Poison

Venom is such a copy of Spider-Man, even his crossovers are knockoffs! Believing himself to be a living miracle after seemingly coming back from the dead, symbiote-possessed Peter Parker rejects the Venom identity and names himself Poison. Yeah, that is... not correct. Whoever was tasked with writing this bio didn't know who the character was (making them just like all the rest of us), and so looked him up, finding the Peter Parker of Earth-70134, from What If? Spider-Man The Other. He also called himself Poison, but that's not this character. In 2017's "Venomverse" story, a group of Venomized heroes from alternate realities were fighting against the Poisons, brittle little aliens that prey on Klyntar symbiotes. They can possess Venoms the same way Venoms posses everyone else, taking over the host and adding them to their collective. One of the alternate Venoms on the team was a Peter Parker who'd joined with his symbiote, and when a Poison posed as Aunt May during a fight, he was tricked, possessed, and turned into this. Come on, Pete, you should know better than to trust a big butt and a smile! The Poison aliens are a crystalline species, so the Venoms they claim end up with a very angular look, almost as if they were wearing a suit of Iron Man armor. Peter, for instance, keeps the Spidey-shaped eyes, set deep into his face, but they have smooth silver rims beneath them, and the mouth is like the seam on the Modern Armor faceplate. Clearly Venom and Carnage were budget-savers for this series, because other than the upper arms and the legs from the knees down, this is a completely new mold. And one without a lot of re-use potential, too! Who else is every going to need this big, segmented body? Especially with the giant black spider as a molded part of the chest? The only things about him that look organic rather than robotic are the six waving tentacles whipping out from his chest symbol, and the two curving spikes that jut off of each forearm. This is like that Moon Knight figure we got: who cares so much about this character to spend so much money on new tooling? The few existing parts there are come from the Spider-UK/Cosmic Spidey mold. Like Scream, Poison only gets paint on the front, not the back - not that there's a lot of color on the back, but the small silver outlines that help define the shape of the suit are only present when viewing the figure from the front. Maybe they were necessary there to stand up against the giant black spider, while the sculpt on the back is fine on its own? Depends on if you're feeling charitable or feeling mean. Poison comes with the final piece of the Monster Venom BAF, the left arm. It, too, is an entirely new sculpt. Poison is a weird, weird choice for a character to get a Marvel Legend, especially only one year after his debut. Clearly he was chosen just for his look, not his popularity. The "Spiderverse" characters have been doing a nice job of filling out the ranks of the Spider-Man Legends line, but even more than Spider-Ham and Typhoid Mary, this really demonstrates how thin a potential line of Venom toys would be: he just doesn't have the related characters to carry it. Good work by Hasbro on turning the interesting design into a toy, though. -- 10/03/18