JesterGoblin

I’ve ranted enough about the faulty packaging design of the Superhero Squad vehicle sets but I’ve got another wave to review but this time it’s about two of the New Avengers and an oddly displaced SUV!

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People collect Superhero Squad figures for several different reasons, some like the style, some like the scale. I just like being able to have a bunch of them but also being able to hide them when needed. That’s becoming harder and harder to do but I’m a completist and buy all the figures.

My most recent acquisition, as a birthday present to myself, were waves 1 & 2 of the Superhero Squad vehicle sets from Hasbro Toy Shop since I had never seen them in stores. After they arrived, I immediately understood why.

When I’m not playing Magic, trying out a new recipe or reading, I pay a lot of attention to marketing. And with that, packaging. I love well designed packaging. It’s the reason I started collecting these figures – the Toys R Us Danger Room 5-pack was so well designed I had to own it. Where the 5-packs, and in turn the Collectors Packs, had excellent packaging design in terms of athestics and usability, these sets lack that. In a big way.

The boxes for all four of the packs are huge, with a lot of wasted space. Any retailer would be hesitant to carry an item at the $17 price point that takes up as much space as a $30 item. But the side isn’t the worst part: it’s the shape.

The boxes are an unven trapezoid. It looks like someone just lopped off a corner. Sure, when two boxes are placed opposite of each other, they make a nice rectangle – that’s two feet long and half a foot deep. But that layout wouldn’t work for stores, for one reason. It means constantly having to reorganize the shelves. No store wants product backwards on their shelves so the only option would be to place them one behind another and loose even more shelf space. What is Hasbro thinking?

But enough ranting about poor package design and wasted space. Let’s review the first set: Arachno Roadster with Spider-Man & the Thing!

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The second (and last) pack of Wave 16 of Marvel Superhero Squad is an interesting one. Containing a straight repaint and one of the most elaborate resculpts to make a figure look almost identical to an existing one, this pack is anything but essential.

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I don’t know why Hasbro changed the number of packs in each wave, but for some reason Wave 16 only has four figures in it! Odd, but saves me some time. This wave consists of one brand new figure, two repaints and one that’s an amalgam of repainted parts and resculpted parts that look identical to an existing figure. This review is for one of the packs: Spider-Man and Moon Knight!

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Hulk & Nova

Strong enough to punch a planet out of orbit!

Hulk is a brand new sculpt and reminds me of Smart Hulk. Minus the well thought out outfits (that was harder to type then expected). But he’s still just another Hulk figure. He’s a good size but something just feels off about him, it may be the hair or the color.

He’s only got three points of articulation: neck and arms, I expected a waist. The biggest issue I have with the figure is we’ve gotten plenty of green Hulks but we haven’t gotten a Smart Hulk, Joe Fix’it or the Maestro.

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