Pros : Articulation is very good with butterfly shoulder joints to aid more dynamic poses.
Cons : Would benefit from alternative hands. Where is the rest of his costume?
Avengers Infinity War wave 1 is giving us four MCU figures alongside three comic book figures - and by purchasing the whole wave (well you can skip Iron-Man if you want) you get to build your very own Thanos to face down your Avengers. In this review we look at Iron Spider.
The packaging shape and design remains consistent with the current Legends releases. The colour scheme is very much purple and yellow, a good representation of Thanos and the golden Infinity Gauntlet. The packaging overall is black but the Avengers logo is presented in a rich gold and under this a purple name stripe. This purple theme goes to the two side panels where we have a purple hue image of Spider-Man.
Round the back we get a promo image of the figure and some top line text about Spidey's role in Infinity War, don't worry there is no spoilers as such in the text. Under this is a checklist for the Thanos Build-A-Figure.
The card insert continues the yellow theme, and when you take out the figure you can see this is now an Avengers "A" logo against an exploding background. The figure sits in the tray alongside the leg of Thanos. There are no twisty ties, the figure and BAF piece pop straight out.
The sculpt is well proportioned and the head has the spider-web design sculpted into the head around the two defined eye sockets. Down into the costume and the spider logo is all relief sculpted and then painted neatly with a gold paint to trim out and separate the red and blue panels. While the painting is pretty spot on throughout, there are spots of red visible on or under the blue panels.
Spidey stands 5 and 3/4 inches high, which is spot on in terms of Tom Holland's build. As you move past the torso the details of the suit do dry up so we have basic blue legs down to the top of the boots where we have some final gold trim and the red legs.
One notable absence at this point are the additional mechanical legs that we associate with Iron-Spider. There is a rumour that these are coming with this same figure in a two pack in the future which feels a bit naughty getting fans to double dip the same figure. I did hope that the figure could be fitted with the unmasked Tom Holland head from Homecoming which would be nice as a variant - sadly the peg holes are not compatible without doing some work on one or the other to make it fit.
Articulation is impressive, and being Spider-Man you can see why there are extra bells and whistles to make this as pose-able as possible. If you count up we have 21 points of articulation starting with a ball jointed head which can be tilted back neatly as though he is looking up at building. We then have a T-joint chest and a waist swivel to articulate the torso.
The extra couple of joints come in the shape of butterfly joints either side of the shoulder. This allows the arms to be swung inward a lot more than the standard arm articulation so if you want Spidey in a web swinging pose this is possible. The arms then have your usual ball jointed shoulders, bicep swivel, double jointed elbows and a wrist joint.
The legs have a ball joint, but these are less rounded and more natural than some I have seen on the Legends figures. Under this is a thigh swivel, double jointed knees and finally ankle rockers.
Spider-Man sadly only comes with the set of hands that are fitted. These are both web-shooting hands, and while these are fine for web shoot poses (with both hands) they look odd with any other pose. The figure is crying out for a neutral set of hands to balance out the hand poses - either fists or gripping hands.
Iron Spider feels like half a release, and I am convinced that this figure will get a re-release with more bells and whistles in the coming months. He needs a second pair of hands as a minimum, and should really also have his mechanical arms - as seen on every other version of this figure, including Hasbro's own 12" and basic line 6" figure.
That being said, the articulation on what we gave is impressive as is the sculpt. Paint apps are neat and the suit is very visual and is growing on me the more I play with it.
I score Iron Spider an average 2 out of 5 and await the improved version....
