STEALTH VENOM
SPIDER-MAN (TOY BIZ)
“In the past, Venom has been both hero and villain, and Spider-Man knows how powerful he can be! With his chameleon-like abilities, Venom can even blend into his surroundings and virtually ‘disappear’ from sight. So, although Venom is unpredictable, one thing is certain; when he does appear, things heat up!”
Ah, yes, Venom’s chameleon like abilities. Of all the Spider-Man villains out there, surely it’s Venom whose abilities could be best classified as “chameleon-like.” …look, guys, I can’t just stand by and let this Chameleon erasure happen! He’s the original Spider-Man villain. Can’t we get him some respect? No? Well, I tried. I guess I’ll just review this “chameleon-like” Venom.
THE FIGURE ITSELF
Stealth Venom was released in Series 7 of Toy Biz’s Spider-Man line. The whole set was dialed into Toy Biz’s tendency to give their lines the occasional repaint-heavy line-up, so there were minimal new parts across the board, all dialed into more recognizable characters. This was Venom’s third time in the line, and the first of the kind of made-up variants. It was far from the last of either thing, of course. The figure stands a little over 5 inches tall and he has 7 points of articulation. Venom lacks elbow joints for reasons I’m not entirely sure of, but there it is. Otherwise, it’s pretty standard stuff. His sculpt from the neck down was the same as the unmasked Venom from earlier in the line. It’s honestly not a bad sculpt, and in particular it captured the animated approach to Venom pretty well. He got a new head, which removed 
the removable mask feature…un-removed? I don’t know. There’s no unmasked head is my point. It’s really bulky at the neck, and I’m not entirely sure why. Also, he’s got this sort of permanently looking up thing going on, which seems odd for someone of his stature. Venom’s stealth-ness came from the color work, which was translucent. There were actually two different versions; the one seen here was the one that more closely mimicked Venom’s usual set-up, while the second one inverted the colors. This one’s not nearly as different at a glance, especially in the photos, but I guess it works out alright. Venom was packed with two clip-on hand attachments, as well as a web-line that was wrapped around his waist.
THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION
I was surprisingly short on Venom figures growing up. I had one of the 10-inchers, and I jumped on the original Spider-Man Classics one pretty quickly, but the 5-inch ones all eluded me until later in life. This guy was mixed in with a handful of Toy Biz figures that got traded into All Time a month or two ago, and he was surprisingly complete, so hooray for me! He’s kinda goofy, obviously, but it’s not like I’m collecting the Toy Biz stuff for its serious adherence to the comics lore, am I? Now, I guess I just have to track down that variant.
Thanks to my sponsors over at All Time Toys for setting me up with this figure to review. If you’re looking for cool toys both old and new, please check out their website and their eBay storefront.
The Figure In Question 
The only Venom figure I have is the 1991 talking one where he says, “die, Spider-Man,” or he hisses and or says, I want to eat your brain.”
Quality children’s entertainment!
It sounds pretty good to me!
I feel like this body was one of Toy Biz’s favorite, I remember it getting heavy reuse as multiple Venoms, all of which had that awkward head that somehow looked worse than the rubber mask the unmasked one came with. I had the clear one with the black paint, is that the inverse one you mean?
But my favorite use of that body honestly has to be as the Minotaur from Toy Biz’s Kevin Sorbo Hercules the Legendary Journeys toy line. They also did a great Ares for Warstar. A little odd to have a Greek God with visible wires, but a fun figure nonetheless.