Nothing excites me more than finding a toy as it is just hitting shelves! Luckily for me, I've been able to snag all the villains from the Spiderman Classics line as soon as the wave is hitting stores. Now for those of you unfamiliar with the toy collecting game, the villains in the Spiderman line are viscously hard to find because they are shipped usually one or two to a box that is chocked full of three weird Spiderman variations that no one really wants. Their excuse is it is a kids like and kids want Spiderman. I, however, remember when I was kid and I was always mad that all I could find was super acid attack frosted hair attack batman instead of the Bob the Goon I so desperately needed. But as Mr. T would say, enough of the jibba jabba. I FOUND MYSTERIO! More specifically MAGIC CHANGE MYSTERIO WITH LIGHT UP HELMET!
There it is. In all of its packaged glory. I'm going to do the right thing and free this poor little plastic bad boy from his plastic imprisonment and then go on to play with him and most likely make his say silly things to another toy. Since that is what toys are made for. The first thing I noticed when I picked up the toy is that the white-ish helmet from the prototype shots has gone out the window and we are now treated with an over sized black fishbowl. I understand Toybiz thought it was important to add a collector-dreaded action feature to the toy and I was all for it after seeing the prototype pictures and how it didn't really effect the toy's look THAT much. I'm not too happy with the new black bowl though. In fact, I plan on making some modifications to make this look a bit more comic book accurate later on.
The figure features the standard awesome levels of articulation that is expected on a Marvel toy made by Toybiz with a couple exceptions, let's look at what is there first though. We the toe, ankle, double knee, ball joint hips, cut waist, ball joint shoulders double elbow, wrist, and fingers. Glaring exceptions the upper waist / chest which I'm sure was sacrificed for the "Magic Change" action feature. But what really gets me is that there is no cut wrist! I can't move his hand around to make the patented Darth Vader reaching out and clutching at the air pose correctly. There is a cut joint at the forearm but it just isn't the same. That is my only gripe about the articulation of the figure though
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The figure I got had all tight joints and is rather easily posed. The cape is made out of the soft plastic that you can find on recent Marvel Legend toys like Vision and Storm. You could strip Mysterio of his cape with little effort but I don't really see why someone would want to do that. The paint applications on the particular figure I got were very good for a Spiderman Classics toy and the lines on his costume are pretty kickin!
Mysterio came with a big puff of smoke and what appears to be two bird demon missiles that can shoot out of the smoke. Another item of note is that the cloud has wheels so as to recreate Mysterio floating, pretty cool. As you can see in the above picture Mysterio does have a head inside the big old fishbowl. Again, I thought this was kind of cool but a little annoying at first, but now we get to the big fun: The Magic Change Helmet!
Mysterio has three different faces that are turned and lit up when you hit that big honking button on his back. This sort of reminds me of the old Man-E-Faces toy in the He-Man line of toys. Here are pictures of his three faces.
My biggest problem with the toy is pretty clear in this picture. The action feature is kind of neat, but when you push in the button you see the HUGE LED light up and it is right in front of his face. I'm sure they could have mounted this a bit better so as to not COMPLETELY ruin the desired effect. I can get over it though. The first face is your regular every day run of the mill human dude man face. Nothing too exciting, the next ones get a little wild though
Yes, the picture did change, just look a little closer. Now he has an angry demon face that is sure to scare Spiderman into submission. As awesome as Mysterio is, he was a little bit silly.
Next up is the scariest face of all time! A weird alien baby face. I'm not really sure if any of these faces come from certain comic books, feel free to let me know if they are. This face is just flat out stupid and it makes me wish I just got a white opaque fishbowl as portrayed in all of the comics I have read with Mysterio.
RATING TIME!
Articulation - 8 out of 10 The no cut wrists really makes me mad, and articulation that had been used in the past on Marvel Legends and Spiderman Classics toys really surpass this one.
Sculpting - 9 out of 10 Mysterio is a rather simple design and it would be kind of hard to not nail him. I took a point off for the HUGE fishbowl.
Overall - 8 out of 10 It would have been a 9 if not for the stupid action feature and slightly below average articulation. Besides that though, this figure rules!
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