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Egg Attack Action figures and statues by Beast Kingdom are the sort of thing one tends to look at and appreciate at conventions, but not collect on a regular basis. For one thing, as imports, they aren’t cheap. For another, with their odd mix of cute “superdeformed” style with all the articulation of an action figure, the appeal is very mixed. Collectors of cute like to display and-or hug, while action figure collectors want more play value than that giant head might allow. Fortunately, in the case of Venompool, he’s such an inherently grotesque and distorted character anyway that the odd proportions work somewhat in his favor.
Pool, Your Resources
Another factor that makes Venompool especially attractive in this format is that most Venompool figures are already expensive. There’s the giant Hot Toys figure in the $500 range, and a Hasbro build-a-figure you have to buy six others to get. So $82.49 is actually not bad for this character in particular, especially since it’s a markdown from the original $109.99.
Now’s the part where the cynic might say that the character itself is such a blatant, fan-pandering cash-grab, cynically fusing Marvel’s two most popular antiheroes into a composite character to make more money. Sure, but both characters kind of have that in their DNA anyway. Venom’s symbiote is kind of a host slut, unlike the movie one that just loves Eddie. And Deadpool has numerous imitators. The original merged character was created for a video game just to be super-difficult to beat, but the comics have had some fun with him since.
Pumpin’ Pecs
Venompool’s torso proportions — not scale, to be clear — resemble those of Masters of the Universe Origins. Huge ball shoulders and upper torso, tapering downward, relatively small and somewhat bow-legs. Articulation-wise, he has that Japanese style McFarlane tries to emulate, with hinged ball joints inside the musculature gaps. Even untranslated, the instruction sheet makes it clear. (Sort of.)
The figure comes with a stand, cast in red translucent plastic at the base, with name and logo, and a clear, hinged “crotch-grabber” stand. It’s a bit short for Venompool specifically, unless you bow his legs a bit more — don’t expect it to serve as a foolproof shelf-diving prevention, especially for a figure this top-heavy. He’s solidly chunky, and the joints aren’t exactly ratchet-tight.
The costume sports some fine details: the red has a mesh texture up close, and the black areas around the eyes have a contrasting, monster-skin feel. Veins on the body muscles look like they’re under spandex. And boy, those teeth…
Fangs a Lot
Venompool includes two heads. One has a big toothy grin, and is a singe fixed piece (save the barbell neck joint). The other has a hinged jaw, removable tongue that can pop on to a ball-and-hinge joint with limited movement, and three different upper-head parts. He has four sets of hands: gun-holding, sword-holding, fists, and open/claws. (The weapons are not attached to the hands, but fit snugly.)
Popping the hands off allows for removal of the wrist manacles if one chooses. It’s not clear the feet will pop off to do likewise with the ankle manacles, and I’m not risking it.
The strangest aspect of the figure is that, rather than make the sheaths on his back fully functional, the designers made it needlessly complicated. The swords come apart into three sections, and to put them in the sheaths, you have to switch out the long blades for short blades. It makes very little sense, unless workable sheaths were somehow not engineerable at this scale — which feels unlikely.
At around eight inches tall, this Venompool towers over Marvel and DC figures, yet looks like a rambunctious child next to 12-inchers. Since the character is meant to be huge, it might work okay with the smaller guys. He matches height with McFarlane megafigs pretty well.
Squishy, Toothy
There’s a nice balance here between funny-cute and dark. On the one hand, he can click his heels or do the Hulk Hogan hand-to-ear pose. On the other, that face could scare small children up close.
The Liefeldian pouches feature the most loving detail on the sculpt besides the head.
So many import figures are small and fiddly that it’s refreshing to have a sturdier slab of plastic here, even if he is a little heavy. Worst case, he might do a shelf dive. But he feels extremely playable, and not like something you have to scream at your houseguests not to touch. Now at his lowest price ever, as of this writing, he might be a good one to grab,
Take a look at more angles on this beast in the images below.
