Now Black Widow isn’t my favorite character from the Avengers movie by quite a long shot, but I just had to pick her up anyways to assemble my team. The Hot Toys Avengers Black Widow Sixth Scale Figure was supposed to be released way back in December along with Thor, but due to the very frequent and annoying Hot Toys delays, it’s now March and she’s finally here!
If you picked up the last release of Scarlet Johansson as Black Widow from the Iron Man 2 line, then you are going to be pleased to find out that this figure a huge improvement. Join me as we take a look at a full-blown review of the Hot Toys Avengers Black Widow Sixth Scale Figure!
Click on the images for a larger view.
Packaging
The packaging that Black Widow comes in is the same style of the rest of the Avengers figures that Hot Toys has made. It is a very basic slip box with an image of the character on the front that wraps around the left side of the box. This box isn’t very bright, as it is just a kind of dull blue color. Could they have picked a more boring image of her for the box art? Nick Fury, Hawkeye, and Captain America all have WAY better photos on their boxes!
Once you slip the sleeve off, the figure will be revealed in a window style box. You don’t really get a view of the figure at this point though because of all of the plastic the figure was wrapped in for shipping.
Then you can remove the plastic tray from the window box and then the figure is accessible. Unlike the rest of the Avengers figures that were released, this figure only has 1 layer of accessories / extras.
Of course, all of the packaging is very collector friendly. If you damage anything while opening the figure, something must be wrong with you.
Sculpt
There is no mistaking that this figure isn’t Scarlet Johansson. The likeness is absolutely spot on and is far better than the earlier Iron Man 2 release of her. This is evident in both the head sculpt and the body sculpt. I’m not sure whether or not it is specific to Black Widow or not though (the product page did say newly developed body).
The hair can get pretty wild on her at times. Though she does come with some styling gel already applied to her hair to help keep it under control. The directions for the figure also say that you can apply hair products to her hair as needed. I didn’t need anything more than what was already applied to her when she arrived.
She looks just about as real as you could expect an action figure to be. Everyone has pretty much grown to expect that level of realism from Hot Toys, and they always deliver.
Paint
The paint job is amazing like on any Hot Toys figure now a days. The production paint is just phenomenal, nearly spotless.
Like with the other Hot Toys figures reviewed, Black Widow has the glassy look to her eyes with the redness that can be found in the normal human eye.
The skin tones are all very even and she even has glossy human-like lips. There really isn’t that much paint on this figure, but where there is, it was done right.
Articulation
When I first saw the promo images for this figure I was worried that she was going to have some major problems with articulation because of the tightness of the suit. Though that is not the case at all. She has a newly developed TrueType body that allows you to get her into just about any pose you can think of.
Her arms are especially flexible since she doesn’t have huge muscles like the male figures. All of the joints function very smoothly, allowing for very easy posing.
Accessories and Costume
So like I said above, the black suit that she is wearing is very flexible. The material that it is made of reminds me of a dry suit, but with way more flexibility. It is absolutely form-fitting pretty much all around, but there is some extra room in the joints. I didn’t take any pictures of her in any really flexible poses, but it is definitely possible to do with ease.
Now since she only came with 1 tray in her packaging, that means that she doesn’t come with very many accessories. Though I do think that she comes with enough for the price.
She has 8 different hands for various poses like punching, holding the pistols, a taser effect, and throwing discs. The hands that she comes with are enough to use all of her accessories and get just the right poses with them.
She comes with 2 identical pistols that have removable magazines and sliding muzzle. They both fit perfectly into the slightly rubberized holsters on her legs.
She also comes with 2 very small “throwing discs” that I didn’t take any pictures of. I would stray away from displaying her with these because they are very easy to lose.
One of the coolest accessories that she comes with is the alien rifle blade. I like this because she doesn’t have to remove her hand to use it like Captain America had to do. You can also get a couple good poses with this.
She also comes with 2 different sets of stinger bracelets. One is just solid black and the other one has a taser effect. This effect is just shown with blue and white paint, much like the taser fists.
Like the rest of the Avengers figures, she also comes with the display base featuring her name and “The Avengers” logo.
Overall
Overall this figure is absolutely phenomenal like with just about any Hot Toys figures. You could say that the price is a little bit high since you don’t get that many accessories, but with the rising price of figures, I would say that it fits into today’s market.
The sculpt of Black Widow this time around (compared to the IM2 release) is about 100x better. Even if you aren’t trying to assemble the entire Avengers team like I am, this figure is worth getting because of the major improvements that were made.
After all, you’re getting an amazing sculpt, phenomenal paint job, and 12 inches of Scarlet Johansson. What more could you want?
Ordering
UPDATE: If you are interested in buying this figure, it’s sold out at retailers, so eBay is probably your best bet. Click this link to search eBay for the Hot Toys Avengers Black Widow figure.
Other Figures
Thor is going to be the next release. I would suggest that you get your pre-orders in now before it’s too late. Sideshow has already started to ship him, so expect a review soon.
While you are waiting you can check out the other Avengers figures that I have reviewed:
[…] hair is sculpted, which I actually prefer for male characters. If it was rooted like Black Widow’s hair, I’m sure it would have been a disaster. The hair sculpt looks great though, much better […]
[…] The packaging that Loki comes in is very similar to the other Avengers figures that Hot Toys has produced. The box has an outer slip sleeve, and you can slide it off and reveal the figure inside of a nice window box. I like the image of Tom Hiddleston that they picked for the box, it’s much more fitting for the character than what we saw for the Black Widow box. […]