Superheroes are the big thing in our house at the moment. Days are filled by alternating epic battles between Spiderman, Venom and the Sandman with watching X-men, spectacular Spiderman and Ironman cartoons. My husband even got in on the act by sending me to Blockbusters to rent The Incredible Hulk, Iron Man and The Dark Knight, leaving me looking like some comic book convention attending geek having an all night movie marathon.

Even though my son has been drawn into the whole X-men thing by the current movie hype, I’m still not relenting with regards to the Wolverine Electronic Claws. However that hasn’t stopped him trying to garner some new toys featuring his favourite comic book heroes, like the new Marvel Transformer Crossovers.

These new incarnations cleverly transform from vehicles into characters. All the best loved Marvel heroes (and a villain) are here, Spiderman, Venom, Hulk, Wolverine and Iron Man. These seem to be the only ones available in the U.K at the moment. Looking at the U.S. sites it seems there are a lot more like Carnage and Captain America, no doubt they will becoming to our shores in the near feature.

You might think these are Transformers Crossovers are a blatant attempt to sell yet another set of the same figures you’ve already got by tying lots of successful franchises together, but you’d be sorely mistaken. As with every great comic book hero there’s a back story.

According to the official Hasbro toyshop site ” Basing their designs on alien technology, Mr. Fantastic and Iron Man create powerful new battle suits for the heroes of Earth”.  Unfortunately the plans fall into the wrong hands because “Based on prototypes stolen from nemesis Mr. Fantastic, Doctor Doom builds a series of mechanised war-suits for the use of the world’s worst Super Villains” and so new battles await all of our heroes.

The transformations themselves are really well done. A snazzy motorbike transforms into Spiderman, a menacing black car turns out to be Venom, Iron Man converts to a fighter jet, Wolverine is a re-imagined as a jeep and Hulk is a heavily armoured tank.

Judging by some of the videos I’ve watched on You Tube of people actually transforming the figures from vehicle to Hero seems time consuming and confusing. I know that my 3 year old wouldn’t be able to do it. Although they are age rated as 5 and upwards, I still doubt that any 5 year old would have the patience to take 10 minutes changing them back and forth during play.

They do seem like a good idea and i think it’s an idea very well executed, however I wouldn’t buy one of these for my son yet as I know I’d spend all day having to fiddle with it. If you think your kid (or big kid) would have the patience for it then I think that it’s a great gift, and would lead to many hours of fun saving the world from Doctor Doom and his cronies.

Go Spidey!