Last month, I scheduled one of my work weeks around Matty Sale Day because I had convinced myself that I needed to be at the computer at precisely 12pm EST in order to get my mitts on Castaspella. Turns out, she was the ugly girl at the dance and hung around for quite a few days after. I really thought she was going to go fast, but I guess I’m not in tune with the ebb and flow of this fanbase’s interests. For the uninitiated, Casta is based off a character in the Princess of Power off-shoot line. The vintage toys were more akin to dolls than action figures, which meant if you were a young boy collecting the He-Mans and you wanted to expand into She-Ra territory you had to be extremely comfortable with your sexuality at a young age and have understanding parents or else you were just shit out of luck.

Casta comes in the same style package as the regular Masters Classics, but she does have a “Princess of Power” sticker on the bubble, which is rather cool. I’ve said my piece about the great packaging for this line many times over, so let’s just move on.

The flipside of the card has the usual bio, which I hardly ever read, and shots of other Princess of Power figures. I’m missing two of those: Netossa and Bow. One of these days, I’ll hunt them down.

Out of the package, Casta is a delightfully colorful figure. The last time I remember being this pleased with a MOTUC figure’s coloring it was Sy-Klone, so obviously I have some innate love for blue and yellow decos. Casta has a blue top and blue leggings, which contrast beautifully with her yellow skirt and boots. Toss in some lightning bolts for good measure and she’s got major style. The orange for the high collar is a strange choice, but I guess it helps bridge the rift leading up to her red hair. Mmm… red heads… me likey. I have a very vague memory of her from the cartoon, but what I do remember was her voice was horrible and she was always macking on Prince Adam.

I really like Casta’s head sculpt, although I don’t think it matches the artwork all that much. The likeness has a lot in common with the one used for Teela some time back, although it still works for me. T4H went all out on the hair sculpt, which is mounded up on top of her head and then cascades behind her. It’s very distinctive. The outfit’s sculpt seems to reuse some parts from She-Ra, most notably the skirt, although the boots have been re-sculpted to match her deco. All in all her outfit looks pretty fresh and original and it’s layered onto the figure as has been the case with many of the past females.

Articulation appears standard for the females in the line. You get ball joints in the neck, shoulders and hips. The arms have swivels in the biceps and wrists and hinged elbows. The legs are hinged at the knees and ankles. Casta can swivel at the waist, but there is no ab-crunch.

Casta comes with three accessories: You get a shield, an effect part, and a huge disc. I know that the disc is tied to her vintage counterpart’s gimmick, but I have no idea what the hell it’s supposed to be. You can clip it onto her waist, but I think it’s garish and ugly like it’s a piece of 70’s wall art and I will banish it to the darkest depths of one of my most miscellaneous totes. Mwahaha.

The shield is pretty cool. Sure, it’s the same PoP shield sculpt we’ve seen before, but it’s cast in translucent plastic and some people will have you believe that translucent plastic makes everything better. Is it a magic shield? Yup, that sounds good to me.

Last up is the effect part. If you know me, you know I am rarely impressed with effect parts. Casta’s is a large yellow magic beam that fits over either of her hands. It’s ok, I guess, but I doubt it will get much face time in my display case.

So, needless to say I’m glad I was able to get this figure, even if I did wind up taking a morning off that I didn’t need to. It’s crazy to look at a figure that took a few days to sell out and wonder what went wrong, but that’s often the case with Matty’s bizarre business model. In any event, I’m a big fan of the Princess of Power figures in the MOTUC collection, mainly because it’s the first time we’ve seen these characters as action figures rather than dolls, and I’m hoping to see a lot more in the 2014 Sub. Casta is a nice, colorful figure and a great addition to my Masters shelf.