DOC OCK

MARVEL LEGENDS (HASBRO)

Fun FiQ Fact #0039: Doctor Octopus was originally slated to be a secondary antagonist for Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man, but was re-purposed as sole antagonist of Spider-Man 2 when it was decided to give more time to both him and Green Goblin.

As a huge fan of the first Sam Raimi Spider-Man, I was, unsurprisingly, hyped about its first sequel.  And boy did I have good reason to be, because Spider-Man 2 is the unquestioned high point of the trilogy, and Alfred Molina’s turn as Otto Octavious is a key part of the film’s success.  I’d not been much of a Doc Ock fan prior to the movie, but I certainly was after.  Molina’s return to the role was one of the first confirmed elements of No Way Home‘s production, and I was hyped about that, too.  And what else could I possibly be hyped about?  Oh yeah, the toys!

THE FIGURE ITSELF

Doc Ock is a deluxe price-point Marvel Legends release.  Like Goblin, he’s coinciding with the release of the retro-carded No Way Home assortment, though unlike Goblin, he’s not officially NWH-branded.  Instead, he’s using the Spider-Man 2 branding, and appears to be in a similar position to the Andrew Garfield figure, where it was some sort of weird licensing mix-up.  In the case of Ock, it’s a little strange, because he winds up as a bit of a mixed bag in terms of design, since he doesn’t seem to be clearly dialing into either film appearance exactly…but I’ll get to that.  The actual figure stands about 6 1/4 inches tall and he has 30 points of articulation, with the tentacles offering up an additional 10 points of movement (plus being able to bend) and also potentially giving him another 3 1/2 inches or so of height, depending on how you want to display him.  The core figure is pretty standard fare for the line in terms of movement.  He’s a little restricted by the overcoat, of course, but that’s expected.  It’s not like Molina was particularly mobile in the films, so it’s not terribly limiting.  The actual sculpting is actually pretty strong.  As I noted above, he’s a bit of an amalgam of the two film appearances, with the slightly shorter hair of 2, but the added turtleneck from NWH.  The hair’s such a negligible thing that I feel he may have been sculpted to just be a NWH figure, and there were minor adjustments made later.  The head, especially facially, has a strong likeness of Molina.  It’s a little harder to capture in photos, but in person, it’s very good.  The glasses are permanently attached, meaning this one is destined to loose them immediately the way the original SM2 ones were.  They look nice, and I appreciate the slight translucence.  The tentacles are permanently attached to the figure, which I suppose is fitting.  They have a wire running through them, with limited joints on the pincers.  The smaller ones are the more posable ones, though that unfortunately also leads to them falling apart a lot.  The larger ones have no movement past the swivel at the base of the arm, and rely on two different styles of swappable claws, so that you can either use them for standing or gripping.  Standing him on the lower two appendages can take a little bit of doing to hit the right sweet spot, but once you get him there, he’s surprisingly stable, which made me very happy.  In terms of color work, he’s pretty mild.  A lot of earthy tones, as you’d expect.  The face paint is quite nice, and there’s some smaller work on the jacket that adds some nice pop.  The tentacles are notably missing the extra gold detailing that they had in SM2, but it’s possible that’s linked to the material that was used for them, since it’s a softer plastic that might not hold paint as well.  Ock is admittedly light on extras, with just two sets of hands, one in fists, the other in open gesture, as well as the previously mentioned swappable lower claws.  Given the sheer sizing on the tentacles, however, this isn’t terribly surprising.

THE ME REMAINDER OF THE EQUATION

I kept waiting for this guy to get shown off *somewhere* with all the movie merch that was going around.  Certainly they had to do an update, right?  I mean, yeah, I’ve still got my original, and he holds up better than some of the others, but I can get an upgrade, right? Well, yes, as a matter of fact, that was right.  He’s the last of the whole batch I got my hands on, but he’s worth the wait.  I could rattle off a bunch of issues (and in fact I did up above), but none of that changes how much I genuinely love this figure, or the level of joy opening him up brought me.

Thanks to my sponsors over at All Time Toys for setting me up with this figure to review.  If you’re looking for cool toys both old and new, please check out their website and their eBay storefront.