Green Goblin

This one goes out to anyone who's something of a scientist themselves. One of the few people who knows that Spider-Man is really Peter Parker, the Green Goblin is perhaps the web-slinger's greatest foe! That's just one line of the longer bio presented on the back of the original toy. Like most of the Marvel Legends Retro Collection releases, this one is based on an old ToyBiz figure - specifically, the Green Goblin in Series 3 of the cartoon line. The text there begins with "The maniacal Green Goblin has but two goals in life: to unite the gangs of the underworld into a single, massive army under his command, and the utter destruction of his hated foe, the amazing Spider-Man!", then finishes saying "And Spidey can't bring himself to go all-out against the Goblin - for he is also Norman Osborn, the father of Pete's best friend Harry!" It's not like we're missing out on much, they just needed to pare it down so there was room to print it in five languages. This figure is a repaint of the existing Green Goblin, which makes sense - why would they bother with a ton of new sculpts when the entire point of this line is to get more money out of existing tools? The scale-mail body suit is molded with crisp details, contrasting nicely with the slightly baggy shirt and the wrinkled gloves and boots. His belt is a separate piece that sits on his waist, and he gets a new little collar piece around his neck, so the transition between the magenta tunic and the green "skin" is less jarring. The head is a new sculpt. The previous Goblin was wearing this same costume, but it was a modern interpretation - this is the classic design, with the bug-eyes and the insane smile that make it clear this is a mask, and not simply someone's weird face. His big ears curl upward, and the tail of his cap trails back from the head as though it's being moved by the wind. The existing Goblin was fine, definitely not something that absolutely needed a re-do. So the big draw of this set is the alternate unmasked Norman Osborn head. It looks surprisingly calm, especially considering the last one we got, which was just absolutely an unhinged maniac. But hey, that means it'll look nice on the Iron Patriot suit. Or a different kind of suit. Green Goblin's colors are lighter than the Series 5 figure, more in tune with the animated model. Makes sense! Instead of purple and metallic emerald green, he gets magenta and bright lime green. His bag and belt are a bit brighter than the rest of the clothes so they'll stand out. He uses the same Goblin Glider mold, but it gets a slightly darker, metallic blue sheen to it. The pumpkin bomb is still orange with green flames. And because of the multilingual packaging, we can learn how to say "pumpkin bomb" in French (bombe-citrouille), German (kürbisbombe), Spanish (bomba calabaza), and Portuguese (bomba-abóbora). He has swivel/hinge ankles, swivel boots, double-hinged knees, swivel thighs, balljointed hips, a swivel waist, hinged torso, swivel/hinge wrists, double-hinged elbows, swivel biceps, swivel/?hinge shoulders, a hinged neck and balljointed head. Both of his hands are in wide "gripping" poses. There's a socket underneath the glider that appears to be made for a balljoint; presumably the Demogoblin one would work? Like we said, the existing Green Goblin wasn't so different from the classic look that we needed this Retro Collection update, but the bonus Norman Osborn head is a terrific bonus. -- 10/25/21

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