Avengers Campus
It may one day be difficult to convince people that the first decade of the “Marvel Cinematic Universe” (the “MCU”) was real at all and not some sort of shared pipe dream. But it’s true that from 2008 to 2019, the “MCU” produced 23 films that together netted $22 billion – an average of about a billion dollars each. The increasingly-interconnected franchise set the modern standard for shared “cinematic universes” of multi-film story arcs, complex crossovers, and Easter eggs that seemed like a perpetual motion machine.
That “universe” became incarnate in the Disney Parks with an unusual model. Avengers Campus isn’t “plucked from the screen” per se, but rather is a sort of imagined, theme-park-able “flex space” where heroes from across the MCU can converge to train “the next generation of heroes” (that’s us). The result is a Silicon Valley-esque campus of steel and glass laboratories reusing the adapted remains of a historic Stark Motors facility. It’s a creative and compelling way to draw all the heroes into one sort of techy, flexible sandbox, even if it positions this “Living Land” as being far less grand than others.
But it also gives Avengers Campus license to be a little more fun. It’s okay that characters who have been long dead in the films co-mingle with heroes just debuting on Disney+. The official explanation is that this world exists in a multiversal variant of the MCU. But the overall effect is that Avengers Campus doesn’t really take itself too seriously.
In keeping with that, it’s tough to describe the land’s retail as “in-universe” until you consider that the land’s universe is very close to our universe! We – the “future heroes” coming to this campus to train – want Captain America T-shirts, and Thor’s Mjölnir as a popcorn bucket, and plastic recreations of the legendary “Infinity Gauntlet,” and Spider-Man t-shirts, and Guardians of the Galaxy plush. We’re here not just to practice our own skills, but to venerate the heroes who’ve saved our world time and time again… and what better way than with merch?
If you and I lived in the MCU and these heroes were actually flying around in the background of our visits to the big city, they’d still be the things we wanted to dress as for Halloween, right? We’d wear Iron Man jerseys the way people wear football jerseys. So while you can argue that the merch here is far less “brainy” than, say, Hogsmeade or Pandora, it actually does make sense “in-universe” where the Campus has called us out to follow in these heroes’ footsteps. Even so, one piece of merch does rise above…
The Spider-Bot
PRICE: $80
There are two Avengers Campuses on Earth – one at Disney California Adventure and one at Walt Disney Studios Park in Paris. Even “in-universe,” the two acknowledge each other’s existence and even their placement in theme parks – perfect recruiting hubs! Both Campuses have different layouts and headlining rides (Guardians of the Galaxy – Mission: BREAKOUT! and Avengers Assemble: Flight Force, respectively), but they both have one ride in common: an interactive dark ride with Spider-Man.
Inside, guests are invited to tour the Worldwide Engineering Brigade – a sort of communal lab for whiz kid tech students from around the globe – and witness the new SLINGR vehicle that allows regular ole people like you and I to sling webs like Spider-Man. Of course, during Peter Parker’s orientation, something goes horribly wrong when a helpful little Spider-Bot is caught in self-replication mode, setting off a chain of exponentially-multiplying bots consuming matter to reproduce, threatening to wipe out the Campus and the world! Of course, we set things right by hopping aboard a SLINGR and capturing the bots for good.
As any self-respecting ride would, our tour-turned-high-stakes-rescue-mission deposits us in the W.E.B. Suppliers gift shop where we can purchase our own Spider-Bot. These remote-controlled, eight-legged robotic helpers are customizable in the sense that they come in multiple color-ways (echoing MCU heroes) and can be “upgraded” with “tactical gear” kits, plug-in chips, and snap-on exoskeleton pieces that theoretically give them advantages in bot-to-bot battle (with several purpose built mini-arenas set up around the Campus for just such battles).
In practice, the Bots are a bit clumsy, with wireless remotes that allow them to move forward, backward, left, and right; to crouch, and to use two “attacks.” Those attacks don’t necessarily manifest any differently depending on your Bot’s customization, but they do contribute to internal statistics around speed, strength, and defense that theoretically see your bot win or lose in face-offs, with a popped-off exoskeleton signaling defeat. It’s doubtful that even the most hardened Marvel fans would bother grafting on upgrades and participating in low energy “battles,” but it’s theoretically available to you!
The question of “value” always looms large, and it’s probably fair to say that Spider-Bots enter a competitive market. $80 is a hefty sum, and there’s almost no question that if you sprang for a Park Hopper, you’d feel more satisfied with a Galaxy’s Edge Droid for just $20 more (see last page) given that the result comes with both a building and activating “experience” and is customized to your liking. The Spider-Bots are adorable and immensely likable (especially after the ride), but ultimately, a clumsy remote-controlled toy that just comes in a plastic polypropylene box feels like something you’d expect at Target for half the price.