Marvel Legends Beetle figure review BAF Absorbing Man wave

With a slew of characters to choose from, it’s understandable that Hasbro can’t satisfy every collector’s demands. That’s just for solo characters, but filling teams is immensely more challenging. Someone at Hasbro is a big fan of Superior Foes of Spider-Man as that team is coming along nicely. Today, I’m checking out The Beetle.

This the Janice Lincoln version of the character. She’s the daughter of longtime Spider-Man adversary Tombstone. She’s got a pretty interesting backstory and criminal history as an agent of Baron Zemo. I really wish Hasbro could figure out a way to include some recommended readings for the characters. She’s a lot more than a female Beetle, but there’s not enough incentive to learn more if you weren’t already familiar with the character.

Packaging: Instead of saying the same old, same old about the packaging, I’ll rave about Hasbro keeping the line’s comic book roots in mind with the side panel drawings. Featuring artwork from some of Marvel’s best, these are nice showcases for the characters. If I had enough space, I’d display them as they are one of my favorite parts of the package setup. The various colors assigned to anchor characters — in this case, red for Spider-Man — was a clever idea.

The package provides a nice wide open window to see the figure clearly and determine if any pieces are stolen/swapped.

Likeness:  While she’s not a household name, Beetle benefits from a cool outfit. Whether for a male or female, that helmet design just works for a villain. The skirt folds are done in a smart manner so as not to hinder any of the articulation. The costume is fairly simply so there’s not a lot of wow factor here, but it works. The gesturing hands are definitely appropriate for the character.

Scale:   Beetle is right at average height, just a bit shorter than her Superior Foes teammates. That works just fine. Beetle has the slender female mold and looks slight compared to females using the fuller body like Spider-Woman or The Wasp. But just like every male hero shouldn’t be the same size, it’s good to see some distinction of body shapes with the females.

Paint:  Beetle isn’t a real paint intensive figure. The design is fairly simple and doesn’t allow for anything fancy. To compensate, Hasbro uses pearlescent paint to simulate her armor. I’m a sucker for this technique as it makes the figure look much more vibrant, which is useful for armored or metallic clad characters.

The paint on the upper arm didn’t take the metallic magenta as well as the rest of the figure so some of the green ‘bleeds’ through and is fairly noticeable.

Articulation: The female Marvel Legend mold would definitely benefit from a bicep twist, but beyond that, Beetle’s articulation is great. As a flier, she can hit all of the essential mid-flight poses. The two-piece wing set also allows for a terrific amount of posing options as well.

Beetle has:

• neck
• ball-jointed shoulders
• bicep
• elbow
• wrist
• wrist hinge
• torso
• waist
• hip
• thigh
• knee (double-jointed)
• ankle

Accessories:  Beetle comes with the same wings we’ve previously seen on the ML Wasp.  That’s helpful if you want to have Beetle sitting or pose her with the rest of the Superior Foes without worrying about the wings toppling everyone.

Additionally, she comes with the right leg of the Build-a-Figure Absorbing Man. If you’re not building Absorbing Man, this category is lacking, but I can’t think of better accessory options for her.

Worth it?  Beetle is currently available for $10. I rarely feel ripped off paying the full $20 for Marvel Legends and consider $15 a very good deal. For even less, it’s a terrific price for a 6” figure in 2016.

Rating: 8.5 out of 10

Where to get it?  Beetle tends to be the pegwarmer of the Absorbing Man set so finding her won’t be problem. Toys R Us and Target are the best options. If for some reason she’s not there, grab her from Amazon.com.