Toy Review: Venom - The Madness

02/16/10

Toy Biz’ Planet of the Symbiotes: Venom The Madness

1996 was before my time as a toy collector. It was also before the Internet changed the hobby for us. When we were kids, the way we knew what was coming out was to go to the toystore and look. If you lived out in the boonies, you were dependent entirely on what you’re local department store toy buyers thought was going to be the next big thing. If they thought lawn darts were making a big come back you were up the proverbial intermittent excrement tributary without a means of propulsion.

When that World Wide Web finally did roll around, it turned things around for manufacturers, sellers, and buyers alike. Now you didn’t need to depend on catalog inserts in your boxes or schoolyard word of mouth to get the news out about the rest of your line. Now you had all sorts of avenues to information about coming releases and didn’t need the scratch to hire underpaid Japanese guys to produce a cartoon for you. Now you could order something online and have it delivered to your door even if you lived in the middle of nowhere with two sheep and a dog. Imagine what life was like for a completist back in the day!

The 90’s was when McFarlane Toys started making figures for the adult collector, setting the bar higher for all the other toy makers. It was when manufacturers realized that there was a market for toys targeted for older kids (at heart). It was also when Toy Biz first started making Marvel action figures.

When I first saw Toy Biz toys, I wasn’t really all that impressed. They weren’t really nice looking, and their sculptors seemed to have problems with proportion. I guess you couldn’t blame them. This was the era of Rob Liefeld and Erik Larsen, Jim Lee and all those other guys. Style was the name of the game. Anatomy be damned.

But apparently, Toy Biz got it’s act together and started pumping out some nice stuff by ‘96. Case in point; the “Planet of the Symbiotes” line. This line consisted of 9 figures; Hybrid, Lasher, Riot, and Venom the Madness, each with a variant repaint, with a 9th figure called Scream which was released solo.

Of the set, the only ones that really look passable are Riot and Venom. It’s a good thing my friend chose to get those two when he bought these as a kid in Singapore. I’ll review Riot later. Let’s stick with Venom.

According to the back of the card (which I don’t have really), during his stay on the Planet of the Symbiotes, Venom was pushed into a vat of toxic waste and mutated into a huge, hulking beast (more than he already was anyway). Can any one say Toxic Avenger? He grew more heads and arms, and apparently got a pair of red tentacles to play with. Insert assorted hentai flashbacks here.

I looked online for a glimpse of the card and found a gallery at www.figurerealm.com. The artwork looks pretty 90’s to me, and I can tell it would have been hard to keep these babies in pristine condition. Considering the weight those J-hooks would have had to take, every toy on the shelf must have been falling down, and every blister must have been falling off the card.

I tried looking this series up and some are harder to find than others. Venom looks relatively easy, but some of the variants look pretty rare. And even if you can find them, chances are they wouldn’t come cheap.

I wouldn’t mind finding a couple of my own, black and green to face off with my Spideys.

The figure itself is huge. He’s a bit smaller than the Toy Biz Marvel Legends Juggernaut. Considering this thing was released in a line that was only 5″ scale, that’s impressive. The sculpt is amazing looking, and really captures the look of Venom in the comics. The regular character I mean. I never read this “Planet” story arc. I’ve got no idea how The Madness looked after he got dunked. This may not be a faithful rendition at all. The comic could have had him with 20 heads, a dozen tentacles (ribbed for your pleasure), 4 arms, and one big white eye for all I know. He could have been dressed in knee socks and pig-tails.

What I’m saying is that this toy, on it’s own, is awesome.

It’s got an amazing amount of detail drawn in, with wrinkles around the mouth, the eyes, each tooth sculpted, the tongue whipping out. If you look closely at the arm, it’s even got ribbing along it, following his musculature. I don’t know if that’s canon, but like I said, who cares? It’s awesome.

He’s built pretty thick. Even though his chest is hollow, he’s pretty hefty and solid. The unit I was reviewing was splitting open along the seam of his torso, but it wasn’t anything superglue couldn’t fix. And face it, this thing is 14 years old. I’d say it’s hanging on like a trooper. Plastic quality is good, but more of the hard brittle kind rather than the rubbery kind Hasbro favors today. This isn’t something that a kid will be able to toss across the room.

The tentacles and the extra arms are made of the rubbery plastic though. They aren’t posable but it’s a neat looking gimmick. And since everything’s black, there’s no worry about discoloration.

The figure has an action feature, which was apparently a requirement back in the day. At least this one is unobtrusive. It’s a button on the back that pops three of his heads out of his shoulders. It’s a pretty nice play feature and doesn’t really affect his display potential.

More awesome.

While Venom: the Madness doesn’t really have as much articulation as the other Venoms in my collection, he does rank because of the sheer excellence of his sculpt. Venom was never really anything more than a brickbat for Spider-man anyway, something that was thrown at him, without finesse. Sure it’s nice when we get a figure like the Spider-man 3 6″ one that can really match the McFarlane Spider-Man figure pose for pose, but there’s something to be said for a great big, meanacing block of goo that looks as if it’s about to eat you.

So if you can find this guy, I highly recommend him. His articulation isn’t really anything useful, but he makes for a nice centerpiece for a Spider-man collection. The detail of the sculpt and the size of the figure really allow him to hold his own with the 6″ crowd.