Marvel Legends Spiral review – Retro card

Depending on when collectors got her, Hasbro’s Marvel Legends Retro Spiral was either their Marvel Legends figure of the year for 2022 or the early favorite to take the title in 2023.

Spiral had been trending high on Top 10 lists for years now, but Hasbro didn’t seem to make her a priority. In this case delaying her worked out since Spiral probably couldn’t have been done at this high level of quality back in 2016, 2018, 2020 and probably 2021.

Now that she’s warped in, let’s see if Spiral is in fact as good as the hype or if Mojo needs to cancel her.

Packaging: Hasbro cares about the environment unless it interferes with the Retro brand packaging. Yes, I’m still salty about this weird double standard between the regular offerings that need to be blind box offerings versus the more traditional packaging that we still get from the retro line.

It definitely makes the Retro packaging look better in comparison especially when Hasbro calls up Dan Nakayama to handle the packaging art.

Nakayama always shows how the characters should look and too often the figure doesn’t look as good as his artwork. That’s not the case this time, which shows how stellar this figure turned out.

I really like the purple and yellow-green color scheme. The wide window shows off the figure and all the accessories.

On the back, we get the cross sell with the other figures in the wave. I like this showcase of the figures so much more than the renders we’ve seen with the standard packaging over the last two years.

Spiral’s bio is succinct, but it does a great job of summarizing her background, allies and archenemy.

Likeness: Hasbro actually took the first crack at Spiral and not Toy Biz. That figure was solid and was easily one of the best efforts from Hasbro’s early foray into Marvel Legends.

It certainly wasn’t one of the figures that desperately needed an update (cough Bansheee cough), but Spiral was still a figure that collectors were ready to upgrade.

Hasbro has rightfully been getting hit with complaints lately about some lackluster execution on figures particularly with comic book based offerings.

Spiral seems to have gotten every bit of love Hasbro’s sculptors and budget could possibly include into a six-inch figure. It’s been easy to be critical of Hasbro’s comic book releases, but it’s basically impossible to find flaw with Spiral.

This figure is exactly how I envisioned Spiral in figure form. Hasbro tends to take shortcuts or half measures based on the available base bodies. There are no compromises with Spiral, who gets all the unique elements needed to do her justice.

Spiral’s head sculpt is superb. The helmet is perfect with all the of the proper details from the studs along the center strip, the lines in the mid section and the layered flow along the sides.

Her hair flows naturally around her face, which is beautifully done. Spiral has a serious, stern expression like she’s ready to charge after Longshot and the X-Men.

The standout aspect of the figure is her six arms. They’re arranged wonderfully so they’re not just stacking over each other. The cool part of the arms is they’re not all the same — some have arm band wraps, others are bare with bracelets and one of the left arms is fully cybernetic.

One interesting note with the cybernetic arm is it’s the only one that has a fist.

I’m pretty sure Spiral is a completely new sculpt. The jewels on her collarbone section are actually sculpted and her legs are thicker than the normal Marvel Legends female figure.

Spiral’s pouch belt is well arranged with it resting slightly askew along her hips. And the fur around her shins and ankles flows nicely without being too baggy.

Paint: As nice as the sculpt is, a bad paint job could ruin it. I was gonna be blown if Spiral had some janky paint. And I looked extensively to try and find some flaw or blemish, but eventually had to tap out.

Hasbro wasn’t messing around here and Spiral is flawless on the paint front. Would it have been nice for a wash on the pouches and furry boot section? Sure, but I’m not taking away any points in this case.

Scale: Spiral wasn’t tiny or especially short but tended to be drawn inconsistently in terms of her height depending on the artist.

This figure is on the taller side — she’s looking down at Longshot — but it’s certainly not some deal breaker.

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Articulation: The real win for Spiral comes with her articulation.

Thanks to Hasbro’s delay in releasing her, she gets the peak of female articulation with bicep joints and painless double-jointed elbows, which are essential for a character who wields an armory worth of swords.

Spiral can hit some nice deep stances as well making for some exciting posing possibilities.

Spiral has:

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

Accessories: Spiral has a nice array of accessories with four katanas. They’re all the same with a slight curved blade and an intricately sculpted hilt.

She’s also got a larger, thicker broadsword with rounded blades at the base and detailing within the blade.

Finally, she’s got a small scythe to help fend off any advancing mutants particularly those with adamantium claws.

Spiral does have two swappable left hands — one is a gripping hand for the cybernetic arm and the other is a grasping, outstretched hand. Those are nice touches.

Worth it? Spiral is the standard $24.99 current price for the line. Given all of the intricate sculpt work, the clear attention to detail and no issues with the paint or articulation and this actually feels like a figure worth $25.

I was able to get her through a Target sale so I paid closer to $20 for her, which is an even better deal.

Rating: 10 out of 10

The only bad thing with Spiral is seeing exactly what Hasbro is possible of when they want to create a definitive version of a character in figure form.

Where to get it? So far this wave hasn’t actually shown up in stores yet though you can grab everyone at Target.com as well as standard online retailers from Amazon or Entertainment Earth.

As an Amazon and Entertainment Earth affiliate, I earn from qualifying purchases.