Figurine Spotlight: Diamond Select Toys Marvel Amazing Spider-Man 2

I’ll be honest, I love me some Spider-Man, he’s perhaps my favorite Marvel Super Hero of all time and I’ve been a fan of his for some time. So of course I jumped at the chance to check out Diamond’s Select Marvel Amazing Spider-Man 2 figure and hoping that it was amazing as I was told it was (Get it?).

What’s in the box?

• (1) Spider-Man 7 inch figure with 16 points of articulation
• NYFD fireman’s helmet and hose nozzle
• 4x sets of varied hands to swap out
• 2x  sets of webbing strands

What I liked

At first glance you can tell that they did a great job on the costume details, even more so when you check out the spider that is on both the front and a larger spider on the back of the costume. Also I liked the way that the costume is textured and not a smooth surface, which goes a long way to differentiate the versions of Spider-Man, especially since this is The Amazing Spider (Movie) version of Spider-Man. Standing at a bit over 7 inches tall made out of rubber, it has a nice feel to it and thankfully it also includes a several varied hands for swapping out for web shooting, web swinging and it even includes two types of webs to use for the posing.

I also like that it didn’t take the strength of the Hulk remove the hands as they were able to be removed with minor force and they even tossed in the NYPD fireman’s helmet and hose nozzle that he used in The Amazing Spider-Man 2.

Overall I’m impressed with the figure’s details, however……

What I didn’t like

I feel this is a missed opportunity here and that’s sad. While Diamond Select was on point with the costume and the details, the articulation on the other hand is a different story. Sure it has a mild selection of articulation, however what is there is stiff and doesn’t allow for many of Spider-Man’s iconic poses. The chest pivots at the torso instead of at the waist, no movement other than up and down from the ankles down and even the shoulder movement is limited. You can’t even bend his toes, a huge negative here folks.

There was also no stand included in the package and I was forced to take one from another one of my figures so that I could at least put Spider-Man into a web swinging pose. Seriously Diamond, how are we supposed to pretend to him swing through the skyline if we can’t even put him in a stand to position him? The hand stems were also really weak and I bent two of them trying to swap them out as they are made out of a really thin piece of plastic and I wasn’t able to super glue it back together, so as you could imagine I was pretty bummed about that.

And while I’m on the subject of build quality I also want to address the issues with the joints, specifically the knees. Those knees are super lose and if you can see via the picture above they don’t support the body very much and greatly limits you on the type of pose / positioning you want to put Spidey. The thighs are also suspect as they are a tad too small and makes it seem that Diamond just throw the parts together without any thought behind the process or didn’t care after the fact. Either way it’s pretty bad.