Just to continue on, here’s the 2nd wave of Marvel Minimates, but this time, I have the variant! Yay!
Peter Parker Spider-man / Classic Green Goblin
Spider-man / Carnage
Damaged Spider-man / Venom
Spider-man (Black) Variant!!
This is where there starts to be a bit more of a theme coming into the waves, this one being, of course, Spider-man centric.
I believe this is the only Carnage that we have (there’s a Spider-Carnage, but I think he’s a different character). Honestly, this minimate still holds up in my eyes. The deco is detailed, with some nice claw hands. He also comes with an axe hand, that I have a picture of him showing below.
We’ve had quite a few Venom updates, and there’s even going to be an upcoming Venom through the ages box set. As with some of the early minimates, this guy seems relatively puny in comparison to his counterparts. If you compare to the Black Spider-man, they’re the same size, although the face teeth are pretty awesome. There was a version that came with an extended tongue, I have that in a Toys R Us 10 pack, but not shown here.
Green Goblin… it must have been a happier time. This guy is way too happy, not really crazy… part of the basic expressions of early waves I guess. It was great to have a Green Goblin, but at the time, no Goblin glider, and no second hand! His pumpkin bomb is going to explode in his hand.
Spider-man, our very first Minimate of good ol’ Spidey. Over the years, Spider-man has around 20 mates (or more?), but the costume means that there really isn’t alot of changes. Maybe an occasional black wash here or there. Still a great mate.
Ah, Battle damage. One of the early staples of the waves (and also adopted in the DC line) was to take one of the popular characters, and give them battle damage. This would give variations to costumes, but what I suspect was to also cut down cost. At this point, very few parts and lots of re-use, which isn’t a bad thing, but I’m sure people were already demanding new, more, obscure characters even in the line’s infancy.
This guy here is a weird little mate. The idea being that it was an early showing of the “Spider-sense”, where Peter Parker, using his Spider-man powers, would detect danger! It’s a cool idea, however, the mate is so specific, it doesn’t have very many uses or display options. I tried to use it in one of my pictures below, but other than ambush, I couldn’t think of anything other uses.
And finally, our variant, Mr. Spider-man in his black symbiote costume. A costume Spider-man wore for around 4 years, just like any storyline, where you fundamentally change a character, there’s going to be public outcry (of course, without the Internet in 1984). This is a very basic mate, which really is all you need. I think the next black Spider-man mate we would get would be as part of the Spider-man 3 movie, but really, not alot of detailing is required.
Here’s some misc pics
Ravsx - Toy Collector 