CAPTAIN AMERICA

SPIDER-MAN: THE ANIMATED SERIES (TOY BIZ)

It’s been a year and a half since I’ve done one of these, but it’s Friday, and I’ve got some addending to do, so, behold, a new Flashack Friday Figure Addedum!  I’m diving back into an older Toy Biz Marvel review, from way back in the site’s very first year, waaaaaaaaaaaay back in 2014.  I hadn’t even seen The Winter Soldier when I wrote this!  Crazy!  So, let’s look back around to Captain America!

By the time this review is posted, I will have seen Captain America: The Winter Soldier.  I’m hoping that I love it as much as I am expecting to, but I’ll just have to wait and see (EDIT: I saw it!  It was amazing.  Go check it out!).  In the meantime, to celebrate the release of the movie, I’ll be taking a look at my very first Captain America action figure.  Back before Cap was the household name he is now, the only way to get a Cap figure was in the tie-in line to the Spider-Man cartoon, of all places.  Cap had just made an appearance on the show, so Toybiz was gracious enough to put him in the eighth series of the line, dubbed Electro-Spark.  How does the figure hold up almost 20 years later? Let’s find out!

THE FIGURE ITSELF

The Spider-Man line was 5 inch scale, but Cap was a big guy, standing almost 6 inches tall and featuring 9 points of articulation.  Toybiz seemed intent on depicting Cap as quite the hulking figure (not that one).  He’s so big, it’s almost like his super-soldier serum took super-soldier serum.  This was not a Cap you wanted to mess with!  The sculpt had some nice touches, particularly the scale texture on Cap’s torso, which is simple, but very effective.  The gloves and boots also show a nice level of detail.  There’s lots of folds and creases, making them stand out nicely.  The face depicts Cap in a very angry state, which wouldn’t be my first go to for the character, but it was the 90s.  Everybody gritted their teeth like that.  The paint work on Cap was simple, but it fits with the time, and it was fairly cleanly applied.  I quite like the stylizing of the “A” on the forehead.  Cap included his mighty shield, though this is probably my biggest issue with the figure.  The shield was reworked to give it some sort of light-up feature, which means it’s really small and like an inch thick. Plus, the star’s not even the right color!

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

As I mentioned in the intro, Cap was my very first figure of the character.  It was also the only version available for a few years, so this is what I had to live with.  The figure is probably one of the most dated sculpts of the old Spider-Man line, but I can’t help but love it.  I guess I just got used to what I had.  AS a kid, there was no thrill like getting to watch my VHS copies of the Ruby-Spears Captain America cartoon while holding this figure.

Here’s the part where I get all hyper-critical of my old writing.  I mean, a little.  Honestly, this one’s not bad.  It breaks format a bit, since his release info is in the intro, and the “Figure Itself” segment jumps right to the stats of the figure.  Also, it should be “Toy Biz was generous enough” not “Toybiz was gracious enough.”  Wrong “g” word past-Ethan!  Beyond that, the review covers its bases pretty well.

What it *doesn’t* cover is the extra accessories I didn’t have at the time.  In addition to that surprisingly thick shield, Cap also got a weird transforming plane/jetpack thing.  It’s extra goofy and silly, but, hey, why stop that now.  I honestly had completely forgotten the whole thing at the time of my original review.  But, thanks to an assist from Max (who I totally am gonna blame, by the way), I got a second copy of this Cap, which had all of his accessories, and look, now he’s all complete!