 Black Widow
The horror that she brings, the horror of her sting
Marvel Legends 375 Action Figure
Item No.: Asst. F2648 No. F3818
Manufacturer: Hasbro
Includes: Grappling hook gun
Action Feature: n/a
Retail: $9.99-$12.99
Availability: May 2022
Other: Weird hair, but neat
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I admit I know little about Black Widow outside the movies. So looking at comic artwork, and old Kenner toys, and this figure, it's a situation where she seems just "off" enough to say that yes, this seems like the kind of thing Kenner might have done. Somewhat. Mostly. I like her more as a toy than as a Black Widow figure.
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Natasha Romanova continues the tradition of using the only body type women may have in comic books. The skin-tight body suit has been used so many times, it makes sense they'd use it again. Not unlike Snake Eyes of old, she's mostly black plastic - but they did mold arms in color, paint a belt, and mold her a unique head. She his high-heeled boots, which I assume are not great for parkour or running, but it's consistent with her look in the comics. She has her wristbands, and her painted belt looks sort of - but not really - like the series of yellow circles in the comic books. Her packaging art and comic appearances have black gloved hands, but the figure has ungloved flesh hands - why, I have no idea. But Kenner would frequently play with the details due to lack of reference (or concern) - it's still a curious choice, they could probably have saved money on paint by going with the gloves.
The face on mine looks weird. Comparing her to other samples online, it seems the face details were painted just a tiny bit too high, so the eyebrow is tucked a bit under the hair and the eyes aren't quite where they should be. The lips are a smidgen off. And by "smidgen" I mean maybe a millimeter - if that. Precision is necessary when painting figure faces and now I'm going to keep an eye out in stores just in case I can trip over another one to see if they look a little off too. At first glance it's fine - but at some angles the eye elevation makes it look like her face has an unpainted mask or bags. More research is needed.
She has a very large bubble which gives her room for the grapple gun accessory. It's a surprise! She can hold it, but she looks a little silly pointing around. It's unlikely this would have made the cut in the Kenner days, because Chewbacca's crossbow lacked the cross part. The sculpting is good and looks on par with/slightly better than what we were getting during the early 1980s. It's nice that she have something, as most of the time we're getting shorted in the accessory department. I would have loved another gun or two, but it's something, and something beats nothing.
For a figure that just needed to be a couple of new parts, I would have liked to see more work done with her face. The area around the eyes seems weirdly flat given the paint detail, the hands are the wrong color, and the hair isn't quite comic-right. This means it's a neat Kenner figure but probably frustratingly not good enough for someone that just wants a good classic comic Black Widow. It's not like you're getting a lot of detail for your $10, but the colors are mostly right and she certainly does a good job looking a lot like her inspiration. I wouldn't recommend buying her first, but if you want more Kenner stuff you can do a lot worse. Just don't expect to be impressed.
--Adam Pawlus
Additional Images
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