It’s fitting that in the year that will include the half-century anniversary of his first appearance, Hammerhead will at long last be having his first mass-release action figure on retail store shelves as well. He may look like a generic gangster with a bad haircut, but Hammerhead has appeared in numerous forms of media over the years and is among the most prolific Spidey villains still needing a Hasbro figure. Now that the Marvel Legends Hammerhead Spider-Man Retro Series figure is available and shipping out, should you let this mobster lay claim to your 22 dollars?

Like most classic villains, Hammerhead has a sob story. The Russia-born Italian immigrant was bullied by classmates and abused by his father because of his ethnicity, provoking him into becoming a killer and embarking on a life of crime. Awakening from a near-death beat-down with a new steel skull and amnesia, Hammerhead fixated on a mobster movie poster he saw and decided to use a 1920s mobster as the template for his whole self. Hey! I’m not making this up!

Created by young Gerry Conway within a few months of Stan Lee turning the Amazing Spider-Man reins over to 19-year-old Conway in 1972, Hammerhead has often been overlooked by fans (and collectibles companies) as a classic Spidey villain—likely because of his lack of a flashy costume and wild super-powers. Whatever the reason it’s taken so long, the Hasbro Hammerhead Legends figure is here! Is it any good? Here’s my review…

[For those who would like to hear me awkwardly ramble on about Hammerhead for 10 minutes while blindly unboxing him, I did record another awful video of such, which you can find above. If you’d like to see more semi-watchable content like this with my reviews, do let me know, as they take a lot of time for me to edit and I might not bother otherwise.]

Before we get started…Yes, I know we sort of got Hammerhead from Hasbro way back in 2015 in the form of an alternate head accessory pack-in for the Marvel Legends Chameleon figure. But that disembodied head without an appropriate body to be placed upon totally does not count!

Seven years later, Hasbro is doing right by the flat-topped mobster, who has a suitable body mold at last. This time out, Hammerhead is a thick, stocky boy like he was meant to be. Let’s face it—Hammerhead was never intended to be tall, dark and handsome—and this toy looks as thuggish as the character should.

Despite wearing a three-piece suit, the Spider-Man Legends Hammerhead figure looks perfectly-proportioned and authentic to how you’d envision him. The character had appeared in a multitude of media over the years, but this is the “ideal” classic Hammerhead I see in my mind.

The head sculpt is a fierce, deep-set scowl: perfect for an ill-mannered thug about to headbutt some schmuck into oblivion. Alternate heads are always nice, but this portrait is A-OK in my book.

Hammerhead comes around at the right time to have pin-less knees, but still has the old-style pinned elbows. Alas. The pins mess up the pinstripe aesthetic of his suit slightly, unfortunately, but seeing as how his previous toy was just a head, I can get past that. Since we’re unlikely to see Hasbro do this character again, pin-less elbows would have been nice, though.

For accessories, we get a “Maggia slugger” baseball bat and a pair of interchangeable grasping hands.

The humongous hammer used to kill his father might have been too grisly, but it’s a real mind-blower that Hasbro didn’t give a gangster a gun for an accessory—especially when one of his hands even has a trigger finger. I know Hammerhead generally is more of a hand-to-hand brawler and so the bat is logical, but c’mon Hasbro—give this criminal a gun!

• As we’ve all come to expect, The Hammerhead Marvel Legends figure really excels in the articulation department, despite some limitations caused by his overlaid suit, with an articulation set including:
  Ball-jointed head and hips
• Ball-hinge shoulders
• Double-hinged elbows and knees
• Swivel waist/biceps/thighs
• Hinged shoes/feet with ankle rockers

He can’t grip the handle of the baseball bat with both hands because the suit doesn’t allow for butterfly swivel shoulders, but hey—can’t have everything.

What you can have, however, is brass knuckles on the default left fist that spell out “HEAD” backwards. This is a neat detail that gives a character that really needs it a tad more personality. (Presumably,“HEAD” is spelled backwards so it can be “branded” onto the foreheads of victims punched out by Hammerhead, although I can’t really recall this from the comics. )

Overall: This an impressive full-fledged figure for a character many assumed would never get one. It’s bizarre for a gangster (with a trigger finger, no less) to not include any gun at all as an accessory, and it’s a shame poor Spider-Man Retro Collection Hammerhead has to settle for visible-pin elbows after waiting all these years for a real toy. Even so, the portrait, stocky body and pin-striped suit are all dead-on for this character. It’s not a perfect action figure, and some of the flexibility restrictions due to the suit are jarring, but it is a surprisingly good toy for a bit of a dull-looking character.

GRADE: B+