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Some people in Eternia don't seem to trust their own abilities. Stratos has wings, but wears a jetpack anyway. Webstor, ostensibly a spider man, carries a grappling hook, a backpack pulley system and 15 feet of uncoiled rope.
One of the last remaining members of an ancient Eternian race of Spider Warriors called the Arachna, Webstor was awoken from hibernation
beneath Snake Mountain and occasionally allies himself with Skeletor. In ancient times, the Arachna were an advanced dominant race until driven underground by the Snake Men. Araneus retains much of the knowledge of his people and while seemingly savage, is an expert mathematician and strategist, as well as an accomplished escape artist. He often arms himself with a grappling hook Fast Pack and uses his climbing power to escape capture!
I never owned Webstor as a kid - in fact, I don't think I even knew anyone who did. So it's fair to say I don't really have any attachment to the character, which also means this is one of the first MOTUC figures I'm not reviewing through the rose-colored glasses of nostalgia.
While at first glance I thought of Webstor as a relatively simple, straightforward figure, I realize now he's actually one of the more complicated characters in the line. The body sculpt itself is very simple - it's just the basic Skeletor body, really, with a new head. The figure is molded mostly in dark blue. There's really not a lot of paint work, aside from the head. While I like the choice of red for the eyes, the actual application isn't quite as sharp as I'd like.
But the armor and backpack are interesting. The
armor is made from rubber and goes on over the arms, then the backpack attaches to the back. There's no actual pulley in the backpack itself, unlike the original figure; it's just a rope that runs through the backpack. The grappling hook can be clipped onto the back of the backpack. It's neat the Horsemen kept so much of the original figure's design intact, but I do wish they'd offered some way to store the rope when not in use. Maybe I missed something, but it looks to me like it just has to hang all over the floor whether the grappling hook is in his hand or attached to the backpack.
Finally, there are the extra spider legs. They're easily my favorite touch, giving Webstor the extra boost he needed to from being a bit too pedestrian. Webstor has the standard MOTUC articulation, plus a few extra balljoints for the spider legs.
The simplicity of the guns that came with Zodac and
Man-At-Arms didn't bother me very much; somehow, both weapons managed to have an art deco sort of look that made them work in 2009. Webstor's gun, though, just looks too much like its 1980s counterpart. It would look better if it were a bit more detailed and streamlined. Because of the way he was packaged, Webstor's left hand was pressing on the barrel of the gun, thereby bending the barrel. A little heating and bending can fix it.
Don't hold it against Webstor if this review isn't as enthusiastic as some of my other reviews have been; I was just never psyched for Webstor in the first place. But he's a fine addition to the MOTUC ranks, and I'm sure there a lot of fans who will be pleased to finally get an updated version.
Of course, Webstor was one of the most radical re-designs of MOTU 200X, and the fact that we never got an action figure of that is a crime.
-- 04/19/10
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