Mondo has had success with its sixth scale line of action figures based on X-Men and X-Men ’97 so it’s no surprise that the company has decided to dip its toe into another 90s animated Marvel series in Spider-Man. And when it comes to Spider-Man, I’m not sure what to call it. I always referred to the X-Men cartoon as simply X-Men, though in the ensuing decades there’s been an attempt to retcon it as X-Men: The Animated Series since that’s what happened with Batman. Only, Batman had “The Animated Series” tacked onto it from the very beginning even if it wasn’t technically the show’s name. With Spider-Man, I guess I always called it just Spider-Man, but over the years I’ve come to think of it as Spider-Man ’94. I don’t know why I feel the need to differentiate it in such a fashion, but I do sometimes refer to X-Men as X-Men ’92.

Whatever you want to call it, Spider-Man was a pretty entertaining show for an early teens kid in the 90s. I was introduced to the character of Spider-Man via public service announcements and that really cool CGi Spider-Man that dropped in as part of the Marvel logo at the end of Muppet Babies. I did catch a few stray episodes of Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends, but for the most part I didn’t know a ton about Spider-Man going into the premiere of the ’94 cartoon. I knew the basics, had a few comics, read the back of many trading cards, but a lot of Spidey knowledge would come from the show. And I liked Spider-Man well enough going into the whole thing, but the character I really liked and wanted to see on television was Venom.

I’ve explained my love of Venom in other posts on the subject, but he was one of the big characters of the 90s. Sure, he debuted in the 80s, but I feel like he took off in the 90s leading to his solo outing in Lethal Protector. When the Toy Biz Marvel Super Heroes line emerged, I didn’t buy Spider-Man, I got Venom! When the video game Maximum Carnage hit, I played that thing and kept saying “Where’s Venom?” until finally getting to the stage where he was playable. He was just cool. This big, brutish, version of Spider-Man with a great concept for his costume and artists that took advantage of it. When the show hit, he was saved for last in the opening title for a reason and I would tune into that show week in and week out waiting for the big guy to finally show up. And when that episode finally hit and the alien slime dripped down onto Eddie Brock I could have jumped out of my skin with excitement. Unfortunately, that would be just one of three episodes that featured the character, but it was still cool to finally see him in animation.

I liked the show Spider-Man well enough, but it wasn’t as high on my list as X-Men. As a result, I don’t know how deep I’m going to go on a line of sixth scale toys that retail for over $200 a piece and require a lot of shelf space to display properly. However, when Mondo announced they were doing Spider-Man I knew I was at least in for Venom. Which doesn’t make the most sense, if I’m being honest. Venom, as a character created for animation, has a weaker design compared to his comic book counterpart. He couldn’t have the many rows of teeth, the giant tongue, complicated eyes, and so forth because it would be a nightmare to animate. He also couldn’t be shaded like he was in the books where most artists would start with a blue base and then layer on the blacks. He kept his basic shape, but the eyes and mouth were simplified. The show added its own touch by cutting out slits on the tops of the white eyes which give him the illusion of slit-like pupils as if owing to a snake. The tongue was there, but not monstrous and usually absent the green slime. Standing out most though was this blue outline the character would have on one side, plus a red one on the other. It’s not uncommon to see blue used to shade black in both comics and animation, but the red was certainly an interesting choice. It’s certainly a unique look for Venom, even if it isn’t my favorite, but there’s charm and certainly a great deal of nostalgia baked into this look.

Mondo’s Venom comes in a massive window box that is structurally the same as what we see from the X-Men line. Conceptually, it’s relying on new artwork and for this release that artwork is done by Kris Anka with Jordan Christianson receiving credit for the package design. There’s a big web on the front with Venom in the middle with a black, blue, and red Spider-Man logo across the top. There’s a Velcro flap with a side portrait of Venom on the inside. The window for viewing the figure has a comic book-like character portrait in the top left corner that also includes the dates April 1995 through November 1996 with both endpoints marking Venom’s debut and final appearance in the show.

Packaging is fun and all, but the real treat is what’s inside. Venom is a big, hulking, brute of an action figure. Mondo lists him as 13″ and my tape measure has him at just a tick over 13.25″. He’s big and right up there with Sabretooth and Omega Red from the X-Men line. This is another sculpt by Alex Brewer and on paint for Venom is Mara Ancheta and, let me tell you, these two did a bang-up job. That should come as no surprise to anyone familiar with what Mondo has been doing at this scale, but Venom looks like a maquette from the show. He is as faithful to the screen as you’re going to find. His upper body is massive with huge shoulders and bulging biceps. It tapers well at the abdomen and he has these tree trunk legs that just really add to the bulk on display.

All of the show specific details are captured beautifully in this figure. The portrait is perfect. He has this slight indent on the center of his head which he was often drawn with. It was like the meeting point between the blue and the red outline and it gave him a bit of a “butthead” look in some stills. Here it’s subtle so we don’t have a butthead Venom, but we have an accurate one. The eyes are perfect and he has those unique Spider-Man ’94 eye slits plus the blue and red lips around his lizard-like maw. The default head has an open mouth and the teeth are painted exceptionally well. On the chest and back is the classic white spider logo and the black lines in the legs are slightly sculpted in. The forearms feature those veins that kind of looked like webbing to me as a kid and they’re colored in blue and red as they were in his second appearance. The white patches are also present, a detail Mondo certainly wouldn’t overlook. And the paint is just fantastic. Crisp, clean, and in the right amount. Venom isn’t the sort of character that’s going to pop like a Cyclops or even a Spider-Man, but he has what he needs. There’s tons of blue and red highlights on the muscles and the logic on play is well applied as the figure creates an illusion of a light source. There’s also a hit of gray in the spider logo under the pectorals and in the abs which looks great and adds definition. If you inspect the figure in great depth you might find a white spot here and there or a softer edge to some of the paint, but in terms of paint slop it’s pretty much pristine.

Now, where these Mondo figures usually don’t shine is with the articulation, and despite Venom doing some thing different, he’s still largely the same. All of the points of articulation you could want are here, they just don’t have the range to create a variety of poses. There’s the usual double-ball peg head, the ball-hinged shoulders, ball-jointed wrist, ball-jointed diaphragm, ball-jointed waist, ball-socket hips, thigh twists, double-jointed knees, ankle hinges, and ankle rockers. The sort of new, or less often seen, are the bicep swivels with double-jointed elbows. I think Mondo is going to be doing this more and more going forward as we did see it with Cyclops and it’s a change I like. In terms of what works and what doesn’t, it’s largely a case of tightness. The shoulders are very tight. Hitting a T pose might be impossible for this guy and just basic rotation is tough. You also have to be mindful of the arm rubbing on the pecs as you don’t want to mess up the paint. The elbows will bend a little past 90 degrees, but he’s so bulky that going any further really isn’t going to do much. The diaphragm joint feels very limited. I’m getting not much forward and back, rotation is oaky, but again it’s a painted surface and I don’t want to mess anything up. The waist is really hard to get much use out of and I can’t get the ankle hinges to budge. The rockers work so standing him has been easy, but this isn’t a Venom for deep crouches or those real spider-like poses.

There’s no sugar-coating it, articulation is a shortcoming with this figure and with this line. It’s just a question of as a consumer are you willing to accept that as a trade-off for the aesthetic? And aiding that aesthetic is the boatload of accessories Mondo included with this one. I have the limited version, which has some extra stuff that I’ll be sure to call attention to. As far as what’s included with all, we have a bunch of hands. By default, Venom comes equipped with open hands but he has sets of fists, gripping, and clawing hands that swap in and out pretty easily. He also has an extra right hand which is gripping a Spider-Man mask from the scene in his debut episode where he tries to expose Spider-Man to the general public. The mask is sculpted and fully painted and looks cool. It’s also kind of amusing to me because Mondo’s Spider-Man figure (I initially passed on that one, but then ordered it via a third party through a sale and I’m still waiting on it) came with a hand holding the mask of Green Goblin. Is that going to be a thing for this line where every character comes with a hand holding the mask of another character?

Naturally, Venom also has some effect parts. And namely, effect hands. He has two fists that are angled with long strands of web shooting out. The web lines are close to 9.5″ in length and are made of soft plastic or rubber with a wire running through it. I’m not sure how useful the wire will be, but I suppose it’s better than not having it. The line ends with a plug hole and you can insert one of two splatter ends or one of two included web ends. I like them, but the connection on my figure’s left hand is pretty weak. Weak enough that I think it might fall off soon which is something to be mindful of. The web line on the right hand seems secure. And if these web lines just seem like too much, there’s also a set of hands with short, 2.5″, web lines shooting out. These do not have a wire, because it’s not needed, but they certainly require less shelf space if you want Venom shooting webs on your shelf.

Venom has always been an expressive character so he needs multiple portraits. And for the standard edition you get three. The default one features an open mouth and Venom’s typical sinister grin. The alt head has that tongue you all want snaking out. As it was in the cartoon, the tongue is pink and there isn’t any slime on it as was common in the comic books. Often in the show the tongue would end as if there was slime on it, but it was just colored pink. I always wondered if that was by design or if they just didn’t paint on the slime. Either way, this head doesn’t reflect that which is honestly probably for the best because it was pretty weird looking. Lastly, we have the unmasked Eddie Brock portrait. There’s not much to say about it other than the likeness is spot on. He has somewhat of an agitated expression when I think most may have preferred a sinister grin, but it’s fine. Paint across all of the heads is pretty damn immaculate. I don’t use that word often to describe the paint job on toys because there’s usually something wrong on everything, however minor. With these it’s pretty damn hard to find anything though.

And now for the extra stuff. If you get the limited version, you get two extra portraits. The first is another tongue head with a more dramatic tongue covered in green slime. This feels like more of a comic head even though the actual head and face of the character is still undoubtedly Venom from the cartoon. I think of this head as the idealized version of the character, what we would have wanted to see all things being equal from the show, but animation budgets prevented it. It’s awesome though and I am guessing this will be the favorite of many. The other head is an Eddie Brock portrait in mid-transformation. The Venom “mask” is closing its mouth over Brock’s face as it would do in the show and it looks amazing. I can’t believe how well they managed to get the paint on this thing and it’s this Brock face that has that sinister grin I was looking for. To go with this is a big piece of Venom goo that clips around the waist of the figure to make it look like alien slime is shooting off his back. It plays up that mid-transformation thing, even though the figure is basically already in Venom form, but it’s neat. It’s soft plastic so it doesn’t feel like something that will scuff the figure or anything.

The last accessory is what I affectionately refer to as Venom’s web sex swing. It’s from the debut episode of the character where he webs up Spider-Man in this web contraption, pulls off his mask, and dangles him over the edge of a building where the onlookers at street level try to get a picture or video of Spider-Man unmasked. It’s basically five parts: you have a Venom left hand which is how it attaches to Venom. Then you have the five web lines, two of which end in loops to go over the Spider-Man figure’s wrists and the other two weblines end on what’s basically a web belt. The plastic is fairly soft and pliable and, according to Mondo, this belt part is supposed to slide over Spider-Man’s legs and come to rest around his waist. I don’t have that figure, but I have my doubts that this thing will be easy to get onto Spider-Man. When/if I get Spider-Man maybe I’ll update this with a picture of it in action, or confirmation that I just couldn’t do it. There are promo shots of it, but who knows how Mondo pulled them off. I suppose you could separate the figure at the diaphragm, but I don’t blame anyone for not wanting to pull apart a 200 dollar action figure. I know I wouldn’t.

Mondo’s take on Venom is pretty damn rad. If you don’t care for his animated look then that’s understandable, but if you’ve ever wanted a representation of Venom from the Spider-Man cartoon on your shelf then this is the one to get. Yes, it’s very expensive and I was even a little annoyed at the price this one came in at, but it’s Venom and I had to have it. The articulation won’t blow anyone away, but the presence this one has is pretty damn incredible. He has all he needs and the execution of the sculpt and the paint is as close to flawless as I think I’ve ever seen with an action figure in any scale. Yeah it costs a lot, but you’re getting a damn good product. If you want the limited edition, unfortunately it’s sold out and you’re going to have to try your luck on the aftermarket. My preferred head is in the limited version, but I don’t know that I’d pay more than the ten bucks Mondo charged for the extra stuff. The standard version should still be available in various places, just not through Mondo directly. If this looks like something you want in your collection, I think the expense is worth it. Just know what you’re getting: a big, kick ass looking Venom from the 90s Spider-Man cartoon.