Spider-Boy

A "retro" figure from 2023. Bailey Briggs, the young sidekick to Spider-Man, was erased from the Web of Life and returns to make a place for himself as a Super Hero. [sic] Now that Marvel and DC have (correctly) lost their joint monopoly on the term "superhero," the next step is for them to finally learn it's one word, not two. I don't want to say that "nobody" wanted a figure of Spider-Boy, because he was introduced after I quit reading Spider-Man and that would be a very me-centric thing to claim. Maybe he's the biggest thing ever! Just because I've seen literally no one ever say anything about him (good or bad) doesn't mean it's not out there happening. Somewhere. The internet's a big place, and every freak deserves to find their special corner in it. Spider-Boy is a rehashed version of a joke Dan Slott wrote when he was doing She-Hulk: back then, a villain got ahold of the TVA's Retroactive Cannon, a device that bombards an individual with anti-temporal rays, unraveling them backwards through time and erasing them from all reality; basically, anyone who got shot with the "Ret-Can" was forgotten by everyone, which is why you yourself out here in the real world never heard of prominent Avengers members like Dr. Rocket and Knight Man. When a similar thing happened in one of the later "Spider-Verse" crossovers, it managed to get undone, bringing back the characters who we'd seen killed, like Jessica Drew and Scarlet Spider - and one we'd never seen before at all. In the story erased from history, Bailey was grabbed by Mister Negative's goons and sold as a test subject to Madame Monstrosity, the mother of the guys who created Scorpion and the Human Fly; she spliced his genes with a spider, which is how he got his powers. It's also why the toy's alternate head has eight extra eyes on his forehead and temples, as well as big fangs in his open mouth. Because Spider-Boy is a kid, this figure uses the teen body, but with the skinnier legs used for Venomized Miles Morales. That's still actually too adult for him: Bailey is 10 years old, having gotten his spider-powers when he was only 7 (which would have been around the time Pete was in the Big Time suit, given the way comic time works). So as for how big he should be, think Timmy from Pitt. His big sneakers were made by Reed Richards, which is why he's able to stick to walls even while wearing them. As so often happens, the parts that are molded in red don't match the parts that are painted red; ideally they'd have molded the while thing in red and simply painted the blue costume details where they were needed. The articulation is the usual for this mold: head, neck, shoulders, biceps, elbows, wrists, chest, waist, hips, thighs, knees, shins, and ankles. They seem to have messed up his feet, though: rather than going into the foot at at angle, which would allow them to tilt a bit when you moved them, the pegs for the ankle joings go in 100% vertically, so the feet just turn in the exact same range the shins are already providing. If you want him to have any kind of angle at all, your only choice is to turn the shin to the side and then adjust the foot accordingly. They've also given him an alternate pair of "thwip" hands, despite the fact he very specifically does not thwip; while he may be Spider-Man's sidekick, Pete hasn't given him webshooters (he's not ready for them yet). We know there are other hands available for this mold, so why do these? Other than the head and the hands, the toy's only accessory is the special backpack Spider-Man made him so he could carry his stuff with him and not leave it lying around the city. In the comics it can switch between plain and spider modes, to help protect his secret identity, but that's beyond the scope of this toy. This may not be the "Spider-Boy" anybody actually wanted a toy of, and it may have a body that's about 50% too old to accurately portray him, but Bailey Briggs is a decent character and it's always fun to get people who have never had toys before. And maybe if they want to reuse these new shoe molds, they could do his brother Boyd someday. -- 03/31/25 Do you like when characters get retconned in? Tell us on our message board, the Loafing Lounge.