Marvel Legends Walgreens Exclusive Agent Venom action figure review

Welcome to this week's three-minute toy review! Hah I kid but this review focuses on just one figure tonight, the long awaited release of Agent Venom. If you haven't been keeping up with the comics Flash Thompson has the symbiote suit now and while he lost his lower legs during combat the symbiote creates them for him. Hasbro has come out of left field and made this a Walgreens drug store exclusive, eight Venoms per case. Yep, you won't have trouble finding him...unless you don't live near a Walgreens. He runs the standard $19.99 and sits in a nifty pre-hung display rack that's usually located near either of the toy aisle endcaps. But is he worth hunting down? Let's find out.

Right off the bat you'll find that Agent Venom's sculpt really, really shines. The headsculpt is slick with goggle-like bug eyes. Venom's base body is the Shield Agent/Steve Rogers/Drax, also being shared by the Toys R Us exclusive Magneto but you won't see much of it as its covered in some great looking armor. It's done in a bumpy organic sculpt with brand new lower arms and legs. The chest piece is intricately done as is the belt full of grenades and weaponry. There's a holster on his right leg with a non-removable gun on it as well. Venom's fingers are in a cool gnarled pose that allows him to hold different sized weapons.

Paint work comes in one shade, white on black plastic. You'll want to compare as the very fine eyeliner can be skewed and the white logo is actually a tampograph, meaning paint that's been applied with a stamp rather than sprayed on. This lends to some symbols being all crisp white and some having missed the sculpt with black specks showing through at the crevices and organic sculpt. However this doesn't actually look terrible and can fall in the way of accidental shading. Just snag a jar of Testors Model Master Acrylic white paint and you can easily touch him up. I wasn't kidding either that's it for his paint work, yet he still looks amazing.

Articulation for Agent Venom is top notch! While some of you may not want to fall back towards the ball-hips they're hardly noticable. His shoulderpads are on thin flexible strips and move out of the way. Every joint including the ab crunch has excellent range. His wrists turn at the upper forearm where the armor meets and he has side-tilt ankles. Pose him however you like, Agent Venom has great proportions and range of motion.

You're in for an accessory extravaganza here. Agent Venom's chest armor and belt are removable. He comes with four guns and a wicked looking symbiote tendril attachment on his back that can wield them. Three of the guns are Hit Monkey's so they're a bit on the small side (tho your Black Widow would benefit from them!) but not a noticeable with the tendrils holding them. The other gun is Steve Roger's and looks better in the actual figure's hand. Removable armor and a bunch of guns, that's pretty decent.

So what's the verdict on Agent Venom? You're probably reading this review on your cellphone walking through a Walgreens right now looking for him. And if you aren't, you should be. This is one awesome figure and I'm having a hard time putting him down. Even if you aren't a huge fan of this Venom customizers can always use the weapons and armor for other figures and that head is practically Spiderman Noir material. The problem is not living near or IN a country with a Walgreens. Hasbro cut out the scalpers by making the entire case Venoms tho his card shows all the other Spiderman Infinite characters as if he were a variant of the assortment. You just need to ask some friends to keep an eye out for you, he won't be hard to find. I'd plug my sponsors here but you're really only going to find him at Walgreens, tho various 3rd parties on Amazon and Ebay have him in stock (all eBay links are eBayPartnerNetwork affiliate links that help me out!) at various markups if you can't stand to wait.

Marvel Select Venom by Diamond Select, action figure review

Venom is one of the most popular Spiderman villain to date and has been drawn hundreds of ways by more artists than I can google. This being the case there's many different looks for him. Here Diamond Select has decided to capture four different looks with one figure! Standing 7-1/2" inches tall he's a little on the tall side when paired against a Marvel legends but has been drawn as large as the Hulk in some comics allowing for a little leeway here.

Venom's sculpt is a thing of beauty and extremely detailed when it comes to the muscles and sculpted-in spider symbol instead of just being painted on. The McFarlane grinning head is easily the winner among the three different heads and looks amazing. The toothy head looks menacing and the half-covered Eddie Brock head which was taken directly from cover art is just as awesome to behold. The clawed hands look sharp as do the open and closed fists. Yep, three sets of hands are included, more on that later. His web-shooters are raised on the back of his hand like little ports, a cool feature.

The first thing you need to do when you open up Venom is run his torso under hot water or a hair dryer and pop it apart. Take a hobby knife and widen the peg hole that's restricting the double ball jointed ab crunch. For some reason the factory added plastic in there that holds it still. You can also do this on the neck port that's attached to his main body. Suddenly Venom can lean, twist, and look around wonderfully. You can even glue his cut waist joint in place after this mod so you don't have to worry about a misaligned symbol.


Venom's articulation before the mentioned modification is a mixed bag. He has a ball jointed head and torso that's restricted but you can fix that. The range of his shoulders and knees is standard single pin but has good range. No, he does not have tilt-ankles and yes, this hurts the ability to pose him. Someone familiar with customizing can swap them out for a Marvel legends Venom feet with ankle rockers but that's up to you. His biceps turn, he has cut thighs, and the wrists being removable turn as well. You'll be able to get him into some decent poses.

Paint work is hit and miss. I saw some good ones on the shelf and I saw some terrible ones. Venom is primarily black plastic with great dark blue airbrushed highlights. The spider symbol in my case was nice and clean. But others were streaked, faded, and in some cases had brown dirt and hair clumps stuck in the paint it as if someone had dropped the freshly painted figure on the factory floor. There's also evidence of touch-up work in places with solid black paint which in some cases clashes with the blue highlights.I really like how his teeth are a bone color instead of bright white like his symbol.

Venom's accessory count will blow you away! He comes with three heads, one with a removable tongue, three sets of hands all of which can be swapped onto the madness backpack which features ball jointed mini-venom heads and jointed arms, and two smaller Madness arms that attach to his. This gives you a huge range of options as to what head with what hands and Maddness features you want. It's really impressive and will certainly be the selling point here.

Scale is seven and a half inch Marvel Select as mentioned but depending on how you like Venom appearing in the comic he can fit right along with your 6" Marvel Legends. There are a couple of things about the figure I need to mention. He has two large holes on his forearms where the madness arms plug in. Venom also suffers from the articulated-statue effect where the sculpt of his elbows is suddenly cut in a straight line to make the joint leaving you with a right-angled elbow. Same where they decided to add the thigh cut, there's flat edges showing when it turns.

So what's the verdict? Is this the end-all-definitive-perfect-Venom figure? It could be. Out of the package he's got issues but a skilled customizer can easily turn him into an awesome figure by modding the neck, torso, and replacing the feet. For $23 you get an excellently sculpted Venom with the most accessories I've ever seen a Marvel toy come with. Our sponsor Big Bad Toy Store has him for just $20 and with the way he's selling out at comic shops the day of release you want want to consider ordering him online to save the worry of seeing an empty shelf. I'm enjoying the figure and customizers will have fun finding use for the Maddness heads, some of which are Marvel legends and Marvel Universe scale.

****UPDATE****

CUSTOMIZER MODIFICATION SECTION

Here's the modifications I made to Venom. They're not hard to do and you'll want to review my Customizing Guides if you haven't already and familiarize yourself with the heat-n-pop method to disassemble him and the X-acto Knive used to trim away plastic. Foot swapping is a little advanced because it involved using a Dremel tool to widen the ankle holes, trimming down the new ankle hinge, and putting in a new pin. First things first, pop off Venom's head then heat the neck up and tug out the shaft. Trim the plastic around the hole's edge at an angle like shown.

Now heat up his ab crunch and pop it apart. Use pliers to remove the ball post same as you did the neck. Trim the plastic at an angle around the edge of both holes. Remember you're not widening the hole that much, you're allowing the post to lean further against the sides. That's where you'll get the range of motion from.

Finally the advanced step, the foot swap. I used the foot from a Spiderman Classics jaw-chomping rubber faced Venom. In order to get the larger ankle hing ring to fit I had to drill into the leg a bit, trim the ankle ring down, and drill a new hole for a larger peg. You might be able to find another foot with a smaller ankle ring and it would be a lot easier to swap. Venom doesn't have any blue highlights on his lower legs so I didn't even need to repaint the new foot. I filled the holes and painted over those but if your new foot doesn't require drilling into the leg you won't need to do this.

Spiderman 4" series Stretch Strike Venom action figure review

The newest 4" Spiderman series is floating around and contains what looks like the best Venom figure in years, Stretch Strike Venom. First thing you'll notice is that he isn't black like in the comics but a dark gray-brownish color with metallic purple highlights. It's not nearly as garish as it sounds in hand but that's what Testors Acryl semigloss black paint is for.

Venom's sculpting is excellent, lots of musculature and tendrily detail. Unlike most figures he's solid PVC so he has some heft and the back tendrils flex. The facial sculpt is sharp just like the teeth and the tongue isn't over the top. I really like the long arms and no-nail clawtips are sculpted. Head and hands, the most important part of a figure.

The articulation is acceptable and better than most figures in the series. Ball head, shoulders, and hips. He's missing a waist, ankle, and unfortunately wrists but that still doesn't hinder him much from getting into some awesome poses. This really surprised me. The range of motion is really good too allowing for everything to move regardless of his stocky form.

Speaking of surprises his action feature isn't all that horrible. It's a blast that attaches to his hand and resembles symbiote moray eel. It's made of a stretchy silicon and can be wrapped around, also jointed at where it attaches to the firmer plastic end that goes on his hand. The sculpt is sharp, this could have worked for an alternate head it's so nice, the gaping mouth and vicious teeth. What's the downside? Finding this guy. Right now he's being scalped by the neackbeard population for upwards of $40. Hopefully the assortment will find its way into more stores but with older Spiderman figs still clogging the pegs who knows.

Right now only Amazon has him.