Toy Review: Fiercest Foes Doctor Octopus

08/18/10

Fiercest Foes Doctor Octopus

There are two stories about Doctor Octopus that I really remember from the time I collected comics. The first was the story arc in the Spider-Man comic where Erik Larsen decided to bring back the Sinister Six. Doc Ock planned to invade an alternate dimension with the help of Mysterio, The Vulture, Sandman, Hobgoblin and one more dude whose name I can’t be bothered to look up at the moment and steal a butt load of advanced weaponry in a bid to take over the world.

You got to love those evil schemes.

The second one was an Incredible Hulk story by Peter David and Dale Keown (the BEST creative team that has EVER done the Hulk) where Hulk went back to Vegas to investigate the death of someone who had befriended him when he was Mr. Fixit. Between battles with the Punisher and various mobsters, Hulk found Octavius in a casino (after being attacked by an irrate Sandman at the end of the aforementioned Revenge of the Sinister Six) making a scene after being asked to leave. What ensued was hilarious.

So after getting my SDCC Spider-Man, I decided to pick up the Doctor Octopus figure from the new Spider-Man Fiercest Foes line that’s currently warming pegs at your local Toy Kingdom.

The Fiercest Foes (FF) line is one of Hasbro’s 4″ lines that run parallel to it’s main Marvel Universe (MU) line. Others include the Iron Man 2 (IM2) line and the upcoming Thor and the inevitable Captain America and Avengers lines. As opposed to the IM2 line, the FF one is geared more towards a younger audience, much like the other Spider-man lines were in the past.

What that means in laymans terms is that there are a buttload of Spider-man versions, most of which will never be seen in the comics. After all, Scuba Gear Spidey or Samurai Spidey or Summer Vacation Spidey in board shorts with “Surf’s Up” Surfboard! are NOT things that would fit into the 40 plus years of continuity. It also means that this line has cut back on articulation and features some really crazy accessories and/or action features.

The back of the card shows you some of the other toys in the lineup. You can see that there are some weird attachable armors that Hasbro has cooked up, stuff you’d never catch the normally fashionable Web Head wearing. For a toy line called “Fiercest Foes”, there seems to be an overabundance of Mr. Peter Parker figures in the assortment.

But I’ll cut Hasbro some slack, because among all these odd alternate univerese Spider-Men, they’ve included some really great examples from Spidey’s rogue gallery. There’s the very nice Carnage figure (rare), a well done, if flawed, Venom (rarer), and an unbelivably cool looking Rhino (absolutely, cut-your-wrists unobtainable). There’s also this figure I’m reviewing today, the “Power Armor Doc Ock.”

It’s unfortunate that this isn’t one of Doctor Octopus’ better known looks. It’s a partly green jumpsuit, but it’s not the classic set of tights that displayed his manly gut so perfectly. Neither is it the beautiful, white pimp suit he wore in the Revenge of the Sinister Six (now THAT would be an awesome figure to have!). This is something that the toy designers seem to have come up with themselves. Which is not to say that it’s bad. It’s a green and yellow clown suit that looks more advanced than the plain spandex pajamas he normally wears.

The sculpt of the figure is pretty good, but there’s just one glaring oddity here. He’s NOT the short, pudgy fellow we all know and love to hate. This guy’s all ripped and burly. He’s got a six pack for crying oout loud.

This all looks good, but the nerd in me is screaming that it’s not canon.

Even the face is less awkward than it should be. I always imagined that Otto Octavius is a nerd gone bad. He’s the social inept kid that got the atomic wedgies in the hallway, or swirlies in the bathroom. The kid who got his lunch money stolen constantly. As such, Otto should be totally without any sense of what other people would accept as “style”.

Yet this guy’s got sporting a goatee and some nice looking specs. He gives off a more of a hipster vibe than “dork”.

He is rocking a bowl cut and looks to be balding. I’m not sure if the bald spots were meant to be there of if it was a missed application or something.

Articulation is better than I expected. The word on this line is that Hasbro dumped several key joints since it was a line for younger customers. I guess the thinking here is that since they’re not displaying these toys, and holding them in their hands most of the time, pretending, then they don’t need a whole lot of articulation. Hence we get toys like the FF Venom with balljointed hips, but no knees or ankles. The Hobgolin/Green Goblin in the line share the lack of ankles, as do most of the Spider-Man versions.

Thankfully, Otto here has both knees, and ankles. Sadly, his hips are just swivels, but that still translate to much more useful movement than Venom.

Sadly, his arms are where Hasbro skimped. They took his elbows away. “I am Otto’s melancholy coronoid process”. He still has a wrist swivel and a balljointed shoulder, but those sweet, double-hinged elbows that the the Marvel Universe Goblins have are missing here.

Luckily, the missing joints aren’t really missed, since this is Doctor Octopus. Who needs elbows when you have several more hyperarticulated, massively armed, super strong, metal appendages to do all your heavy lifting?

Hasbro sculpted Ock’s arms as a seperate piece this time, so you can remove the harness as you like. There’s a small clip on the side you can undo rather easily so you can slide the figure out. Y’know, when old Octavious needs time to admire that new ripped body of his.

There are 8 limbs on the harness. Don’t ask me why there are 8… from what I know from the comics and movies, he’s supposed to have only 4. This toy has a total of 12 limbs. Kind of silly, but meh.

There are 2 arms that root him to the ground:

3 arms tipped with non-articulated gripping claws:

and 3 more arms with implements that are open to interpretation. 1 of those is a spinning saw blade with some itty bitty teeth and another looks like a vacuum cleaner (for all that hair he’s losing I, guess). The last of them looks like a plug. I suppose even Doctor Octopus needs to recharge his batteries now and then.

Together, the toy is surprisingly fun. Even if the arms are not articulated (except for the free-spinning saw blade), it’s fairly poseble. The way the arms are positioned are dynamic enough to give you plenty of options when displaying the thing.

The toy also comes with 3 “Fiercest Foes Cards”. They’re part of a cockamamie game that Hasbro has cooked up. I suppose it’s another one of their diabolical marketing gimmicks, but I’m not sure how suggessful it’ll be. The art on the things isn’t very attractive and the whole process of the game (explained in the instruction sheet) seems tedious.

And considering the endless versions of the web-head, the scarcity of the villains (which is retarded for a line called “Fiercest Foes”), and a price of Php 450.00 each, I doubt people are going to buy enough of them to actually PLAY this game.

Luckily, “Power Armor Doc Ock” is one of those figures that seems to be warming pegs at Toy Kingdom and Toys “R” Us branches around Ortigas.

Relatively, anyway.

Even with the missing articulation, and the odd transluscent orange plastic they chose to cast the arms in (the most likely reason no one’s buying it), the toy is a good buy. It’s got a very high fun factor, good poseability, and a nice sculpt. So far, this one’s even nicer than the Superhero Showdown Octopus, which seems to have limited posing possibilities due to the limp arms.

If you’re a wiz at painting, you could even redo the arms and costume to give him a classic look.