The Best Spawn Ever

Spawn toys have always been known for their amazing detailed sculpts, intricate paint applications, and awesome base accessories. The one thing which seem to be the weakness of McFarlane toys is their articulation. The most common criticism of any Spawn toy is that, it is nothing more than a glorified plastic statue.

Then came along the Image Comics 10th Anniversary Spawn figure.

What else can i say, but, "wow".

This is even better articulated than anything produced by Marvel Legends. And I am talking about the kewl Toybiz Marvel Legends, not the crappy ones from Hasbro.

Todd McFarlane pulled out all the stops in this figure. It's got 32 points of articulation. The details in the sculpting and paint, are still as amazing as it has ever been. It has one of the coolest base accessory ever, the iconic "cross", which has been repeatedly featured in the comics. The belt buckle and chain accessory is made of diecast metal. It is very sturdy, and can withstand a lot of playtime. I had a blast posing it for these pictures.

There are several variations of this figure. You can check them out here on this picture.

Notice the logos at the base of the packaging? The one on the left is the regular version, while the one on the right is the tri-lingual version. I am not aware which is the more rare of the two, but I will say this, I do not care. If i see another mint-on-card 10th Anniversary Spawn, i will snatch it up, without hesitation.

As I said in my other blog entry, I only recently got into Spawn, so I got these figures from the secondary market.

The first one I got, was actually a consignment in a local comicbook shop, and it has been sitting there for over a month, but, thankfully, no one bought it. The comic owner told me, "people come in, and they notice, 'hey, it's Spawn, very nice (or some other words of approval)', but will then put it back, without even expressing an interest in buying it". I was like, "huh? Seriously?". When I saw it, I couldn't put it down. He sold it to me for $25. I didn't have enough money with me, since I already paid for my monthly comic hauls when I saw the figure, and he is not accepting credit cards, so I waited for him to close his shop, and asked him to accompany me to the nearest ATM. The whole time, I couldn't put the figure down. I just had to have it. Since then, I got two more regular 10th Anniversary Spawns (I opened one), and one Mcfarlane Exclusive version.

This version is the "Necroplasm Spawn 2", a McFarlane Exclusive figure, sold only to members of Spawn.com. This figure makes sense, because Spawn is supposed to be made up of necroplasm. The first "Necroplasm Spawn" is molded after the 1st Spawn figure I reviewed in my previous blog entry.

Spawn can be posed on the two pegs located at the lower part of the base...

...or, he can be attached to the two pegs located at the upper part of the base. One peg is at the middle of the cross, while the other is at one of the arms.

Note however that posing Spawn on top of the cross will not hold indefinitely, and the figure will always fall, if you left it there for a long time, like, maybe, overnight.

In the Aliens Versus Predator DVD, McFarlane said that, there were instances when, he will produce a figure the way he wants to make it, never mind the price, even if he loses money doing it, because he will try to recoup his losses with other figures. Nothing can be further from the truth in the Image 10th Anniversary figures. While Spawn was produced near to perfection, the figures of Ripclaw, Savage Dragon, and Shadowhawk were huge disappointments. There is no doubt which of the four figures is Todd's baby.

I highly recommend this figure, not just to Spawn collectors, but to all toy/figure collectors, or those who collects anything from the 90s. This figure is, in my opinion, the best 6 inch scale figure ever produced. Better than anything produced by Toybiz, Hasbro, SOTA, NECA, or any other toy companies producing 6 inch action figures.

If only McFarlane toys will produce all their figures like this, they will, no doubt, still be one of the leading toy manufacturers around, the way they were back in the 90s. Unfortunately, they are content in making plastic statues. So, the 10th anniversary Spawn figure, instead of being the norm in McFarlane toys, it is sadly relegated to being the quintessential "what could have been".