“Be honest with me...how fast do you think you can get that thing to go without killing it?”
Soon after it’s appearance in the Venom: The Last Dance trailer, a 3rd party unbranded Venom horse started showing up on secondary selling platforms like eBay and Aliexpress. The Venom horse does not appear to be a bootleg of a licensed release, so we took a punt and ordered the figure to see how it would fit with our Marvel Legends display.
The Venom Horse, in most cases (and ours), comes unboxed but inside a low-quality plastic inner tray that does appear to be shaped to hold the horse and accessories. Some sellers are offering the item boxed, although the box shown is also unbranded and uses a poster for the movie as the main cover.
In hand, the Venom Horse is a surprisingly heavy item, with the body in solid plastic rather than a hollow piece as you may expect. The base plastic is black with sculpted symbiote tendrils across the full body, up the neck, and down the four legs. The tail is supplied separately and needs plugging into a socket on the horse’s rump with a fit that is tight but secure once it's clicked in place although there is a weak spot here and the tail is easy to snap. The tail, like the body, is black plastic and with multiple splayed tendrils snaking outward from the central joint. Over the black base of the horse is applied some blue highlighted areas, adding a further layer to the heavily sculpted figure.
There are three heads supplied with the Venom horse, the first attached on arrival features an open mouth lined with Venom-esque teeth painted in bone yellow and with a red gum line. The eyes are painted too in white - and here the paint is a little rough in terms of courage and definition. This head has a tongue in red that snakes out of the mouth and this is removable being fitted with a magnet connection that slots into the mouth and holds in place.
The second head is similar to the first with some minor variations including smaller eyes and teeth and with a fixed tongue. The final head is broader and with a less elongated snout and a tongue that snakes out and back to the right of the face as though the horse is running at speeds. All three heads slot on and off by way of a large ball joint. All are reflective of the Venom Horse on screen, but with minor variations of expression, which allows you to choose which one you use for display.
Articulation totals 17 points overall and all of them are pinless. The neck articulates at the base of the body moving forward and backward, while the ball joint head allows for mainly vertical movement up and down, but with a little play laterally. The tail, as mentioned, is a clip-in ball joint on a peg that rotates round and can be displayed raised, lowered, and to the sides. The bulk of the joints are then in the legs, the forelegs featuring three joints at the top, middle, and base just above the hooves. The rear legs have four joints with the flank moving as a rotating joint to the body, and then the same hinges used down the legs to the hooves.
The weight of the horse which felt impressive on first opening now becomes a problem as the leg joints are not ratcheted and our Venom horse is difficult to stand on its own without all four legs on the ground and pretty much straight down. Any running posing, or where any of the four legs is off the ground then the weight of the horse takes it over.
In terms of scale, the Venom horse is indeed a 1/12 (6-inch) scaled item with a six-inch basic figure like our Agent Ross coming up to the horse's back. The movie Venom figure stands taller, and just a tad shorter than the horse's head. While Carnage - the largest of the movie symbiotes - stands about a head taller. The horse can be ridden using the articulation of the rider although we are not close as yet to recreating the scenes in The Last Dance without an Eddie Brock figure.
Whether this will be revealed as a bootleg for a license release is unknown, but it is very unusual for a bootleg to make it to market before the licensed release. For now, it is the only Venom horse option for collectors, and I am pleased to say that it will work well enough with the Marvel Legends or other 6-inch figures - although it does lack the overall quality and finish of other lines. As this is bought through 3rd party selling sites please do your homework on a seller before purchasing to check their feedback, and shipping options.
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About Me : As a child of the 70's and 80's I grew up in a golden age for action figures and in my youth bought and sold myself through collections of Star Wars, G.I. Joe (Action Force) and M.A.S.K. while also dabbling in He-Man, Transformers and Ghostbusters. Roll forward and I am now reliving that Youth with the action figures of today and am a collector and fan of the larger 6-8 inch figures from my favourite movie and TV licences - including the ones mentioned above, but also the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Doctor Who and the Aliens. I launched The Mephitsu Archives in 2015 with a view of creating a UK focused site or these figures where fans can pick up the latest action figure news, read reviews and get information on where to buy their figures and what is currently on store shelves. I hope I am delivering that to you guys...
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