Late last year, Hasbro began making one of this old kid’s dream come true by delivering action figures based on the Dungeons & Dragons cartoon. The show was great (still is!) and It was one of those rare instances where a pretty successful cartoon didn’t have any related toys. The first figures hit and included Hank, Diana, Bobby, and Uni, with Venger and Dungeon Master in a single set. And while the figures looked really good, it was a nightmare of QC issues and more broken limbs than a bad roll in a battle with a Bugbear. With the second wave completing the party, all I could do was wait and hope for the best.

And here they are! This assortment wraps up the party with Sheila the Thief, Eric the Cavalier, and Presto the Wizard. The figures come in the same style packaging as the previous releases, which is a mix of windowless box and card. As far as windowless packaging goes, I think these look really nice. The cartoon-style character art is wonderful and the pictures on the box are fairly accurate to what’s inside. I also really dig the side panels line up to create an interconnected image of the entire party. Each figure also comes with a die used in the actual tabletop game, which is shown on the front of the packaging. So, let’s get one thing out of the way first… I had zero QC issues with any of these figures and I didn’t even have to heat them up. All the joints worked perfectly right out of the package. And while it’s a shame to have to call that out as a win, at least maybe Hasbro got the message from the initial run of figures. Let’s start with Sheila…

I was extremely happy with this figure the moment it came out of the box, and I think Hasbro absolutely nailed everything about her. Indeed, I think she’s on par with her brother as being two of the best looking figures so far. The costume features a pink tunic cinched at the waist with an aqua-colored belt. The tunic and belt are made of soft plastic forming a skirt with slits up the sides so as not to inhibit the hip articulation too badly. Sheila’s high brown boots have sculpted bands around the edges at her thighs, and I like how pronounced these are, rather than just being painted on. She comes with two versions of her Cloak of Invisibility, the one seen above has the hood sculpted down behind her head and the whole thing is cast in lavender plastic. It’s held on simply by hanging around her neck and it looks great.

The head sculpt is very nice, and while Hasbro seems to be putting a little bit of their own spin on the cartoon designs, I still think this is a great likeness for Sheila in the cartoon. She’s got perfectly printed eyes and some freckles dotting her cheeks. The orange hair is a separate piece and it frames her face beautifully.

Articulation for all of these figures remains more or less the same, with just a few variations. With Sheila, you get rotating hinges in the shoulders, elbows, wrists, and ankles. There are ball joints in the hips, double-hinges in the knees, a ball joint in the waist and neck, and swivels in the thighs. Even with the plastic skirt, she has a nice range of motion.

The alternate Cloak includes a separate piece for the hood and the Cloak itself can be seen gradually turning invisible down near the bottom edge. It’s a nice effect for a power that is difficult to portray in action figure form. The hood fits the figure’s head very well and since it’s a separate piece it doesn’t inhibit her head movement. I was kind of hoping we might see an SDCC Exclusive clear variant of Sheila, but I suspect Hasbro is probably done with this line. Moving on to Eric…

So, where Sheila was a homerun, Eric is more like a walk with a runner on third. I was a bit disappointed when I got him out of the box, but to be honest, he’s grown on me quite a bit since then. The body is pretty good, with a yellow tunic and orange belt, treated much the same way as Sheila’s. You get some shiny silver paint for the arms with a very soft sculpt depicting the mail. The thighs are a little duller, and the boots and knee guards are just left bare gray plastic. The red cape looks really good and hangs well on the figure. My biggest complaint here is that the bare plastic for the lower legs looks a bit cheap.

The articulation here takes a step back from Sheila’s as Eric’s knees have rotating hinges rather than double-hinges. He also doesn’t have any thigh swivels, which makes his legs look a little weird when he’s standing straight. It’s not ideal, but I got used to it.

The head sculpt is… OK. I appreciate that they gave Eric a face that looks like it needs to be punched, because he was a real jerk in the cartoon. I don’t think the likeness is bad at all and I dig the little Alfalfa-like sprout of hair jutting off the top of his head. But this is one instance where I wish we got a second head with a scared expression, because Eric was such a sniveling coward.

Eric comes with his shield, which clips onto his arm. It’s cast in orange plastic with a painted griffon emblem on the front. It looks OK, but there’s a bit of black paint slop around the central emblem.

You also get a pretty cool magic effect piece, made of soft semi translucent plastic, which clips on around the edge of the shield. It goes on pretty easy and it looks fantastic. OK, let’s move on to the final figure, Presto!

Happily, I think Presto ranks up there with Sheila as being one of the best in the line. He’s got his green wizard robes, complete with dangly sleeves and a pouch, which maybe holds magical reagents or maybe his D&D dice. This figure sports the least amount of detail because of his simple toony outfit, but I like that Hasbro put a little rumple in the front and on the sleeves to break up that field of green. He has slits up the sides of his robes, but his legs are still more or less confined to under the robe, so most of the articulation is used to keep him standing up.

And like Sheila, Hasbro knocked it out of the park with this portrait. The glasses are sculpted as part of the face and that was definitely the way to go here. The paint on the thin frames is also pretty damn clean. They did a great job on the shape of his face and the ears and even the hair looks fantastic. The hat is attached to the hairpiece with a large tab, so to have him take off the hat, you swap out the hairpiece for one that doesn’t have the tab. This is pretty easy to do and a clever way to make the switch.

Presto’s left hand is designed to hold the hat and his right hand is a pointy-spell casting hand. You also get two magic effect parts, both cast in translucent purple plastic. The first depicts magic energy emerging from the hat.

The second is a stream of magical energy that runs from the hat to a clip that goes around Presto’s right wrist, and boy does this look awesome! It looks so awesome that I feel bad pointing out that it isn’t the same effect piece that’s shown on the front of the package which creates more of a spell shooting from his hand effect. I would have liked to get that one too, but man this one is so good, I’m not going to complain about it.

And with these three figures on my shelf, Hasbro really has made a dream come true for my toy collection. I’ve wanted figures like these ever since I was a kid and it seems like such a small miracle to get them all this time later. I mean, who the hell could have guessed that we’d get these forty years later? Yes, it’s a shame that the early figures were marred with QC issues, but Hasbro seemed to get their hands around that and pull it together at the end. Would I like to see the line continue? Of course! Do I think it’s going to… nah. It seems like a stretch to get figures from some of the one-off characters appearing in the various episodes. But I’m still holding out just a little hope that we might get Tiamat!