I really wanted to cover a spider action figure for the Halloween Countdown as spiders are one thing that genuinely terrifying to me, and my life is currently devoid of anything new that I truly find revolting but want to pose and feed other action figures to. I was tempted to find a Shelob figure from Lord of the Rings, but after seeing that they fetch prices which equate to roughly half of what it would cost to build a lab and genetically engineer an actual giant super-spider, I thought I would just go for the cheaper option of Aragog, the ‘Acromantula’ from Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.

 

 

I think I made the right choice. Made by Mattel in 2002 for the release of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Aragog is one of the larger sized figures from the Harry Potter line.

Whereas Shelob looks revolting in a bloated and covered in  growths kind of way, Aragog looks far more realistic. Sadly this toy isn’t the same shade of brown that the on-screen version is (which looks like the colour of actual house spiders) but he does look close enough to look pretty terrifying, complete with eight eyes and enough sculpted detail to look furry. I don’t know if it’s just that I am thinking about spiders a bit too much, but a poster just fell of the wall and I near simultaneously bolted from the room and shit myself in about a quarter of a second.

Aragog has two neat features, the first being that his eyes and mandible tips glow in the dark.

 

 

Though I really dig the fact his eyes glow, I don’t like that his mandible tips do. If you saw the six eyes looming in the dark, you might think they are the eyes of a spider but the glowing tips kind of confuse the image a bit. Still, I do appreciate glow-in-the-dark things, so it’s still pretty neat.

 

The second feature Aragog has is a little button on his back which opens and closes his mandables, making it so you can ‘grab’ hold of other figures. Here he is terrorizing Ron:

 

 

So if you are looking for a giant spider to look intimidating and eat your other toys, this is a pretty good option, and is cheaper than Shelob. It also works with all sorts of scale figures, like this poor stormtrooper here.

 

 

Harry Potter toys will probably be making another appearance in the future, as I had a few of ’em as a kid and quite liked them. Though I didn’t own Aragog until now which I deeply regret, purely based on amount of Stormtroopers that could have met their grisly demise by his hand (or fangs).

 

I think that wraps up another entry in the Halloween Countdown anyway. As we’ve looked at a few toys now, I think it’s time to look at something a little different tomorrow, like an old computer game that is undeniably Halloween-esque.

So come back on the morrow, if you dare…