Like it or not, Matty seems to be focusing a lot on Princess of Power for 2014. I’m perfectly happy with that, not only because they’ve all been great figures, but it’s also nice to see a line put such an emphasis on female action figures. It took us forever just to get a 6-inch movie version of Black Widow out of Hasbro but Masters has been churning out the ladies in droves. I suppose that’s one of the benefits of not having to bend to the whims of retailers. For May, Matty doubled up with both a regular monthly figure and a quarterly beast. Today we’re checking out Scorpia and next week we’ll take a look at Battle Lion.

You know the drill by now. Scorpia comes in the usual Greyskull-inspired package. She’s mounted inside the bubble on her side to accommodate that tail of hers. There’s a sticker on the bubble that signifies she is a member of “The Evil Horde” and her tagline is “Stinging Horde Enforcer!” The back of the card shows other Horde figures (Damn, I really need that Leech!) and the usual bio card. Wait… Scorpia’s real name is Lynda D’ream? There’s a stripper name if I ever heard one! Let’s get her open and check her out!

I never watched a lot of She-Ra, but for whatever reason I remember Scorpia really well. Maybe she made an impact on me or I just happened to catch her episodes the most. Either way, I was excited to get this figure and I’m extremely pleased with the way she turned out. Her costume really advertises her Horde alliance what with the black and red deco and the Horde emblem sculpted rather creatively into her belt and the way the wings seem to rise up and cradle her boobs. Even before we get to her scorpion parts, it feels like a lot of original work went into this figure. She just seems really fresh. The scorpion parts are made of textured red plastic and include her shoulder armor, her dainty little claw and that long, lean and sexy tail. Mmmm… nothing does it for me like arachnid parts on a woman.

The tail itself is surprisingly light. It’s made of very soft plastic and has one swivel cut in the first segment after it comes off her tushie. Some may complain that it isn’t actually articulated more, but I think what’s here works well. You can stretch it out and maneuver it into all sorts of positions and it will snap back to its natural state. It also doesn’t hinder the figure’s balance at all, but I’ll come back to that in a bit.

The portrait here is fantastic. When I looked at Netossa last week I expressed a bit of fatigue over the sameness in many of the MOTUC lady portraits. That’s certainly not the case with Scorpia. Her face sculpt is as unique as they come. She’s just the right mix of scary and pretty, which is something I tend to attribute to my ex-fiancé. The paint apps on her face are also immaculate and I really dig the look of her exaggerated green eye shadow. Everything about this figure’s sculpt and paint are a homerun.

Moving on to articulation and yeah, it’s mostly the same old song. But while the points are mostly the same, Scorpia feels like her articulation is a lot more serviceable. I’m thinking it has to do with the fact that there isn’t anything hindering those hips, but whatever the case I had an unusually great amount of fun posing her and it doesn’t hurt that she’s an extremely well balanced figure. Even with a set of high heeled boots and a big tail hanging off her back, she’s still quite easy to keep standing.

You get one accessory with Scorpia and that’s her Horde crossbow.  Now, I’m quite partial to all the Horde crossbows so I was going to love this piece no matter what, but I still think this is one of the cooler ones. Scorpia may be part arachnid, but she’s also a girl and that means she needs to accessorize. Naturally, her crossbow is a custom piece with a very chic scorpion theme. The sculpt and paint on it are really beautiful and it clips onto her tiny little wrist quite well.

If you haven’t figured it out by now, I think Scorpia is an awesome figure and I’m happy to have her join Catra and Octavia as a trio of Evil Horde ladies on my shelf. I don’t keep a finger on the pulse of the Masters fandom, so I’m not sure whether those collectors have warmed up to the idea of lots of PoP figures invading their Classics line, but personally, I can’t get enough of these gals. As vintage toys, these were characters were basically dolls and didn’t mesh well with the vintage Masters figures, but to get them as actual action figures is just really cool. It’s no wonder I picked up the Club Etheria Sub too. Honestly, if we got nothing but PoP figures for the rest of the year, and they were all as good as Scorpia, I would be perfectly fine with that.

This month Matty Collector gave fans another crack at picking up Netossa and I was all ready to be there for Early Access to scoop her up. Then I did a little research and found that I could get her from another seller off Amazon with free shipping and save about seven bucks so I got her there instead. I originally passed on this gal the first time because I was missing a couple of the Princess of Power characters and wasn’t sure whether I’d be able to get them, but now I’m up to date on almost all of Etheria’s rebellious ladies, so I decided to add her to the collection.

There’s the packaging looking as smashing as ever with Netossa trapped beyond the bubble. Now the tables are turned, Netossa! How do you like being trapped, eh? The only thing worth pointing out here is the Princess of Power sticker on the bubble. Her tag line on the insert is “Captivating Beauty!” Oh, I see what you did there, Matty! The back of the card shows a bunch of other PoP characters available, including that controversial Star Sisters three-pack, which I may have just picked up today for ridiculously cheap. Bow is also missing from my collection, and one of these days I’m going to have to lay out more money to get him than I would like to. Anyway, let’s free Netossa and see what she’s all about.

Hailing from the far reaches of Etheria, Netossa is a Nubian beauty and her action figure certainly looks the part. I thought that the blue hair with her dark complexion took me a little getting used to, but I find myself digging it a lot. It adds to her exotic charm. Her outfit design is one of the more interesting of rebellion ladies. The flared out tops and the detail work on her tummy give it something of an art deco vibe and I like the long sash part of her skirt that drops down between her legs. The ensemble is rounded out by a pair of white bracers and white boots. A little added silver and blue paint adds just the right touch.

The portrait here is very good, although I’m starting to feel a sense of sameness with Matty’s MOTUC female sculpts. Netossa’s features are probably the most unique we’ve seen yet and still the cheekbones and somewhat flatness of the face feels very similar to a lot of the other ladies going all the way back to Teela. Maybe that’s not so much a complaint as just an observation. I still like what we got here and I’m pleased to see that Tossa’s expression came out a lot less stern than it looked in the original pictures. Her modern redesign does a nice job incorporating the soft goods hood from the vintage figure into some stylish wings, which I presume are supposed to be part of the cape, but more on that in a sec. The paintwork on the eyes and lips is excellent and the hair sculpt is pretty basic stuff.

As her name suggests, Netossa’s big thing is tossing her net, which doubles as her cape. Of course, the cape is removable simply by popping off the head, but if you remove it, the wings on her head stay in place as they are sculpted as part of her noggin. I’m sure I’m going to display her with the cape on, so that’s not a huge deal for me, but considering the character is all about removing and tossing her cape, it’s something of an oversight in the design. I’ll also say that it would have been nice if they had incorporated some kind of handle or way for her to hold the cape like she’s tossing it. I tend to just hook her hand around the neck hole and it seems to work OK.

The articulation here is exactly what you should expect by now from the female MOTUC bucks, but hey, let’s run through it anyway. The arms are ball jointed at the shoulders, hinged at the elbows and have swivels in the biceps and wrists. The legs are ball jointed at the hips, hinged at the knees and ankles, and she has rockers in the ankles. Netossa has a ball jointed neck and she can swivel at the waist. It’s worth mentioning that the knee joints on my figure are pretty loose so this one is probably going to be quite prone to taking shelf dives. I’ll have to make sure that she’s in the front row.

Seeing how Netossa’s main accessory doubles as her cape, Mattel managed to get away without adding much in the way of extras. You do get a shield, which is a silver repaint of She-Ra’s shield with a blue crystal in it. I don’t mind the re-use here as it is indeed still a nice piece and it matches the figure well.

All in all, Netossa is a cool enough figure and a nice addition to my Great Rebellion shelf. I find that she stands out nicely among what is already quite a motley crew of ladies. The design of her outfit is really well done and in the end I wound up liking her a lot more than I thought I would. I’m finding myself more and more pleased that Matty are giving us modern action figure updates to the more doll-like PoP toys as it makes me feel a little less self-conscious about collecting them and they do compliment the He-Man side of my collection remarkably well. Next week, I’ll check out the latest villain of the line… Scorpia!