Saturday, November 23, 2013

COMMANDO SPAWN - McFarlane Toys The Adventures of Spawn figure


Commando Spawn was released by McFarlane Toys as part of the Series 32 Adventures of Spawn (2nd set) wave a few years back. The figures are done in an animated style, with bright colors, angular designs, cartoonish proportions and lots of smooth surfaces. They still sport some great detail, although it's done on a "simpler palette", if that makes any sense.

Ok, let's get this out of the way first: no matter that the packages call these "Ultra-Action Figures", these are slightly adjustable statues. Expect nothing more, and you won't be disappointed. They are either pre-posed in extreme leans (the women, especially), or are designed to stand tall in a vanilla pose.

Commando Spawn looks great doing just that. His right fist is clenched tight and his left is wrapped around a ginormous rotating barrel design. There's a hose running from the back of the weapon to a large backpack on his back, and a bandolier of large shells across his chest. Come to think of it, they really don't seem to match the weapon at all, so I don't know what they'd actually accomplish other than looking wicked.

He's got a small removable dagger strapped to his right thigh, ammo pouches around his left one and his belt, and a handful of grenades around his left bicep. There's another pouch sculpted onto his right bicep.

The backpack looks like no backpack I've ever seen, with a couple more hoses and lots of geometric designs all over it. The color scheme for the entire figure features matte black and grey, along with a deep red offset by olive green. The whole thing works really well: this guy looks dynamite.

As mentioned earlier, Commando Spawn is a glorified statue. His head has a cut joint, as do his shoulders, forearms (at the tops of the gloves) and calves (at the tops of the boots). That's 7 points. The leg joints allow you to get the feet to lie flat. The shoulders look odd when the arms are raised, because it throws the sculpt off, and the forearms function fine, even with the hose attached to the cannon on the left.

Commando Spawn stands 7" tall. He came with a display stand sporting the Spawn logo, but it isn't needed to help him stand at all.

One thing worth mentioning here is that Commando Spawn sports a hollow torso. He's incredibly light for his size, and I'd assume that this was done to prevent him from being too top-heavy. However, Tremor (from the same series) is completely solid, and is so heavy that he can't stand up at all, despite a special display stand. So that doesn't seem to be the reason (since the manufacturing isn't uniform even across the same series).  That leaves me thinking it had something to do with the manufacturing process. In any event, you may feel ripped off paying a ton for this guy once you have himin hand unless you go in knowing that he's gonna feel pretty light for his size.

Commando Spawn is a great looking statue. The sculpt and paint are terrific, and I really like the design. Everything works well together. No, he can't achieve more than two or three different looks, but that's ok for my purposes, since he'll be spending his time on a shelf looking menacing, rather than being played with...

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