It’s Thanksgiving Thursday as I write this Figure Friday or as they call it around the Biff Bam Pop! offices…Thursday. Just Thursday.
I’ve got the local parade on the TV as I write this, and I’m pretty sure I’ve done this exact thing before. I like writing in the mornings when I’m sharper and more lucid, but it’s rare. So I guess you could say I’m thankful I’m able to do this. Boom, got ‘em.
This is also the portion of the column where I’m morally obligated to remind you to 1) shop small if possible this holiday season and B) donate to charity if you can (Toys for Tots is my pick, staying on-brand here). A couple of months ago, I freed myself from the Great Satan that is Amazon, and it hasn’t negatively impacted my life at all. Plus, I now get to have the pleasure of looking smug from the moral high ground.
My next FF entry will be for the Holiday Gift Guide, so this column is relatively low-stakes. May as well dick around a bit and have some fun with it.
Hot Toys Spider-Man
I couldn’t pass up a chance to write about this. It’s so niche and ridiculous, and I’m pleased and amazed in equal measure over its existence.
As a kid, superheroes existed only on the comics page or on Saturday morning TV cartoons. Seeing a real, live superhero was a rarity reserved for Superman, Batman (Adam West), Wonder Woman, and the Incredible Hulk in the years before Batman (1989) blew the doors off the genre and kick-started the golden age of comic book movies.
My favourite, Spider-Man, was largely absent from both the big and small screens, barring a small cameo on The Electric Company. Yes, by 1978, we all believed a man could fly, but climbing walls and swinging from a web were completely different matters.
There was a short-lived Spider-Man TV show that ran from 1977 to 1979. Some of the episodes were later cut together as “movies” and released on VHS or ran as Saturday afternoon movies on one of the local UHF stations, which is where I encountered them.
Granted, I wasn’t even in grade school yet, so cut me a little slack…but my mind was blown. Spider-Man was real, and the fact that he was swinging from a literal rope and that Los Angeles looks nothing like New York meant absolutely nothing to me. The movies didn’t rerun too often, and there was no way to tell when they were going to be shown, but when I did manage to catch one, it was amazing, spectacular, etc.
Recently, Hot Toys revealed this extremely limited-edition sixth-scale figure of 1977 Spider-Man, and it is perfect. If I have any criticisms, it’s that it looks too good. Part of the charm of the series was that it was an accurate depiction of what a dude in the 1970s would look like if they made their own spandex super-suit.
This figure has it all…the chunky utility belt, the somehow even chunkier web-shooter (but just one for some reason, even as a kid, that didn’t make sense to me) and two sets of interchangeable eye pieces. I’m particularly enamoured with the eye pieces; the weird ones with the tiny dots must have been an absolute nightmare for the actor to see out of.
If you’re after this figure…good luck. It’s been limited to 600 pieces, and you can join the waitlist now and hope for a miracle.
So, with all that being said, let’s see what else Hot Toys has been up to.
Oh…Oh no…
