Jack O'Lantern

A "retro" figure from... wait, this actually is a retro figure! He appeared in the 1998 "Bug Busters" assortment! So that means of the 13 figures released in the past two Spider-Man Legends series, a grand total of two of them have actually been the sort of Retro Collection releases Hasbro wants you to believe they are. Believe, and pay for. A mercenary in an armored suit, Jack O'Lantern terrorizes New York on his hovercraft as the infamous flame-headed villain. You know we really haven't had a figure of this character since 1998? There's no reason to assume this is Jason Macendale before he gave up the suit to become Hobgoblin; the bio certainly doesn't say it is. "But Hasbro just made a Jack O'Lantern a few years ago." No, that was the new guy, Agent Venom's enemy. "But ToyBiz made--" No, that was Mad Jack, just nobody remembers that figure well enough to tell the difference. Absent any contradiction, we're going to say that this Jack O'Lantern (as well as the one from 25 years ago) is the Steve Levins version, a character who was introduced in 1991 but not given a name untl 2005. In a Handbook entry, not even in a story. Also, it wasn't even his own handbook entry, it was a footnote in Armadillo's. So important! Hasbro really went all out for the figure, though. While his arms and legs come from that new body they like so much, everything else is new. The J.O'L costume is like the anti-Goblin: Norman Osborn and his derivatives wear a suit with scalemail on the arms and legs, and cloth covering the torso; Jack O'Lantern has armor on the torso, and cloth on the limbs. It really seems unlikely that Steve Ditko, who was the regular artist on Machine Man at that point (having taken over when Jack Kirby left), made this choice on purpose - after all, Roderick Kingsley may have been introduced eight months before Jack O'Lantern, but Hobgoblin wouldn't be invented for two more years after that, and Ditko had no way of knowing that this new villain would someday have ties, however oblique, to a villain who had at this point been dead for seven years. Daniel Salas sculpted all the new parts, including the awesome head. As usual, the flame look is accomplished by molding the head in translucent plastic, then painting some bits solid. But this time they did even better than that, making the entire visible part of his pumpkin mask a separate piece. The flat yellow you can see in his eyes and mouth? That's the part of the head they painted a solid color, with the orange gourd being glued on above it. It gives the face a depth no previous attempt at the character has had, and it looks terrific. We do wish there were more of a wash on the face to up the contrast on the toy; there are a ton of sculpted details - little cracks and bumps and the like - that you really can't make out. His pumpkin bombs could use more detail, too. Despite the theme he had going on, they were never drawn in the books to look like actual pumpkins, the way the various Goblins' were - they were just featureless orange spheres, and that's what this toy accurately gives us. The three on the right side of his belt are permanently attached, as are two on the right; the neat thing is we get one separate grenade that can either plug onto the belt or be held in the hand specifically posed to grip it securely. That's great! The bright orange grenades at his waist add some much-needed contrast to what would otherwise be a long stretch of nothing but greens (dark for the sleeves and legs, metallic for the armor). Jack O'Lantern was introduced hovering silently into a room on his flying disc, but that's not the way it worked for the rest of that story or any of the next few ones he was in, either: he referred to it as a "pogo-platform," and he really did seem to get around by bouncing it everywhere, like a high-tech Pogo Bal. It's as identified with Jack O'Lantern as Green Goblin is with his glider, so it's good they included it here. In a quite clever move, they've made the bottom nub a removable piece, revealing a socket where a flight stand could plug in. Now, if only they'd thought to include one of those stands, as well. I thought it was very weird that Jack O'Lantern seemed to be one of the most in-demand figures of this series, trailing only behind Scarlet Spider. But Walmart happened to have him by himself on the peg, and he was marked down to under $20, which is closer to what these figures are worth than the $25 Hasbro is actively trying to scam you for. (Sadly, the fact these aren't lingering on shelves means a lot of you are falling for the scam. And that makes it harder on everybody.) It turns out that Jack's a really nice figure, with a bunch of creative new molds and a lovely sculpt, so it makes sense so many fans want him in their collection. -- 10/28/24 So which is it, does his platform hover or bounce? Tell us on our message board, the Loafing Lounge.

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