Toybox REVIEW: Marvel Legends Spider-Man Unlimited

Release Date: February 2025

RRP: $24.99/£24.99

To its credit, the Marvel Legends line does a pretty great job of releasing a wide range of characters. But if there's one thing Hasbro love it's variants, and between both Iron Man and Spider-Man alone they certainly aren't in short supply. But every so often a costume variant will come out that's particularly special, and for many collectors Marvel Legends Spider-Man Unlimited is one such example. Based on the costume from the 1999 series of the same name, Spider-Man Unlimited sees Spidey don a nanotech-enhanced suit as he travels to the parallel Counter-Earth - battling the forces of the High Evolutionary as well as the combined strength of Venom and Carnage.

Marvel Legends Spider-Man Unlimited is part of a new retro-carded wave of figures, with packaging based on the toys made for the 1994 Spider-Man animated series. As a series I grew up watching and a seminal piece of Spider-Man media for me, this brought back a lot of fond memories. I also think there's a degree of irony to it as well, given that Spider-Man Unlimited is the series that succeeded it after the 1994 series ended on a cliff-hanger (that I've never really gotten over to this very day). Nevertheless this is a fantastic replica of that original packaging, oversized to fit the Marvel Legends scale but keeping all of the key detailing. Accompanying the series logo on the front of the card is an image of the Unlimited suit as it appears in the cartoon, and then on the back it's also accompanied by a short character bio as well as images of the rest of the figures in the wave (and credit where it's due, this is a really solid wave of figures with some fantastic character choices). After tearing open the bubble to get to the figure inside, you'll find it and its accessories neatly stored on their plastic tray.

In terms of appearance the figure has a great likeness to the onscreen suit, but anyone who watched the show will immediately notice it's missing one key component – the shading. Onscreen the Unlimited suit had a lot of black shading across the suit, which took the place of most of the blue and (more significantly) was in the central part of the mask. Without it the figure doesn't look bad by any stretch of the imagination, but it does lose a bit of allure. In terms of detailing though the figure is spot on though, with sculpted detailing for the spider symbol on the chest as well as the stripes on the boots. The spider-shaped gauntlets are separate pieces that slip over the forearms, so can rotate around depending on how you want to pose the figure. One of the most iconic (and perhaps controversial) elements of the suit is the addition of a cape, which has been done here in a softer milky white translucent plastic with raised web detailing. It looks great, particularly with how it's been shaped to capture its torn look. While I'm no expert on Marvel Legends, I've handled enough to know that this is an older Spider-Man body that's been remoulded to account for the suit changes. Overall it’s a pretty great looking figure despite it's lack of shading, and would be the perfect basis for either a more screen-accurate repaint or transparent "invisible" version should they ever want to revisit the suit again.

Again whilst I'm no expert when it comes to Marvel Legends, Spider-Man Unlimited seems to be pretty par for the course when it comes to articulation. At the very least, it isn't doing anything I haven't seen previous Spider-Man/Marvel Legends figure do that I've picked up over the last decade or so. Altogether he features;

- Ball jointed head and hips

- Hinged neck and ab crunch

- Swivel hinge shoulders, wrists and ankles

- Butterfly joint shoulders

- Double hinge elbows and knees

- Bicep, waist, thigh and boot swivels

In this case, "par for the course" certainly isn't a bad thing. Hasbro have kept this kind of articulation for years because it works, and it works particularly well on Spider-Man. Together with the help of an articulated/flight stand (which you can connect in the conventional way or by plugging it directly into the holes in his feet), Spidey can manage all sort of acrobatic poses with ease. Everything moves exactly as it should, and at no point do any of the joints feel too tight or loose. The ab crunch especially was a lot of fun for helping those poses be as dynamic as possible. Really my only one complaint is that I wish the cape had some sort of articulation. Nothing special - just a hinge to make it flap up or even if it was attached via a plug so it could rotate to either side. These things probably aren't quite in Hasbro's wheelhouse as they are with Japanese lines, but it would have been nice to make those poses pop a little more. Instead the cape just sits there on the back, which is a shame given the nice colouring and detail it has. Outside of that, it's hard to feel dissatisfied here.

But as tends to be the case with Marvel Legends, the figure doesn't have a whole lot in the way of accessories. Two additional pairs of hands in total in fact, giving the figure closed fists, open hands and posed web-shooter hands in total. No real surprise given this tends to be the norm across the line, so if you're looking for a more expansive Spidey from Hasbro you're better off checking out that Maximum Series Spider-Man they've got coming out later this year. In the meantime though, the web line parts from any of the Mafex figures also work well with this release. Even with the small selection of hands on offer there's more than enough to get a good variety of poses out of the figure, and hand switching is nice and straightforward. That said it might be worth taking caution when doing so, as the wrist gauntlets are quite fiddly and made from fairly thin strips of plastic. I changed the hands plenty of times without any issues, but if you were to force the hands out of their sockets and catch the gauntlets whilst doing something could very easily tear.

Marvel Legends Spider-Man Unlimited is a figure that's been on a lot of people's wish lists for some time, and while it might not tick every box of what you may want from this particular Spidey costume Hasbro have nevertheless delivered a really solid figure. Sure the lack of shading might affect the overall appearance and the wrist gauntlets are a little fiddly, but when it comes to price and poseability Spider-Man Unlimited definitely comes out on top. As one of the most pleasant surprises I've seen from Marvel Legends in some time, this is a great figure to kick off 2025 and a reminder as to why this line has been going strong for so many years.