[Trivial Psychic]

I was able to find the first two figures from the Venom wave in Venom and Carnage earlier this week at a local Walgreens. Here are a couple of thoughts on Venom.

At first glance, this looks like a straight-up reissue of the Sandman wave Venom with a couple of additional items such as the Brock head and the forming tendril piece. There is a bit more to it however as the figure itself has a seni glossier finish on most of the parts, as well as a new standard Venom head, which features no extended tongue.



The figure itself features identical articulation and is on the Hyperion body mold we all know. There are no new parts to it. The figure has a softer and gummier feel to it, but it is not distractingly so. And while all the parts from the Sandman figure work perfectly with the new figure, the problem is they will look different to the trained eye, since the new figure has formentioned sheen to it. It is hard to spot at a distance, but in hand you will notice it, especially when the figure is displayed under a light. (New Venom is the figure on the right.)



The new figure also features some QC issues, as the paint apps on my Sandman figure were much more crisp with less fuzziness. The eyes were missing a small bit of paint on the corner, and the spider symbol itself, while fairly straight, does display some blurryness on the pinchers. The glossiness of the figure is also an issue, as it is not evenly distributed among the entire figure, with some parts featuring more sheen than other (like the Defenders boxset DD did.) However, that mismatched gloss does not stand out anywhere near to the levels of that previous DD figure.

It should also be noted that the hands on this new Venom are not removable unless you were willing to apply heat and mod them in some way to be easily removed. Know that if you want those open Venom hands from the previous figure to work, you're going to need to put some TLC into it.

So should you pick it up if you already have the Sandman figure? It really depends on what you want. Honestly I actually have found myself preferring this one more than the Sandman release, simply because of the new additions, the Brock head (which has been tweaked in size since the reveal, and does not look as big in person as it does in photos,) the tendril piece, and tongueless Venom portrait. With all of the specific artist's looks that Hasbro has been trying to capture lately, it is obvious that this was their love letter to Todd McFarlane. The Venom portrait is the dead giveaway, as Todd McFarlane never drew Venom with the dragging, drooling tongue. While I never cared much for Todd, I always enjoyed his work on Venom the most, just barely behind Bagley's interpretation.



I'm a bit biased in saying I recommend the purchase, however, if you can live without the extras, save your money and buy or trade for the BAF part on the secondary market. It's a mostly good looking figure with some nice bonus parts to those who missed out on the original release, but that's about it. It's not better than the original release, but it's not so much worse that you should hunt down that one instead if you missed out.