Marvel: Funko unveils four new POP figures from the same laboratory

Four figures have been announced for December 2026, and their official names all carry the same note in parentheses. Funko is not releasing four random Marvel characters: it is releasing successive products of a single program, the one that created Wolverine. And hidden in one of the boxes is the image every Logan reader has in mind.

Four names, one suffix

The wording appears on all four boxes: (Weapon X Program).

This is not just branding. In Marvel continuity, all four characters in this wave are test subjects from the same laboratory, separated by forty years of publication history. Logan is the original product. Victor Creed was part of Team X, the program's covert squad, with the same implanted false memories. X-23 is an attempt to reproduce him. Weapon H is the modern version of the protocol, from the point when the program stopped copying Wolverine and started combining him with something else.

Funko is therefore documenting a lineage, not assembling a cast. The official descriptions even say so for three of the four: X-23's opens with “Born from Weapon X's darkest experiments,” while Weapon H's begins with “Born from a volatile fusion of Wolverine's healing factor and the Hulk's monstrous power.” Only Sabretooth is described as a Wolverine adversary without the laboratory being named. It is the suffix on the box that ties him to the group.

The X in Weapon X is a Roman numeral

It is the detail almost everyone reads the wrong way, and the one that gives the wave its logic.

Weapon X is not “weapon X” in the sense of an unknown weapon. It is the tenth program in a series called Weapon Plus, revealed by Grant Morrison in the early 2000s during his run on New X-Men. The first in the list, Weapon I, is the World War II super-soldier project: the one that created Captain America.

In other words, the chain that leads to Logan begins with Steve Rogers. And it continues after him: Deadpool is Weapon XI, while X-23 carries the number of the twenty-third attempt. Her codename is not a superhero alias, it is a case number.

The Chase recreates the 1991 scene – POP #1659

The most important release in the announcement, and the only one hiding something.

The Pop! Premium Weapon X comes in a standard version, with Logan's claws out after the adamantium bonding process. But one box in six contains a Chase variant in which he wears the helmet.

That helmet is the defining image of the modern version of the character. It comes from Weapon X, the story Barry Windsor-Smith wrote, drew and inked himself in Marvel Comics Presents from March to September 1991 — thirty-five years ago this year. Logan is shown submerged in a tank, strapped down, his head enclosed in a wired apparatus, while three scientists take notes as though they were studying an animal: the Professor, Dr. Cornelius and Carol Hines. Everything else comes from that story: the amnesia, the dog tags, the rage.

Making that helmet the Chase means turning the most horrifying moment in the character's biography into the hardest piece in the wave to obtain. For once, the rarity has narrative meaning.

Sabretooth and X-23 complete the file

The two standard releases in the wave, each with its own connection to the program.

• Sabretooth – POP #1656: the official description emphasizes his savagery and presents him as the one person capable of standing toe to toe with Wolverine. That is accurate, and precisely why the program recruited him: Creed was not a laboratory prisoner, he was one of its agents.
• X-23 – POP #1657: Funko uses her designation rather than her name, Laura Kinney, even though she now carries the Wolverine mantle in her own monthly series. The choice fits the theme of the wave, but reduces her to the way she was made rather than what she became.

Weapon H, the only true first – POP #1658

Clayton Cortez had never had a figure before, and he gets the most generous format of the bunch: a Pop! Super.

The character is recent by Marvel standards. Created by Greg Pak and Mike Deodato, he first appeared in 2017 in Totally Awesome Hulk, during the “Weapons of Mutant Destruction” storyline, before receiving his own series. A mercenary captured by the program, he is infused with DNA taken from Amadeus Cho and the future Logan, then given the full adamantium treatment. The result: a gray Hulk with retractable claws, and a subject his creators cannot control.

The Super format is therefore justified by the character himself. A standard-size Weapon H would miss the point.

My take on this release

Weapon H is the most obvious purchase of the four, by far. It is the first figure for a character who had none, the format fits the subject, and it is the only piece in the wave that no other existing release can replace. The other three already have figures in the catalog.

As for the Premium, I am harsher than most people will be: the standard version is the least useful piece in the wave. A claws-out Logan with an adamantium skeleton already exists in the catalog under that exact name, and the only thing that justifies this release is the helmet — in other words, the Chase. One box in six. If you buy the Premium hoping for the right one, be prepared to end up holding a redundant figure.

Sabretooth and Weapon X, on the other hand, belong together. Releasing them separately makes little sense: Team X was the two of them and their falsified memories, and they are the only pair in the wave whose shared history is actually the point.

The real omission is Omega Red. Arkady Rossovich is the Soviet counterpart to the program, the carbonadium subject, the most visually striking enemy Weapon X produced, and he is still absent from a wave that presents itself as a laboratory inventory. Deadpool's absence, as Weapon XI, is easier to forgive: Funko has released him often enough for us to survive one wave without him. Pre-orders are open, with release scheduled for December 2026.