I'm pretty sure that every young boy is being issues some sort of red and blue webslinger figure at his fourth birthday, and the Crime Fightin' Spider-Man is as good of a choice as any. It started shipping earlier this year along with Night Mission Spider-Man, a clear blue figure that's so odd I saw it, shrugged it off, and it wormed its way into my head until I caved in and bought it - along with this normal Crime Fightin' version - a few months ago. The blue one got cracked open immediately in February while the red-and-blue one stayed in my "open this later" pile until the middle of June. It had the cooler accessory, but it wasn't what you would call overwhelmingly interesting. This same mold has been used for numerous comic book Spider-Man figures that came with jets or planes or other things you, the collector, would never buy.
Its appeal is that it's cheap. Hasbro, by 2013, started to push for a cheaper action figure program as its normal collector/kid fare had inched up to a minimum of $9 per figure with most scraping $10. This guy is usually around $6 nowadays, but may be more at Toys R Us. He's the simplest Spider-Man figure in this size available today, with no action features and a pose that's more at home in 1988 than 2013.
While the blue Night Mission figure is a wonderful example of what I assume to be a toy designer bashing their head against the desk to come up with something new, weird, and different, ol' red-and-blue is pretty paint by numbers. The design is delightfully cartoony with sculpted webbing over his red outfit segments, the panel lines going unpainted. A black spider appears on his chest, and he has big, friendly eyes with a black outline on his head. For the toy dorks out there, it's very much like getting an Alpha Phase Outer Space Men figure, and then the regular one. Except in this case, you've seen thousands of regular ones by now.
The big blue spider has a red marking on its back, while the other figure in this assortment had an unpainted arachnid. Oh, and it's a different mold - this is more or less a regular spider, while the red one packaged with blue Night Mission Spider-Man is a cyborg. Because why not. The web backpack accessory is a nifty holdover from Marvel Universe and fits quite nicely on the figure. Sadly the spider can't cling to the backpack or anything, so what you have is a plastic spider to chuck in the parts bin and a backpack you'll either leave on the figure or get mad at and throw at the spider.
I was under the impression this line would have more recolors, and was surprised to find out that instead wave 2 would have a new sculpt with comic-inspired decoration (Iron Spider and Ben Reilly) which sadly puts an end to my hopes of weird clear red or green Spider-Man figures. There's nothing wrong with this guy, but you've seen this mold before and you didn't want him then. This might make a great gift for a kid, or a pilot for the new cheap Star Wars vehicles, but in and of itself it doesn't bring much new to the table. It's still pleasant enough though, and if hte price is right you really have no reason to skip him.
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