Quality Control vs. Buyer Beware.

It still feels like a lull in the storm, as far as action figure releases go: any day now, I’m sure the new Star Wars Black and Batman ‘66 and maybe even new Marvel Legends will show up on store shelves. Right this second, though, it is clearance time; that wonderful, magical, possibly spazical time of year where I buy a lotta figures I never would have at full price.

Case in point: the Wal-Mart exclusive Amazing Spider-Man movie figure, with backpack, skateboard, and alternate Andrew Garfield head. (Hmm, almost typed Andrew McCarthy there…I don’t exactly picture that variant flying off the pegs.) I didn’t bite when he was $16.99, nor when marked down to $11. I could spring for nine bucks, though, and did. (The Lizard and the Ultimate Spider-Man were still there, and I may scoop them up if there are further drops.)

I made a grievous error, though, since I’m not used to seeing two of the same figure that I wanted on the peg at the same time: I didn’t remember to compare them before I bought one! Although, that may or may not have helped; but there was a glob on the belt line that looks like Spidey got gum stuck on him. I don't know what it is, but it seems like a stray bit of plastic that fell on the figure late in the process, possibly after painting? And since Spidey's costume has a certain texture to it (since everyone's costume has to have that now...) the blob really latched on there. In the same vein, there's just the tiniest little piece of stray mold, right under the chin of the Garfield head. Probably invisible in the photos here, and I didn't have enough light to take a good macro picture; but the Batman Legacy Catwoman I found had that as well. If I'd taken a moment to compare figures, I might have got a better one.

Then, more disaster: the neck joint is a rather small pin, that was stuck; and the left leg fell off! Luckily, the leg seems to pop right back on well enough, and a little time in the freezer and some warm water loosened that neck right up. And after all that? He's not a bad Spidey, and the texture is kind of interesting. If you have a rack of recent Marvel movie figures or DC Movie Masters, he ought to fit in just fine. But mostly he's a wake-up call for me to give my purchases a bit more of a look-over in the store, instead of just gibbering like a chimp as I run them up to the register...

Along with the alternate head, Spidey also came with a backpack and a skateboard: the wheels roll on the skateboard, and the backpack has a strap to hold said skateboard, which isn't too shabby. Then there's another of those re-purposed Heroscape bases, and I need to take a glance around at how many I have of those and whether I can do anything with them. Watch those clearance aisles!