A Spider with a Grappling Hook (Sept. '09)

So here we are with Webstor!  This keeps with my theory that all the monster people on Eternia are just crazy human genetic experiments from the ancient past.  They swapped humans with animals, but they could never get the body to produce the unique abilities.  So, given centuries, the animal people eventually adapted by creating their own items to fill in the rest of their missing abilities.  The spider people have no web abilities, so: grappling hook!  Cut and paste this talk for other guys like Buzz-Off or Clawful.  Buzz-Off has mechanical wings and a helmet to provide bug eyes, and Clawful has to wear shell-like armor.  All of 'em have to produce their own extra anatomy to finish the junk that their bodies won't do on their own.

But yeah, that's just my musings.  I've always loved the crazy way that the animal folk in MotU had to mimic the abilities of the animal they're mixed with.  But hey, the figure!  Look at 'em!  Not amazing, but still cool. 

You can see he's got a grappling hook backpack with some spider legs attached: those are new, and a nod to how he looked in the 200X cartoon.  I think they're supposed to be actually a part of him here, but for the toy they're just attached to the backpack (which works great if I wana keep them like that for the story, 'cause that's just more junk he had to add to himself to make him more spider-like).  The hook is sadly using a plastic that is kinda bendy - at least for the shaft.  The actual hook part is hard plastic, but it doesn't matter since the shaft has the rope on it.  If you have him hanging from anything for a long time the shaft will eventually bend.  Guess you just gotta deal with that.

Here he is with the vintage guy.  Looks like they added some extra eyes for the Classics version.  The backpack on the vintage one (though mine lost his rope and hook long ago) had this action feature where you pull on the bottom of the rope and the backpack would auto-climb up!  I think it was neat...can't honestly remember.  It broke so long ago that I only have tiny memories of it ever working.  Anyway, the new one doesn't do that!  Not that he needs to, though once again I think that would have been a neat option.  But no; the Classics one just has the rope freely pull through the backpack so you can do with it as you please.  Hang 'em, wrap it around enemies, or what have you.  The rope is nice 'n thick so you don't have to worry about it breaking.

One minor annoyance about him is that his gun is actually smaller than the vintage gun!  Well okay I dunno where that is, but the grey one is the same thing.  I was looking forward to finally being able to make use of that second handle, but since the gun is smaller and the biceps of the figures get in the way, you really can't easily get the figures in a two-handed holding position for that gun!  Might have been possible if they had sized the gun up a bit to either match the vintage or...you know, be larger than it.  Since that woulda made sense. 

Not a deal breaker, though!  The gun still works and serves it's purpose...it's just kinda small for a rifle.

And orange!