Jul 3, 2010

For the Honor of the Toy Chest!

For the Honor of Grayskull!!
I HAVE SHE-RA!!
Yes the MOTUC She-Ra deserved a video before her review. She is THAT special. She's He-Man's twin sister... and I've reviewed him like 2 times... well 3 if we count the He-Man vs Superman Theoretic review on the He-Man review, or the Wun-Dar joke review within the Weapons Pack review. 4 times if we count those two...
Here we have the Princess of Power herself: She-Ra! We should do like her Brother and Liberate her from the evil Mint on Card Prison.


Now that she has been liberated, we can see what She-Ra has for us:
-She-Ra with removable head (Based on the Toy.)
-Alternate Style Guide head (The one that looks like the Cartoon)
-Sword of Protection (Two shades of Gold. The color is a nod to the vintage toy sword)
-She-Ra's Shield
-A Battle Axe with peculiar indentations in the back (Kinda looks like a comb)
-Removable Tiara/Reversible (inspired by the 80s toy)
-removable cape

I have mentioned her 80s toy a couple of times and here's a small treat: Her 80s commercial.
First thing you might have noticed is how Girly the 80s toy was... Well DUH! It was a girls line!
and next to this, anything will look girly...

She-Ra's inclusion in the MOTU continuity through the cartoons was what made many male MOTU fans like myself like her. Now in the Masters of the Universe Classics line, She-Ra looks like she is part of the MOTU line. (Being in the same scale as the MOTU figures helps a lot.)

If you've seen the ad and the MOTUC pics you can see that the Vintage Toy She-Ra looks very different from the MOTUC She-Ra. Part of me is glad that Finally after so many years I can have THE She-Ra I remember from my childhood, but there is a part of me that wants a MOTUC-ized version of the Vintage Toy.
This is as close as possible that we'll get to a Toy Accurate She-Ra for now...

Now unto the Review:
As always 1 = waste of plastic not worthy of a Happy Meal and 5 = super mega awesome toy!

Articulation: As I said in my Evil Lyn Review, Female figures get the short end of the stick here.They lost the ab crunch and their abdomen and crotch are not as detailed as the males. other than that She-Ra can do anything He-Man can. Except spreading her legs for a kick... Stupid pretty rigid plastic skirt! The long hair also reduces the amount of doable poses.
3.0

Paint and Sculpt:
As always the Horsemen are amazing! They made a She-Ra that looks like she came straight out of the cartoon. Paints are once again kept to a minimum. and so far She-Ra looks Perfect.
4.5
(Not exactly crazy about the windblown hair, but since my She-Ra will probably be in the I AM She-Ra pose it's not a big deal... There is also the Head problems...)

Accessories:
She-Ra's got a couple of them mentioned already. The problems lie on the heads:
First the Heads are more annoying to swap this time. I needed to use a hairdryer to warm the Style guide head so I could attach it to She-Ra's body.
The Toy head (Which I'm less likely to use thanks to the whole Head attaching problems.) has a huge hole in the forehead to place the Tiara.

While the hole on her face is not THAT big of an issue the problems around the headswapping are reducing the amount of use on certain accessories.
3.0

Overall score: 3.5
I am disappointed in She-Ra. I love the toy, but most of her flaws lie in two problem areas: The rigid Skirt AND the Problematic neck peg.



Mattel claims that this is not a defect:

Kastor's Korner: Recently you issued a press release that She-Ra's neck peg is still not perfect, meaning subscribers are now stuck with a possibly defective figure. Why not push back figures with issues like this till they can be correctly made?

Matty: The figure is not defective, it just is not working as perfect as we will like. As fans we also hold very high standards on how we want products to look. She-Ra still does everything she is promised to do and the heads are removable, they just don’t swap as well as we originally intended. If we held her back, we would not have had a June figure to deliver to subscribers who bought into a program offering one new figure each month. If there really was a defect we would certainly hold her up, but as stated, all of her features do work, just not as smoothly as we would have hoped.


Ok... Just to be clear:
Main Entry: 1de·fec·tive
Pronunciation: \di-ˈfek-tiv\
Function: adjective
Date: 14th century
1 a : imperfect in form or function : faulty [a defective pane of glass] b : falling below the norm in structure or in mental or physical function [defective eyesight]
2 : lacking one or more of the usual forms of grammatical inflection [must is a defective verb]
— de·fec·tive·ly adverb
— de·fec·tive·ness noun

Ok... So She-Ra is not working as good as Mattel expected, thus falling below the norm in the physical function of Head Swapping , or being imperfect in said function. The heads cannot be attached properly unless heat is applied... This is the First MOTUC Figure I've had to do that in order to swap the head. It's a defect, Mattel.



Finally I got this ICFTTC mini MOTUC marathon done! Now to rearrange my MOTUC display...

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