I’m trying to space out the Super7 stuff as much as possible, but with me trying to get caught up on GI JOE Ultimates and new waves of ThunderCats and Silverhawks, it’s just a lot of stuff to try to squeeze into each week and still offer some variety. Anyway, just to refresh everyone’s memory, Matty Collector started ThunderCats and Super7 took it over. And while Super7 technically finished the main ThunderCats team a while ago, the Thunder Kittens were released by Mattel as SDCC Exclusives and were not easy to get. Naturally fans who missed them have been waiting for Super7 to do them, and now they have! WilyKit arrived as part of Wave 8 and WilyKat has already shipped as part of Wave 9. Since I already reviewed Matty’s set, I’ll be focusing on comparisons for today’s look!

I’m usually not a fan of cartoons inserting the young characters for kids to relate to, but I really do love the Thunder Kittens. They’re fun, they’re not too annoying, and their mischief works well as the inciting incident for a lot of episodes. Matty’s Kittens came in some really cool packaging, but that’s to be expected for a special SDCC release. Here we get the standard S7 ThunderCats Ultimates packaging after all the cost cutting. So, no more outer mailer and no more slipcover. You do still get some nice character art on the back panel as well as a little blurb about the character. Even with the cut backs, the presentation here is still gorgeous and everything is collector friendly, but I’m leaning toward not keeping these boxes any longer.

Before I even did an in hand direct comparison, I could tell that this new version of Wilykit was a huge improvement over Mattel’s. She looks crisper and more colorful, and surprisingly more polished than the previous release. Her dress is more of a purple and pink combo, where Matty’s was more blue and lavender. The skin tone is a lot lighter and uses bare plastic rather than paint, making her look a lot cleaner. And yes, it is an entirely new sculpt! She’s only a bit shorter than the Matty figure, but her proportions are slighter and more alike to what we saw in the cartoon. The belt is now red instead of brown and still has her braces of pill bombs sculpted in. These along with the belt buckle are sculpted sharper and painted in bright silver, as is the sculpted cuff on her right bicep. Finally, her toes are more claw like and accurate to the cartoon, whereas Matty’s, looked more human.

You get two heads to choose from, where Matty’s only came with one. The neutral head has much paler skin than the Matty release and the difference between the white painted inner part of the face and the the surrounding area is more subtle. The eyes are printed much more sharply and are colored orange rather than red, as is the hair. The hair shape has been reworked so it’s less pointy on the top, which is where most of the difference in height comes from. Whether this is more or less screen accurate kind of depended on which episode I was watching. I think the brightness of the hair could have been taken down a notch, but I still dig it. Everything about this portrait just looks so much brighter and cleaner than Matty’s.

The additional head offers a wink and a smile and is a very welcome bonus. Wilykit is now showing off her pearly whites and has her right eye closed into a knowing wink. It’s playful and mischievous and really presents the character very well.

The articulation here is nearly identical to Matty’s, meaning you get lots of rotating hinges, and not as tight a bend in the elbow as most would probably like. With that having been said, the one big improvement here is that the waist is now ball jointed, where it was merely a swivel on the Matty figure. The skirt is a tad restrictive of the hips. You can still get her into a pretty wide stance, but I think Matty’s could do slightly better in that regards. The joints are a bit delicate due to the smaller nature of the figures’s limbs, but not so much that I was worried about breakage while playing with her.

WilyKit comes with a pair of relaxed hands attached and you get only three additional hands to swap out. These include one set of gripping hands for her lasso and one right hand sculpted with one of her pill bombs between her fingers. I love that they included the pill throwing hand and I’ll likely display her with it. But, it still feels like she came up pretty light in the extra hand department. Considering how small a figure she is, that feels a tad cheap.

Just like the previous release, WilyKit comes with two versions of her rope: One to store on her belt, and one all unfurled into a lasso. This is one aspect where the S7 figure takes a step back from Matty’s, as this one has a real problem staying put when you peg it into her belt. Matty’s wasn’t perfect, but it used a much chonkier tab to connect and it just worked better. On the other hand, S7’s is still more accurate to the episodes I’ve watched recently.

And of course, WilyKit comes with her Space Board, and this is also an entirely new sculpt. The board is about as long as WilyKit is tall and it’s a lot fatter and rounder than Matty’s. It’s also painted much, much better. There’s a single peg on the top to support the figure as well as a sculpted Eye of Thundera. Meanwhile the flipside has some sculpted thruster jets and a socket to plug in the flight stand.

The stand plugs into the bottom and has a ball joint so you can angle the board different ways. It’s a clear cone with a smoked effect on the bottom. All in all it looks good and does its job well. The foot peg makes a secure connection with Wilykit and she stays on a lot better than Matty’s figure does.

And here are some comparison pics with the Matty figure, where you can really see the differences to the hair sculpt from behind.

Apart from some spotty QC issues, I was pretty favorable toward the SDCC Thunder Kittens when I reviewed them back in the day. I would have been perfectly fine having them continue on in my ThunderCats display if S7 opted out of making them. But, with that having been said, I think this new WilyKit is an improvement on nearly all fronts. Of course, the previous WilyKit is nearly nine years old now, so I expected better, but even still, I prefer the color choices, the changes to the hair, and even the design of the Space Board. Yeah, she stumbles a bit with the lasso belt attachment, but it’s a minor thing on an otherwise great figure. Her brother is already on his way to me as we speak, and we’ll get these two Kittens together as soon as I am done looking at the rest of this wave.