Insert coin. Select Venom. Watch him load in not as the inky black symbiote from the comics, but as a glowing, almost neon light-blue nightmare — and if that image just triggered a flood of arcade-cabinet nostalgia, Medicom Toy built the MAFEX No.298 Blue Venom specifically for you. This isn’t just another Venom repaint fighting for shelf space; it’s a deliberate, well-researched homage to one of the most recognizable “wrong but right” color choices in fighting-game history, and it deserves a review that treats that pedigree seriously. Here’s the piece of toy-collector trivia that makes this figure click: Venom has never actually been consistently black in every piece of official media. When Capcom brought him into Marvel Super Heroes vs. Street Fighter’s spiritual predecessor and then properly into Marvel vs. Capcom: Clash of Super Heroes in 1998, the character’s default palette wasn’t the comic-accurate black — it was a bright, almost cyan light blue. The reasoning was practical: a solid black character sprite tends to vanish into the background of a busy fighting-game screen, so Capcom’s artists needed something that would pop against the chaos of a 3-on-3 brawl. Rather than invent a new look from scratch, they leaned on an existing source — Todd McFarlane and David Michelinie’s Venom: Lethal Protector miniseries, which used heavy blue cross-hatching and highlighting across Venom’s muscles to keep him visually readable in print. Capcom essentially took that shading technique and turned the volume all the way up.
The result became so beloved that Marvel vs. Capcom 2: New Age of Heroes carried it forward as Venom’s default color, cementing “Blue Venom” as shorthand among fighting-game fans long before Medicom ever sculpted a figure around it. The legacy hasn’t faded either — Capcom brought the palette back for Marvel vs. Capcom Fighting Collection: Arcade Classics, and NetEase’s Marvel Rivals paid direct tribute with Venom’s “Cyan Clash” skin, which developer Danny LaDuca all but confirmed was a nod to the character’s MvC roots. Hasbro even beat Medicom to the punch domestically with a Marvel Legends “GamerVerse” Captain America & Venom two-pack built around the same blue scheme. MAFEX No.298 is Medicom’s entry into that same lineage — which also explains why several retailers file this figure under “Marvel Gamerverse” rather than a straight comic reissue. It’s less a labeling error and more an acknowledgment that this blue palette is, at this point, as much a video-game icon as a comic one.
MAFEX No.298 launched in Japan on June 27, 2026, priced around ¥10,780 before tax (roughly $70–$75 USD at Japanese retail, with U.S. import pricing typically landing closer to $90–$120 after shipping and distributor markup). The figure stands about 6.3 inches tall, towering appropriately over a standard-scale MAFEX Spider-Man when the two share a shelf.
Sculpt and Paint
Sculpting duties fall to PERFECT-STUDIO, the Japanese studio responsible for several of MAFEX’s beefiest Marvel entries, and the base body borrows heavily from the architecture Medicom established with MAFEX No.088 Venom (Comic Ver.). What’s new — and what makes No.298 worth the double-dip — is the paint deco. Instead of flat black, the entire body is awash in a cool, saturated light blue with darker navy shading worked into the muscle definition, ridges, and joints. It’s a faithful three-dimensional translation of that Lethal Protector-inspired, MvC-popularized look, not a generic “blue repaint” slapped on for variety’s sake.
The teeth, drool strands, and wide white eyes are cleanly applied with no visible bleed onto the surrounding blue on review samples circulating from Japanese retailers. Under studio lighting it photographs exceptionally well — which matters more than collectors like to admit, since so much of a figure’s word-of-mouth now travels through unboxing photos and video reviews rather than in-hand impressions.
Articulation:
MAFEX has built its reputation on articulation that frequently outclasses Western 6-inch lines, and Blue Venom mostly lives up to that despite his oversized frame. The joint package includes:
- Ball-jointed head and neck
- Double-hinged shoulders with swing, hinge, and rotation
- Bicep swivels and double-jointed elbows
- Articulated torso with ab-crunch and waist twist
- Ball-jointed hips with hinge and thigh swivel
- Double-hinged knees
- Multi-jointed ankles for stable, non-flat-footed poses
Oversized traps, lats, and a jutting jaw have historically made Venom one of the harder characters to engineer without sacrificing range of motion, but the No.088-derived body handles it well. You can land the crouching pre-attack stance, the leaping special-move pose, and the classic “roaring taunt” — basically anything you’d want to recreate straight out of an MvC2 win pose — without plastic-on-plastic collisions killing the pose halfway through.
Accessories:
This is where No.298 pulls ahead of a lot of same-shelf competition. In the box:
- Two interchangeable head sculpts — a closed-mouth snarl and an open-mouth, tongue-out roar, letting you toggle between stalking menace and full “We’re Venom!” theatrics
- Magnetic web-effect hand and foot parts for wall-crawling poses on metal display surfaces or diorama backdrops
- Multiple web-line effect parts to simulate mid-swing or web-slinging action shots
- A posable figure stand with a Venom-branded support arm for off-the-ground, mid-combo poses
For the price bracket, that’s a genuinely generous accessory spread, and the magnetic hand/foot gimmick — a MAFEX Spider-Man-line staple — separates this from flatter-footed competitors on the shelf.
How It Stacks Up
- Vs. MAFEX No.088 Venom (Comic Ver.): The direct ancestor and the “classic” black reading of the character. No.298 shares nearly identical articulation but trades flat menace for stylized, game-accurate flair — this is a paint-and-presentation upgrade, not a re-engineering.
- Vs. MAFEX No.282 Venom (Let There Be Carnage Ver.): A live-action-inspired sculpt with film-accurate texture and coloring. No.298 leans entirely into retro comic-and-game stylization, making the two complementary rather than competing purchases.
- Vs. Hasbro Marvel Legends “GamerVerse” Blue Venom (Captain America two-pack): Hasbro got here first with its own MvC-inspired blue Venom, bundled alongside a Capcom-styled Captain America. Hasbro’s version is bulkier, cheaper per-figure, and easier to find domestically; MAFEX counters with tighter engineering, sharper paint precision, and a more premium accessory set, at a real cost and availability premium for import-dependent buyers.
Pros:
- A faithful, well-researched translation of Venom’s genuinely iconic Marvel vs. Capcom color palette
- Strong, character-appropriate articulation despite the bulky frame
- Generous accessory loadout, including magnetic web parts and two head sculpts
- Rare case of a figure’s paint deco doubling as a small history lesson in crossover-game design
Cons:
- Import pricing and shipping can push real-world cost well above Japanese MSRP
- Not a 1:1 comic panel recreation — more stylized tribute than exact replica
- Now has direct, cheaper competition from Hasbro’s own MvC-inspired blue Venom release
MAFEX No.298 Blue Venom succeeds because it understands exactly what it’s referencing — not just “Venom, but blue,” but a specific, beloved piece of Marvel vs. Capcom history that’s been quietly influencing merchandise and games for over two decades. For fighting-game veterans, 90s Marvel readers, and anyone who’s ever mashed the light-punch button as Venom in an arcade cabinet, this is one of the more thoughtfully designed entries in Medicom’s growing Spider-Man corner of the MAFEX line — and an easy recommendation if you can stomach the import price. Judged purely as a Marvel vs. Capcom tribute, this figure nails it: the palette, the shading style, and the exaggerated musculature all read exactly like Venom’s classic in-game sprite and artwork brought into three dimensions. Fans expecting an exact match to one panel will find a blend instead; fans chasing the MvC aesthetic will find precisely what they came for.
Check Price And Availability
Amazon– https://amzn.to/4xS8xZp
This post includes affiliate links. If you make a purchase through these links, I may earn a commission at no extra cost to you.
Leave a Reply