DR. OCTOPUS

SPIDER-MAN: THE ANIMATED SERIES (TOY BIZ)

“A laboratory explosion grafted four tentacle-like mechanical arms to the body of renowned Radiology expert Dr. Otto Octavius, warping his mind, transforming him into the genius know as Dr. Octopus! Octopus can control his titanium steel tentacles with but a thought – – and his thoughts are often of smashing his arch-foe, Spider-Man!”

The ‘90s was a pretty solid decade when it came to super hero cartoons.  At the head of the pack was Batman: The Animated Series, which everything else was kind of trying to imitate, at least in some fashion.  Perhaps the oddest case of this was Spider-Man: The Animated Series, which featured a surprising number of shared actors with BTAS.  Batman’s faithful butler Alfred’s voice actor Ephram Zimbalist Jr was one of the crossover actors, also lending his voice to Dr. Octopus, who was also one of the tie-in toyline’s first figures to roll out.  Let’s check him out today! 

THE FIGURE ITSELF

Dr. Octopus was released in the first series of Toy Biz’s Spider-Man: The Animated Series tie-in line.  As with the rest of the line’s early run figures, he’s based on his cartoon design (in contrast to a lot of the other Toy Biz 5-inch lines), itself based on Erik Larsen’s updated Doc Ock design from the comics around that time.  The figure stands just over 5 inches tall and he has 9 points of articulation.  He gets the standard set-up for the Toy Biz 5-inch figures in terms of movement, at least for the most part.  You can also get a little movement out of the tentacles, which can slightly turn at the base, but it’s sort of iffy and inconsistent.  The sculpt for this guy was all-new, though it would see re-use a few other times under Toy Biz, as well as serving as the inspiration for the smaller die cast figure and the 10-inch figure.  It’s based on his armored attire from the show, and it’s pretty good at that.  It’s certainly a more cut take on Otto than we usually see, but it was the ‘90s; everybody just looked like that.  I remember, I was there.  The hair’s not quite consistent with the show, which leaned into his Moe Howard cut; instead, it’s a little more contemporary.  All-in-all, not a bad sculpt, which captures the character pretty well.  The tentacles are a softer material, to allow for the action feature.  Pulling the (incredibly obvious and oddly shaped) tab on his back pulls the strings within the arms taut, so they sort of close inward.  It’s not a reliably good feature, but I guess it’s no worse for long-term livelihood than the usual bendy ones.  Doc Ock’s color work is pretty simple.  It matches the animation model, and its fairly clean on the application front.  It doesn’t do anything crazy, but it gets the job done.  Doc Ock included no accessories, rather common for the earlier figures in the line.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

I didn’t have this figure as a kid.  I remember him, and I remember others having him, but I never had one of my own.  Honestly, I never much clicked with Doc Ock until Spider-Man 2, and didn’t have much interest in figures of him until around that time.  This is a more recent addition, relatively speaking, although it’s probably been five years or so since I snagged this one loose from a collection that got traded into work.  He’s kind of a basic sort of figure, and doesn’t quite get into the sorts of things that later Doc Ocks got into, but he does manage to be a decent all-around figure.