With new waves of both GI JOE and Silverhawks Ultimates arriving, Super7 has been shipping a lot of figures this year and I’m going to have to put in some extra time just to keep my head above water. But since I’ve already started digging into the most recent wave of ThunderCats with Snarf, let’s press on through and try to put this one to bed with a look at Willa, Queen of the Warrior Maidens!

Willa was one of those recurring characters in the cartoon that sadly never got the figure treatment from LJN, so naturally I was really looking forward to her release. These treetop-dwelling battle-vixens were pretty strong allies for the ThunderCats to have in their fight for survival on their new home plasnet. Besides, if I found myself crash landing on Third Earth and my closest neighbors are auto-tuning robot bears or hot warrior maidens, I know where I’d be hanging out the most! Willa comes in the standard style Ultimates packaging with a sleeve over a window box. You get some character art and a little blurb about Willa on the back, and everything is collector friendly!

And Willa does indeed look like she dropped right out of the cartoon and into my hands! She dons her ragged cut dress made out of what I always presumed to be some kind of exotic orange animal skins, a double belt, which suspends a dagger in a scabbard on her waist, and some gold bangles sculpted onto her left wrist and both her ankles. The costume is pretty simple, but that’s in keeping with the character’s appearance on screen and I think Super7 did a beautiful job translating it to figure form. I was happy to see the bangles were sculpted and not worn by the figure, as this way they stay put as intended and the ones on her wrist don’t fall out when I swap hands. What I don’t care for is that the use of skin tone colored bare plastic used for the arms and legs doesn’t quite match the flesh tone that’s painted in the exposed area around her neck and chest. Maybe she just got extra tan up there? Yeah, it’s not ideal, but I can live with it.

You get two head sculpts to choose from: One serious and one smiling. I think both are excellent, but I’m going to go with the first one for regular display. I think it suits the character more, as she is a warrior maiden after all. Also, I get a bit more of a Disney Princess vibe off the second head. Both portraits feature the large flower she wears under her right ear and the ponytail down her left shoulder.

Naturally, you get a lot of hands to choose from, each fitted with hinged pegs. These include fists, grasping hands, accessory holding hands, flat hands, and a right hand for drawing her bow string. The articulation is what I’ve come to expect from this line, which means rotating hinges in the shoulders, elbows, knees, and ankles. You get ball joint in the neck and under the chest, as well as ball joints in the hips with some extra lateral movement and slits in the sides of the skirt to allow for greater range of motion there. She also has lateral rockers in the ankles to keep her feet planted flat on the floor in wide stances.

Her curved dagger is removable and can be wielded in her right or left hand. It’s pretty small, but has some silver paint for the blade, guard and pommel and a black and red pattern on the grip.

Of course, Willa’s weapon of choice is the bow, and hers comes with a black string. And thank God for that, because I absolutely hate it when figures in this scale have plastic strings on their bows. The bow is red with sculpted yellow wrapping around the middle and both ends. She also sports a quiver with a number of arrows permanently sculpted inside it. The quiver has a soft plastic strap to allow her to wear it on her shoulder. Yeah, in the cartoon it was often worn around her waist but I prefer it off the shoulder.

There are two loose arrows included: One regular and one which looks like a bomb or unlit fire arrow. I was surprised that even with the limited range in the elbows, I could still get her to draw the bow and knock the arrow pretty well.

And the final accessory is Willa’s pet spider, Bushy, who can serve as a sort of living grappling hook. Bushy is just a static piece with no articulation, but they did a great job on the sculpt and paint for such a little bugger.

If I actually had any ThunderCats toys as a kid, I could say that I’ve been waiting 40 years for a figure like this, but I can say that I still remember going over my friend’s house to play with his ridiculously large collection of Thunder Kitties and realizing there was no Willa or Nayda and that always made me sad. Either way, Super7 is really doing an admirable job of knocking these cartoon styled figures off my wishlist. And boy do I hope to see Nayda turn up in a future wave! Heck, I’ll go one step further… let’s see a wave of Warrior Maidens similar to how they did the Mutant Reptile troop builders, because I would be all over that!