Review of Spider-Man Classic Heroes Action Figure Venom with Scorpion Stinger

The Basics:Price: $14.99-$35.00

Scale: 6" without stinger, 6 3/4" with stinger

Venom (Mac Gargan):

Mac Gargan isn't the first psycho to meld with the Venom symbiote, but he's certainly the most dangerous by far.  Originally a regular guy hired by J. Jonah Jameson to take down Spider-Man, his sanity was damaged by the experiment that gave him his powers. It was destroyed entirely by his bond with the symbiote. Now, with full knowledge of the web-slinger's secret identity, he becomes the most dangerous foe Spider-Man has ever faced!

Venom has a very nice sculpt. All over his huge body are muscle lines, veins, even tears here and there in the symbiote goo. The hands look great, very veiny and each finger has the whole fingernail-claw thing going on. The face sculpt is probably one of, if not my favorite Venom face sculpt. I mean it just looks so damn cool. There's so much detail going on in that face sculpt, it's ridiculous. The teeth look awesome on the gums and the tongue, dear lord where to begin. It has the texture of a real tongue......i'm not even kidding. It's long as hell too, and thats perfect because one of Venom's trademarks is his unnaturally long tongue. It puts poor Gene Simmons to shame. Overall Venom has a great sculpt that really hits it home. Great work Hasbro, great work. For paint, the work is well done. The white is solid, no slop ( at least on mine) on the spider logos. The red eyes are siginificant to the Gargan Venom and look great. ( I myself am considering for making them white too though, only because I think it would look creepier, again just my thoughts). His main color is black but it has shades of purple, which you can better see in the picture below.

Alright, now lets get into accessories and articulation.

In terms of accessories, Venom comes with his Scorpion Stinger:



The stinger itself is very nicely sculpted. It is removeable but unfortunately leaves Venom with a hole, or in this case square, in his back. So if you want to display Venom without the stinger, like me, either have his back always to the wall or invest in clay, which I am. The stinger has 5 swivel-hinge joints allowing for cool poses, if you choose to display him with it. It's a nice accessory and i'm glad Hasbro gave it to us.
In terms of articulation, Venom has a swivel-hinge head, swivel-hinge shoulder, hinge elbows, swivel-hinge wrists, ball-jointed abs, swivel waist, swivel- hinge thighs, double-hinge knees, hinge ankles. There are a few pieces of articulation I would have liked to see. It detracts from the overall score of the figure for me but not too much as you can still get some nice poses out of him.

Overall:

Yes, he is missing some articulation, but that doesn't bother me too much because they actually put articulation in the tail, and he can still pull of poses. This Venom looks amazing, and is a lot of fun. Sure he could have used a swivel at the biceps, hips, and even a rocker ankle, but you have to admit, Hasbro did a very good job on this figure. He's one of my favorite Marvel Legends scale figures from the Spider-Man sub-line and you owe it to yourself to pick this guy up. When I got him last year he was $18.99, but since then Toys R Us has dropped it to $13.99 so go out and get yourself one, hyou'll be glad you did!

9 out 10!!!