"Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse" Comic Series: Stilt-Man Build-A-Figure addendum

Okay, the images in today's review were a good joke, but you still deserve to see the full image, not cut into long shards:

And now, what you really want: math!

If Wilbur Day is 5'6" without his armor, then his inseam is probably about 27" - adding the height of his feet, call it 30" from hip to the ground. To calculate your stride length, pedometers and fitness trackers multiply a man's height in inches by 0.415 (or 0.413 for women), which gives Wilbur a rough estimate of a 27" stride. With two legs that meet at the hip and also both touch the ground, we've got ourselves a triangle!

Using the Law of Cosines [(b² + c² - a²) / 2bc] we can plug in the numbers and find the angles of this triangle - since the internal angles of a triangle will always add up to 180°, and we know the two at the ground would be the same, we just need to solve for the top angle, subtract that number from 180, then divide the result in two. Rounding off a little bit, we get 53.5° at the hip and 63.25° at the feet.

Now let's reverse that. Knowing all the angles, and accounting for the fact his stilts extends to 250', we can determine exactly how far a single step would take Stilt-Man at max height: 225 feet, or 75 yards per stride.

If you're very clever, you may notice that 250' feet is 3,000 inches, and thus exactly 100 times greater than his usual 30" legs, meaning you don't even have to do all the stuff with the angles, and instead save yourself some time and effort by just adding two zeroes to the end of any measurement to properly scale it up. For instance, if an average walking speed is three and a half miles per hour, then Stilt-Man is moving 350mph by taking a casual stroll through the city. He could walk from New York to Toronto in that time. Imagine if he tried running! Or even just walking at a brisk pace. Even at an amble, he's already faster than a baseline Quicksilver, so who's going to catch him?

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10 Responses to "Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse" Comic Series: Stilt-Man Build-A-Figure addendum

  1. Ai Muhao says:

    While I know that this might not be the place, I have say that I really do agree with the statement in the review that Hasbro is really wasting a market by _not_ releasing more of army-builder characters like the Hand Ninja.

    Like, when Transformers: Siege was out they allowed some retailers to order full cases of Refraktor (Reflector) because it was obvious that people were gonna want three (in order to combine them into the camera mode). But in Earthrise and Kingdom, they for some reason chose to rerelease certain characters completely unchanged from the previous toyline (e.g. Kingdom gets Arcee and Wheeljack, completely unchanged from the Earthrise toys. At least Earthrise Megatron and Optimus Prime are modified from Siege Megatron and Optimus). You know, instead of characters who're actually army-builders like the Weaponizers.

    It's like the darkest days of Transformers: Prime, when you had shelves filled with nothing but Bumblebees with only one or two Vehicons. What happened, Hasbro?!

  2. AmericanHyena says:

    I feel like I should point out that I immediately recognized the third-story-attic person as a good friend of mine AND that I think he only owns one, maybe two Hand ninjas. He’s been going out of his way to buy the Stilt-Man legs off Facebook groups, Marketplace and eBay because he has no real interest in the ninjas.

    • yo go re says:

      Yeah, he's going about it the smart way. But he still only needs 2/3 as many as intended... 🙂

      • Ai Muhao says:

        Hahah. Don't ruin his dream, man. Maybe Stilt-Man got an upgrade. Hulk gets bigger, Iron Man's armour gets more sleek and ridiculous, Stilt-Man gets longer legs.

        Plus, at least he's doing it in a way that doesn't rob other of the Ninjas.

    • Ai Muhao says:

      Kudos to your friend. That's the kind of consideration we need more of these days.

      And probably friendlier for the environment too. Better than all those Build A Figure parts that float around because people only want a particular figure and don't care about the rest...

  3. The 'Third Story Attic' person is me! I woke up today to find out I was referenced here and absolutely love it haha.

    I currently only own one Hand Ninja and have around 13 pairs of Stiltman legs. As my friend mentioned above, I have been scrounging Ebay, Twitter, Facebook toy groups and Marketplace to find standalone legs rather than hoarding Ninjas. I had to figure that they were probably people who wanted the ninjas and had zero interest in the legs much like I had interest in the legs and zero interest in the ninjas aside from one for my Daredevil display.

    Stiltman is a character I have personally been begging Hasbro to do for YEARS almost exactly like this, although ideally I always suggested they release him as a standalone figure in a wave full of army builder henchmen where EVERYONE else in the wave included additional legs. Buying one case of figures would net you a fairly tall and ridiculous Stiltman! That way people could be able to army build a handful of their favorite henchmen (Hand Ninjas, Hydra Troopers, Aim Soldiers, Hellfire Guards, Skrull, ect) while also making it easy to build a great Stiltman without running into the exact situation we are running into here where it is difficult to be able to build him up since everyone wants that single army builder.

    At the end of the day I'm VERY happy that they did him at all and that it's possible to shoot for my goal. My house isn't THAT tall, although you're probably correct in your estimate that I would need around 40(ish) pairs of legs to get to him where I'm trying to.

    • yo go re says:

      An army-builder series that all comes with stilts would have been an even smarter idea!

    • Ai Muhao says:

      Hahah. Good luck with your goal!

      If and when you succeed, maybe you should send a pic here so they can add it to the Stilt-Man review? That'd be good for a laugh, and I'm sure the way you're going about it (i.e. just getting one Hand Ninja and getting the other leg parts elsewhere) would be a great example of responsible toy-collecting.

  4. Also if anybody has extra Stiltman legs and wants to donate them towards my cause (or just sell them to me at a reasonable rate) I would be happy to give them a good home so I can build my dream Stiltman! Just hit me up on Twitter @Jordamus_Prime

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