Vintage Spider-Man Helicopter by Empire 1979

Spider-Man, Spider-Man, does whatever a spider can. So, why the heck does he need a helicopter for? Because it looks cool. That's why.

In 1979, Empire toys produced the Spider-Man helicopter to go along with Mego's 8 inch figure line. Empire also produced a Spider-Man Van, a Hulk Copter and Hulk Van, and a Bat Copter, which was much cooler than the Mego version. No, Bat Van, however. They probably felt it was too much like Mego's Mobile Bat-Lab. You can see pics of a couple of these bad boys over at Plaid Stallions HERE.

I picked this baby off eBay back in February. I actually received a Spider-Man helicopter for Christmas from my sister back in 1979. I still have the fuselage and tried to restore it, but was never able to get the missing parts. So, I just bought the whole darn thing.

The back story on that, as I have discussed before, is while cleaning out my parents garage years ago, my dad threw out a vast amount of my toys. For some reason, he kept things such as the fuselage, in this case, and threw away the accessories. Accessories like the rotor and landing gear.

I just happened to see this on eBay just before the auction ended. However, I was not home and spotted this baby using my iPhone. I knew I would never win the bid using my phone, so, I called my wife had her bid from our home computer.  My cool, but non-geek wife won the bid and the rest was history.

There are still parts missing such as, the winch, which suspends from the left side of the helicopter. You see the hole where the peg that holds the winch in place would go in the pic above. Plus there was a net and several other pieces of rescue and crime fighting equipment: oxygen tank, shovel, walkie-talkie, axe, pick axe, etc.

This is definitely a cool, however, huge toy that is almost two feet long. Although designed for the Mego 8 inch Spider-Man, I think the 12 inch version fits a lot better. I am very pleased to have this back in my collection. Now, just need to find a complete Empire Bat Copter.