Spiderman (House of M)
Of late, I find that collecting Hasbro Marvel Universe figures is becoming a lot like collecting Star Wars Clone Troopers, in the sense that there are only a few new molds developed each year and then we get to buy a lot of repaints with minimal changes done to them for quite some time.
In Marvel Universe Series 2, Hasbro included a House of M Spiderman that uses the slim muscular body type we have seen before with a slightly different paint scheme. Colors are classic Spidey red and dark blue, but the costume panels are distributed in a slightly different pattern. The overall look is so close to that of regular Spiderman that you may not notice any difference right away.
The only piece exclusive to Spiderman is the head, which has the rim of the eyes sculpted onto the otherwise smooth mask. Since the rest of the figure is pretty much generic, HoM Spidey has the following articulation:
• 
Ball jointed neck.
• Double peg, hinged shoulders.
• Hinged elbows.
• Swivel wrists.
• Floating torso.
• Ball jointed hips.
• Double Hinged knees.
• Peg & Hinge ankles.
Even though this is not a bad generic template, I don’t think it’s a right fit for Spiderman. Starting with the really fastidious, Spidey ends up being too tall in relation to the other figures in the MU line.
Second, the hip joint design really hurts posing and while it may not be a big issue for other characters, Spiderman needs to be able to at least approximate a crouching pose, which is simply unattainable without a swivel joint stuck somewhere in between waist and ankles.
On a more positive note, paint applications are quite good. There are some issues though, as sometimes the black web lines are painted slightly outside the blocked red areas, but in general the look is neat and clean.
HoM Spiderman comes with a tangled web attachment, a web knapsack with some personal effects sculpted onto them, a black rectangular display base and the Series 2 HAMMER file. Since the House of M story arc involved alternate realities, Spidey’s file makes only the most oblique references to the events during that period, a point driven home by the amount of censored words in it.
Based on looks alone, this is a cool Spiderman repaint and even though there is room for improvement in the articulation model, I don’t think we’ll see a new mold in quite a while, so, if you need a Spiderman figure for the time being, it may as well be this one.
Errex Score: 85/100
Category: Featured, Marvel, Toy Reviews
About the Author (Author Profile)
I've been collecting action figures since the original Kenner Star Wars days. Nowadays, I still collect pretty much anything that catches my eye.Subscribe
If you enjoyed this article, subscribe to receive more just like it.
I’m just not a huge fan of the huge eyed Spidey.
I kind of like the big eyes.
The small eye mask looks a bit too much like regular Luchador garb at times, moreso since they used that head sculpt for the first, chubbier version of Spiderman, the one that used the modified Daredevil buck.