Oh damn, somebody better call Marduk!
Tiamat is a monstrous five-headed evil dragon that roams the land in search of treasure. The most feared of all evil dragons, Tiamat fights with five gruesome heads, each with its own destructive power. She is the Queen of Evil Dragons and as the most powerful creature in the realm, she's feared by even the mighty Venger!
Tiamat (D&D's Tiamat, at any rate) was introduced
in the 1975 Greyhawk supplement, just like the owlbear or displacer beast, though she was given no name beyond "The Dragon Queen"; it wasn't until the Monster Manual two years later that she was given the name of the Mesopotamian embodiment of the sea and the mother of all the other gods. Why was she given that name? Probably because it was easier than making something up, and because nerds have always loved obscure references.
As the mother of dragons (not that one), Tiamat has to represent all the different types of dragons D&D has to offer. How to do that? Well, there are five types of chromatic dragon, so she has five heads: white, green, red, blue, and black. And since each type of dragon has its own type of breath attack, she's got all of those, too: ice breath for white, poison gas for green, fire for red, lightning for blue, and acid for black.
Surprisingly, the cartoon didn't just design one dragon head and color it five different ways: each head gets its own look, similar to one another because they're technically all the same species, but not identical. Like, the white head has a broad, flat snout with front-facing nostrils, distinct brows, a backward-angled fin on top of its head, a pointed tongue, and large front fangs; the green head, the one that looks most similar to it, has a forward-facing fin, a forked tongue, and fangs that are all the same size; blue gets smoother brows, fins on its ears, and a row of spikes over its head and one on the end of its nose; black gets a shorter fin on its head, ridges on its nose, sharply angled brows and two forward-facing horns.
The red head, in the center of the lineup, is the most distinctive. It's larger, bigger in every sense, and really seems to have
a very "Rankin/Bass Lord of the Rings" look to it, like they simply started with Smaug and made the features a little less "wolf" and a little more "serpent." It has large, pointy ears, some hair or fur on its cheeks (to match the horse-like mane that runs all the way down her back), separate eyebrow scales that look like thick armor, a segmented hog nose, and sharp fangs that stick out from distinct lips/gums at an angle like a snake's. It doesn't exactly blend in with the rest, but it's definitely scary, and the thing that sets dragons apart from other strongly-defined mythological creatures is their lack of any standardized set of features, so it works for her.
Since red is the "main" head, that's what color the body is, as well. It has to be a fairly thick body, so five necks sprouting from it won't look out of place Each of the heads has its matching color extending all the way down the back of the neck, with broad,
orange-red scales down the front. Those continue all the way under the dragon's belly and out to the end of the tail, while the rest of the skin is a darker version of that same red, even including the membranes in the wings - a feature which does not match her description in the Monster Manual, probably because that would have been too difficult to consistently animate. At least we get airbrushed shadows to bring out the musculature, right? As a cartoon figure, the sculpt is gentle, and doesn't bother with intricate dragon scales or anything. They really did go all-in on airbrushing shadows, as a way of faking depth the sculpt couldn't deliver.
In addition to appearing in the opening every episode,
Tiamat (or at least an avatar of her) appeared in Episode 1, where the kids trap her, but then release her to save them from Venger; in Episode 3, where they stumble into an ongoing battle between Tiamat and Venger; as a cameo in Episode 11; and a major role in in Episode 20, when the kids go to her home dimension to ask her how they can defeat Venger. While the character model on the show often depicted her standing on her two hind legs, this toy is more traditionally quadrupedal. The figure is a daunting 15½" tall, and nearly 20" long and wide.
And those numbers have been publicized since Super7 announced the toy, but if your brain is as defective as mine, the numbers won't mean anything to you and you'll still be utterly alarmed by the size of the box
that gets dropped off at your door. The figure is in a plastic tray, inside a fancy window box with graphics, inside a plstic bag, inside a plain white mailer box, wrapped in bubble wrap and held in place inside a sturdy brown cardboard shipping box by styrofoam spacers on each corner. Good lord! (All that will come in handy if, like me, your box is just left sitting outside on a rainy day with no notification that it's been delivered.) This box would barely fit through the front door! I was physically alarmed by both the size of the box and the size of the toy inside it. Despite knowing full well how big it was meant to be!
Remember when NECA did that Balrog in scale with ToyBiz's Lord of the Rings figures, and had to sell it in a plain cardboard box rather than having any kind of packaging? This sure ain't that!
Given her size, it's no surprise Tiamat uses hollow, rotocast construction to keep the toy's weight down. And if there's one thing you know about roto toys, it's that the articulation is just going to be swivel joints.
So it goes. There are joints in the shoulders and hips, so you can have her rear up a bit if you want to copy the times the cartoon did that, though she won't be able to look down at the kids: the heads and necks turn, but there's no up-and-down range, only side-to-side. And of course, turning them will break the line of red on the throat, so you'll want to pose her in ways to avoid that being noticeable. The wings turn on their own, rather than only moving with the arms, so that's nice. The tail has three joints, and the tip had to be turned backward to fit into the box.
Obviously, as this is a Super7 release, it's meant to go with their 7"-ish scale Ultimates figures, but the big imposing dragon will look even bigger and more imposing the smaller the toys are that you stand it next to. Hasbro's 6" Cartoon Classics are wonderful, for instance, but the 2¼" D&D Minimates would be even better. Heck, even Lego or Kre-O would work, if you don't care about her necessarily being the cartoon version; it's not like "Tiamat" was something made up for the show, after all.
That said, the major flaw with this release is the price. This sells for $300. No, that's not a typo: $300. Three hundred dollars. Three zero zero. Are you effing nuts, Super7? This Tiamat is in no way worth $300. Yeah, it's big but that's all: it's hollow, minimally articulated, has simple paint, and no features or accessories; reminder that Hasbro's HasLabs cost somewhere in the same range, but have detailed sculpts, multiple moving pieces, intricate paint, usually include bonus figures, and (even if you don't want them) electronics. $300, and we can't get heads that look down at humans standing before her? $300, and we can't get a breath effect for each head? Like, we don't begrudge Super7 selling a $300 toy, but if McDonald's starts selling a $75 cheeseburger, you have a right to expect that it's something spectacular, yeah? Not just, like, five regular patties smushed together. This isn't worth $300. But it's close. It's damn close! Like, $150? No question. $200? Eh, justifiable, once it's in-hand. But $300 is just too much. Even if she did turn out to be pretty great.
-- 11/19/25
What would Super7 need to include to make this worth the full price? Tell us on our message board, the Loafing Lounge.
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