[En Sabah Nerd]

My local grocery store got the new Spider-Man wave in last week but someone or someones already bought Moon Knight, homemade Spidey, and cosmic Spidey. Last night hen I was grocery shopping the remaining figures were already placed an sale with $5 off so I scooped up Vulture, movie Spidey, and Beetle.

I'll start with my thoughts on Beetle, of the three I think he's the sleeper hit. I wasn't sure I wanted him much when I put him in my cart but I didn't want to pass on the sale price. In hand I like this figure a lot more than I thought I would when looking at it in box. The colors are really nice aside from a few small spots of paint scratching around the forearms and mine doesn't have the shoulder issue that I've read others have experienced. Whether he's used as a filler villain or a Thunderbolt I think it's just a solid figure and I'm a sucker for the green and purple color scheme.

Vulture is a very cool looking bad guy for Homecoming in my opinion. I know not everybody likes what they did with him but I think it's a cool way to bring him to the big screen. The paint work on the figure is clean on mine and while the colors are generally muted there is still some personality to it. The sculpt is another strong entry for Hasbro's MCU figures and all of the articulation works well. My only cons would be that he has no weapon accessories or a Michael Keaton head and that then of course he has no wings on his own. I'm thinking I might give him the repainted Destroyer gun from the EE GotG set since that looks weird and alien enough to fill in for that thing he has in the trailers. It's also nice to finally get another movie villain figure from anybody, neither Hasbro nor DST have done any in a good long while.

Spider-Man is neat but I personally had to put in a lot of effort to get everything working. A lot of his joints were totally stuck out of the box, mostly in his left arm. I had to heat up and entirely remove his bicep just to get in unstuck and moving. His left shoulder butterfly joint and his left bicep were also entirely stuck but thankfully I didn't have to remove those to get them moving. The lower hinge then on his left elbow is still entirely frozen stuck and even when I heat it to get at it all I start to do is bend the upper part too much so I have to stop. Sculpt and articulation wise this is a great Spidey figure but then paint QC doesn't seem to be very high on Hasbro's list. The alternate head has a decent amount of white paint going over the lines on its left eye and then just across the figure here and there small amounts of blue or black end up where they shouldn't be. The web wings are done nice enough but they only work with certain poses (still better to have them I suppose) and then he only has two pairs of hands which is a drop from previous releases. Overall I really do like this figure and the costume design but I should not have had to do all that I did to get it in workable conditions, kids could get these figures and if one had gotten the figure I had they definitely would've broken it trying to move anything on the figure's left side.

So now I have a decent amount of Vulture's wings put together and I'm only missing the 3 parts. Only problem is I really don't want the other three figures in this wave but I do really want to finish Vulture's wings. If anybody has the parts that come with Tombstone, Captain Universe Spidey, and Homemade Spidey I'd definitely be open to make a deal for them. If anybody's interested in that you can PM me.