Marvel Legends Lasher Review

With this year being the 30^th anniversary of the character Venom, big things are in store for him; from a movie, to huge comic events, and even action figures. Later this year, Marvel Legends is producing a whole line of Venom figures, but you don’t have to wait for those to get your first symbiote character fix of the year. Enter: Lasher!

Lasher was a character I was pretty excited for when he was initially revealed. I have fond memories for the original Lasher figure ToyBiz made when I was a kid. And then I started to notice some things…

First of all, Lasher’s paint is great! The mix of different greens and blacks were perfectly executed. It’s probably the best thing about the figure, though the articulation is pretty close, which I’ll cover, too.

For those of you who don’t know, Lasher here is pure reuse of the Superior Venom figure’s body (which appeared in the 2015 Rhino Build-A-Figure Series). He also reuses the Scarlet Spider’s head (also from that same Rhino Series). So nothing on this guy is new. He’s your basic easy repaint to keep costs down. I feel that this hurt the figure. First of all, the feet are inaccurate to the character’s design. He should have two toes, not the five with sharp nails that the Superior Venom figure had. He also should have had the Carnage hands, not the Superior Venom ones. I don’t get why he got these hands when more accurate ones were already sculpted and in the Hasbro parts catalogue. Finally, I feel that this body was the wrong choice for this character. I don’t think Lasher should be as small and thin as Spider-Man.

Lasher comes with the Lizard’s head, which is a petty important piece to get. Other than that, he comes with the tentacles first seen on, you guessed it, Superior Venom. I seem to recall Lasher having more tentacles (at least two more), so again, the reuse of parts hurts him. Another downside to these tentacles is the lack of articulation. Once they’re plugged in, there is no rotation at all, in fact, depending how you pose or play with your figures, they can pop out easily, too. They also have to be plugged in to the appropriate port (designated by unique shapes on the ends of them), so there’s no interchanging these things, either.

Lasher’s articulation is, fortunately pretty good, with 32 points of articulation. His head is ball-jointed, he has a neck hinge, butterfly joints, shoulder swivels and hinges, bicep swivels, double jointed elbows, swivel and hinged wrists, ab crunch, ab swivel, hip rotation, thigh swivels, double jointed knees, ankle pivots and hinges.

I wanted to like Lasher a lot more than I do. He’s just an adequate figure at best, but he could have been so much more if not for the misuse of body parts. I can see him becoming a real peg-warmer (one of those guys who just doesn’t sell), but who knows, maybe I’ll be proven wrong. We know Scream is coming later this year in the Venom Build-A-Figure Series, and I hope that pairing Lasher with Scream (and hopefully the other three Life Foundation symbiotes are forthcoming) will make him not only more desirable, but help him look cooler by being paired in a group.

The Lizard Build-A-Figure Series has been hitting brick and mortar retail stores for about two months or so (Walgreens and Target, for example), though I picked mine up online from Dorkside Toys.