Every time I start to worry if I rely on Honest Trailers a little too much for content, they do something like this.
“This” being the absolutely legitimate and approved by Marvel Japanese Spider-Man TV show, and the Honest Trailer does not disappoint. It is a little unfair to judge television programs set (wow) forty years ago by the production values (and all the other values) of today — only I don’t care because man but this is hysterical. I was particularly struck at how ur-Power Rangers this all is, mostly because this show looks like a goram test bed for all the tropes that Toei (the producers of this Spider-Man) would later use for their shows which would later be adapted into what we call the Power Rangers. If that sounds complicated; well, so is the relationship between American and Japanese children’s television.
Yes, he is very much legitimate and approved by Marvel. In fact, he’s so legitimate and approved by Marvel that he appeared in the recent Spider-Verse storyline that saw Spider-Heroes from a number of different settings all appear together. And he even had his giant robot!
To the best of my knowledge, the only Spider-Man who didn’t appear in the storyline or get a reference was the Hostess Fruit Pie Spider-Man from the old ads. They had to use a non-copyright violating look-alike for Hostess instead.