…like the packaging! Allura comes in the same collector friendly box as all of the other pilots (minus Sven, of course!).  And like the others, Allura’s box is color coded to match her lion, so in this case it’s blue. The front of the box has a decent piece of artwork showing off the figure’s animated counterpart. There’s also a window to show the figure itself. The back of the box has a blurb about Allura and Blue Lion and some shots of the figure and her accessories. Take note, the photo on the back erroneously shows the key-stand being pink, while the one you actually get is appropriately blue.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it one more time in a few months, this package design is nearly perfect. The only thing I would have preferred is having the figure’s name printed on the side for when I store them on the shelves lined up like books. Oh well, at least they’re color coded.

Open up the box and slide out the tray, we get a great look at everything that comes inside. You get the figure with the swappable head, the key style figure stand, the piece of the Blazing Sword, in this case it’s the top of the hilt and the base of the blade, and you also get one of the two clear stands for the Blazing Sword. I’m still resisting the temptation to start assembling the sword until I get everything.

Some early pictures had me a little worried about Allura’s body sculpt. She looked a little too chunky, but with the figure in hand it looks like those were probably just from unflattering angles. The proportions and build of the final figure look really good. Once again, Mattel has done a decent job of using different builds for each of the figures making them look as diverse in size and shape as the characters were in the cartoon. I am, however, a little iffy on Allura’s heads. The sculpts seems ok, I like the shape of the face and the sculpting on the hair, the helmeted head looks great, but I think it’s the eyes that just seem a little weird or creepy to me. It may just be conveying the animation style, but there’s just something about those eyes that doesn’t gel right with me. Once again, the figure’s gun is sculpted into the holster and once again, I’ll point out that at $15 each, these figures should have had removable guns.

The paintwork on this figure is excellent. The aforementioned eyes are a style choice, and not caused by sloppy paint. I’m particularly impressed by the paint on her thin, silver tiara. The pink on her uniform is great, and while some of these figures have been prone to some smudging on the white uniform, Allura has none of that.

Articulation here is exactly what we got with all the other figures. In this case, that’s a bit of a relief because sometimes female figures get a few points of articulation cut out. That’s not the case here. Allura has ball joints in her neck, shoulders, elbows and knees, and universal movement at the hips.

As usual, the figure comes with the key that can be used to open the accompanying Lion’s cockpit and it doubles as a stand. It’s a good thing, too, because Allura’s tiny feet make it difficult for her to stand on her own. One of my running gripe’s with this line is that Matty couldn’t pony up for an extra sticker on both sides of the key and yes, that still irks me a bit.

So, there are no big surprises here. Overall, Allura is a solid figure. We deserved better at this price point, but by now we all know what to expect and we’re either comfortable with that or we’re not. I still haven’t decided whether I’m going to be displaying these figures in front of my completed Voltron, leaving them in the cockpits, or just keeping them in the boxes. I suppose that’ll be determined by how much space I have. Tomorrow, I’ll be back to check out Allura’s lion.