot of speculation about this suit when it was first revealed. It seemed to have mystical glyphs imprinted in the material and the gauntlets had a certain Strange-ness about them, if ya know what I mean. A lot of these details can be seen in Hot Toys’ Sixth-Scale version. But in the end it was all a big nothing, and it turned out to be just the regular suit turned inside out because Peter Parker got paint on it. Yeah. I kind of wish they had the balls to just put Inside Out Suit on the package. Black & Gold Suit just sounds like he’s trying to make a fashion statement.

Just to recap, all the way back to my review of the Integrated Suit, I really didn’t like that design, but the figure came close to selling it to me. You could say the same about this suit and the Hot Toys figure, but in the case of this Legends figure, well, it’s just a load of crap that makes a bad design look even worse. The black suit with gold webbing might have worked for me if the webbing was consistent throughout, and it didn’t have those red bits on the sleeves. Now, this comes down to a design inconsistency, where the Hot Toys figure shows some beautifully intricate gold on the forearms, which I presume is the exposed circuitry inside the suit when it’s worn normally. Here you just get the out of place red bits that look terrible. Why the difference? Who knows? Who cares!

The paint on the head is really bad. At least the gold webbing on the rest of the figure is fairly well done. It has a nice gold leaf finish and most of the lines are pretty sharp. The gold webbing on the head looks like it was done with a crayon before slapping the figure into the box. There’s also a lot of sloppy spray around the white eye lenses. Yuck!

You get all the usual articulation in the modern Spidey bucks, and that includes the lateral butterfly joints on the shoulders. It may be ugly, but it’s still a pretty fun figure to play around with.

Hey, let’s talk hands… because I have to gripe about hands in EVERY review throughout this wave. Nope, still no crawling hands, but you do get thwippy hands and fists. No wait… not fists. Accessory holding hands. WHAT?? WHY??? Is it so he can hold on to the webbing he doesn’t come with and swing? How is it possible they made the hand selection EVEN WORSE?!?

Wow, do I hate this figure. In all honesty, the inside out suit gag in No Way Home was kind of funny and a very Peter Parker thing to have to do. Almost as bad as having to throw on a Fantastic Four suit and run home barefoot with a bag on your head. But this figure is just trash. Hot Toys is proof positive that something could be done with the design to make an attractive figure, and yes, I do understand that we’re talking about a big difference in cost between that one and this one. But even for what it is, this figure just looks sloppy and half-assed. Next week, I’ll wrap up the boxed figures with Miles Morales, and we’ll check out the Armadillo Build-A-Figure!

Sep 12 2022

Marvel Legends (Armadillo Wave): Integrated Suit Spider-Man and J. Jonah Jameson by Hasbro

Welcome back to another Marvel Monday! This week, I’m kicking off a brand new wave, and by that I really mean an older wave that’s on my backlog pile. The Armadillo Wave is a smattering of Spider-Man based figures covering everything from the MCU films, comics, and even the GamerVerse! I’d say only about two-thirds of this assortment really interested me, but the Armadillo Build-A-Figure was enough to tip me over to getting the whole wave. Let’s start today with Spider-Man in his Integrated Suit as he appeared in No Way Home, and then J. Jonah Jameson!

I re-watched No Way Home a couple of weeks back and I still really dig that movie a lot. Indeed, as sad as I am to say it, right now these Sony-Disney efforts are about the only thing holding my attention toward the MCU these days. Integrated Suit Spider-Man does not come with any BAF parts, but I’m guessing Hasbro figured this one would be the most desirable one in the wave and that he’d have no problem selling on his own.

The Integrated Suit is basically a merged version of both the Iron-Spider and Upgraded Suit, and the design is definitely not one of my favorites. I tend to like my Spidey suits red and blue and vibrant, although the straight-up Iron-Spider Suit was spiffy enough to get my approval. This one takes the black and red from the upgraded Suit and adds some gold trim and a gold spider emblem on the chest and back, as well as gold web-shooters. The gold does spruce up the Upgraded Suit design, but I still think this whole design is just a mess. Of course, none of that is the figure’s fault, and to be fair, I think Hasbro did a pretty nice job with what they had to work with. The paint here is very sharp, and the texturing on the red parts of the suit looks fantastic. I do, however, think a little wash or panel lining in the web pattern would have looked nice.

You get only one portrait, which feels kind of cheap given the lack of a BAF part. Hasbro has enough Tom Holland heads by now that they really should have thrown one in here. And if not an unmasked head, than maybe a second masked head with squinting eyes.

The articulation is everything I expect from my Spidey Legends these days, which means it has all the usual points plus the shoulder crunches. You won’t get some of the extreme poses you will out of the more expensive imports, but I still had a whole bunch of fun playing around with this figure, and he’ll likely spend some time on my desk so I have something to fiddle around with on my down time.

You get two sets of hands: Fists and thwippy hands, and once again here the figure comes up short. With no BAF part and no extra head, the least Hasbro could have done was throw in the splayed finger hands we’ve seen with some previous Spidey Legends releases. I think this wave came out before the big price hike, but with Legends now approaching $30 each, I’m going to need more to get me to keep going even as a selective buyer.

Overall, I think this is a decent figure, it’s just based on a suit design that I’m not terrifically fond of. Still, if anything I think the design works better as a toy than on the big screen and Hasbro did a decent job making me like it a little more here. An extra head, another pair of hands, and a little linework on the web pattern, and I’d have no other complaints. Still, even with no BAF part, I’m glad I picked him up. Let’s move on to J.J. Jameson!

OK, so I absolutely lost my shit when I saw that post-credits stinger at the end of Far From Home with J.K. Simmons reprising his role as J. Jonah, and again in No Way Home. Say what you will about the Raimi Spider-Man movies, and I am most definitely still a fan, but Simmons as Jameson was pitch-perfect casting. It was inspired. Still, this figure is something of a consolation prize, because I would have much rather had younger, newspaperman Jameson from those films as a modern Legends figure. But hey, I’ll take what I can get, and I still think this figure is a real treat. This looks to be mostly a reuse of the business-suit body that we’ve seen in the past with characters like Agent Coulson and Chameleon, but the lack of tie puts it a lot closer to the Bruce Banner figure we got in the Age of Ultron 4-pack. The key difference is Jameson here has one button of the sports jacket buttoned. I don’t remember seeing that on a previous suited figure, so it may be some new sculpting there, or just recycled from a figure I missed. The suit is blue, the underlying shirt is white, and he’s got a freshly polished pair of black shoes. Yup, this was a pretty easy figure for Hasbro to knock out, and as such I don’t have a whole lot to say about it.

The two portraits are really spot on for a contemporary Simmons. And even without the full head of hair and the trademark silver wing tips, this is still J. Jonah through and through. The sculpt does a beautiful job of recreating every line in his face, both in the relatively calm portrait and the angry shouty one. And let’s be honest, who among us is going to display this figure without the shouty face?

You get two sets of hands, the first of which are relaxed hands. Well, I say relaxed hands, but they really aren’t. They’re actually more like flat karate chop hands, and they don’t really fit this figure unless you want to have Jameson doing the robot at the Daily Bugle’s annual Christmas party. And honestly, I just don’t think that’s his style. A pair of actual relaxed hands would have been more welcome here, and we all know Hasbro has done them before, so it’s odd they went with these instead.

Now, the second pair is more his type. You get a pointing finger on his right hand and a left hand that is clenched into a tight fist of righteous anger. Combine these with the shouty head, and you’ve got all you’ll ever need!

As I stand with one foot ready to step outside the Marvel Legends collecting circle, figures like these give me hope that maybe I’m not quite done yet. Jameson surely isn’t the most exciting figure around and he isn’t the version of Simmons/Jameson that I really wanted, BUT… I love him, and I love that Hasbro gave him to us. Likewise, the Integrated Suit ranks pretty far down on my list of Spider-Man’s MCU suits, and yet I can still find some fun and joy in this figure. Off the top of my head, I honestly couldn’t tell you what other figures are in this wave, so it’ll be a surprise when I dive into the box to get my next figure to review, but so far the assortment is off to a pretty OK start.