Spider-Man 2: The Movie (Panini Sticker Album)

Background

Panini is a long-established "collectible sticker" company, famous originall for football stickers and then as of 1994 also well-known for their Marvel Super Hero stickers. During the crazy second half of the 1990's, Marvel HQ purchased Panini in a fancy deal by which Panini acquired Marvel's UK division. Of course the whole thing melted down just a year later, and Panini was sold off during the 1999 Marvel bankruptcy process. It is now independent once more, but still seems to hold valuable UK and international Marvel licenses.

Only a few years later, the Spider-Man movie in 2002 marked the rapid turn-around in Marvel's fortunes and the beginning of their spectacular renaissance. By the time Spider-Man 2 came out in 2004, things were well back on track again for Marvel. Panini the whole while was just doing what it always did — making stickers!

The stickers themselves are the 2004 Panini Spider-Man 2 Stickers set, consisting of 132 regular stickers and 24 holo-sparkle stickers. This item is the "sticker album" into which these stickers can be applied.

Story Details

There are three different editions of the book. There's a UK "Panini" version, a USA "Imperial" version, and a "Hot Shots" version that was produced for the Australia/NZ market. In the USA there was also a "gift box" downsized version Spider-Man 2: The Movie (Panini Sticker Album Boxed Set) which is significantly different in some key areas and so it has a separate review.

This full-size format is magazine-sized 8.25" x 10.75" and is 100% movie tie-in. Note that due to the strong and strictly-controlled coloring and artwork for these movie tie-ins, they all look rather similar! You could easily confuse it with other movie tie-in products such as the Spider-Man 2: The Movie Souvenir Sticker Book (Alligator) which contained 20 non-collectible stickers and has no relationship with Panini at all.

The book is 32 pages of full-color photo movie-stills. They're double-page spreads, which mean that really we're looking at maybe 15 or so key scenes from the movie. That's not a lot of images to cover a full-length film, and so we can't be surprised when we find lots of holes in the story-telling. That means no John Jameson, no Tritium Sphere and consequent explosion. No fight on the train, etc.

Of course, each sticker embeds itself into a dedicated spot within the book, and fills up a box in the page which is left faded/blurred until you add the corresponding bit of image. The 132 regular stickers fit into movie scenes, and then the bonus 24 glitter stickers have spaces marked out for them on the back-side of a quadruple-spread vertical poster. However, if you put the poster on your wall (or the back of your bedroom door) then you won't see the glitter stickers. Tough choice!

As of 2025, you can still buy full boxes of the stickers pretty cheaply on eBay. Finding this sticker album is actually the tricky bit.

General Comments

Panini. Stickers.

Kids like this stuff, and Panini gives them what they want in a clean, professional format.

Spider-Man 2 (2004) is generally considered to be the best of the three Sam Raimi movies. This sticker book doesn't really do it justice, since the strength of the film is in the emotional touches of the film, and the excellent performances. The train-rescue scene is perhaps the most-remembered, but it didn't make the cut into this book. Perhaps they wanted to avoid too many spoilers for the film, and leave something left to be discovered!

Overall Rating

We get bright-colored stickers.

I guess we can't complain. Stickers is better than no-Stickers, right?

Three webs.

Footnote

My original review of this product was a bit harsh, I feel. It has been rewritten to be a little bit more middle-ground for what is, after all, a pretty typical sort of sticker album movie tie-in.