Kenner rightly deserves its place in toy making history for popularising the 3 ¾ inch figure through its vintage Star Wars line of the 1970s and 80s, with the huge success of the movie franchise proving to be a massive marketing lucky break for the company. The Mego Corporation definitely deserves a nod as the very first pioneer of the 3 ¾ inch scale, however, with their Comic Action Heroes line launched way back in 1976, and its revamped series three years later known as the Pocket Super Heroes. Featuring the already licensed comic book characters from its own classic 8 inch World’s Greatest Super Heroes line, these pint-sized action figures were only produced until 1982.
Spider-Man
Web Climbing Spidey from Spider-Man 2
One of the action figure previews to generate a major buzz and lengthy blog posts all over the Internet during the recent San Diego Comic-Con was the all new Hasbro Spider-Man with sparkly metallic finishes. It will be released to coincide with the 2012 reboot of the Spider-Man movie franchise – The Amazing Spider-Man – which sees the very talented Andrew Garfield with the unenviable task of taking over a role that Tobey Maguire played so nerdily well in the Sam Raimi trilogy. In my book, however, there’s simply no such thing as too many Spider-Man movies, or action figures for that matter, so until the Garfield figure hits store shelves, here’s a look at some official movie merchandise by Toy Biz from the 2004 Spider-Man 2 movie – the Web Climbing Spider-Man.
Secret Wars: Spider-Man
Whilst Super Powers will probably remain my first choice as winners in the great superheroes action figure stand-off during the mid 1980s, when the mighty Mattel joined forces with Marvel to produce the Secret Wars line in direct competition with the DC Comics branded Kenner Super Powers product, I have to admit that I’m growing to like the Secret Wars figures more and more.
Bright colours, solid sculpts and accurate comic-book costumes and likenesses made these figures popular at the time and if you can pick up a figure that has survived with its paintwork intact like Spider-Man here, they make fine display pieces for any vintage collector today.