I’m finally up to the most recently released wave of ThunderCats Ultimates. Yeah, there are some older ones I haven’t looked at yet and I’ll swing back to them, but right now I’m just excited to be caught up to a current wave! This is also the first wave released in a while where I did not buy all four of the figures. I’m not doing the LJN color versions, so that got me off the hook for Jaga and Grune. But since I didn’t review the original Grune yet, maybe I’ll toss him in after I’m done with the two Wave 9 figures I did buy. And those were WilyKat and the Lunatak, Chilla. I just reviewed a Lunatak last time, and WilyKit is anxious to be reunited with her brother, so let’s go with him!

The packaging still looks great, even with the outer sleeve no longer being included. You get a great look at the figure and accessories through the front window and the back panel has some character art and a little bio about the older ThunderKitten sibling. Everything is collector friendly, but since I don’t feel like renting a storage unit for empty figure boxes, these packages are being recycled. As I mentioned last time with WilyKit, these are brand new versions of the figures that were released as part of Mattel’s ThunderCats line as an SDCC Exclusive! I was very pleased with most of the changes Super7 made to WilyKit, so I have high hopes for her brother.

And a lot of what I said about WilyKit will hold true here. Even without a direct comparison yet, this WilyKat figure looks cleaner and crisper to me. The colors are less drab and more toony, with the orange a lot brighter and the brown closer to the orange in tone. Even the sculpt is smoothed out to give him more of an animated look. Matty’s figure had more gloss to the paint and the matte finish here is also more in line with the cartoon vibe. The boots here have less color to them, so the detail like the sculpted wraps pop less, but again, more screen accurate. Finally, the skin tones on both of Mattel’s kittens were a lot darker than they should have been, and that’s resolved here too. The one big downer for me with Super7’s figure is the clip on lasso, which is essentially the same as his sister’s. The tab is super soft and it does not want to stay pegged in. I also liked the sculpt better on Matty’s version of this accessory as well. Otherwise, I think everything else here is a huge improvement.

You get two head sculpts, and both are excellent. The first is a neutral expression and the second offers a open mouthed grin, which is very charming and I think suits the character perfectly. The facial features are super clean and the eye printing is perfect. I had a some issues with the paint on my Matty WilyKat, and while there’s still a bit of minor gaffs here and there in the hair, this is a big improvement. S7’s portrait looks more youthful and toon accurate, whereas Matty’s had sharper detail in the hair sculpt.

And here’s a quick shot of the Matty and Super7 figures together! Matty’s is taller and a tad beefier. I think the proportions and size on the new one are perfect.

WilyKat’s articulation is identical to Kit’s, which in turn is pretty close to what we saw on Matty’s figures. The elbows can at least do a 90-degree bend and the waist is a ball joint, as opposed to Matty’s which just had a swivel. There are slits up the sides of his tunic’s skirt that allow for a little more range in the hips, but the knees don’t have as much range as I would like. The quality of the joints all feel great, although there’s some paint chipping inside the hinge of my figure’s right shoulder, which needs to be cleaned up. WilyKat comes with four pairs of hands and surprisingly no fists. But you do get pairs of relaxed, splayed finger, accessory holding, smoke bomb throwing, and an extra right hand about to throw one of his little mischief pills. I really dig the effects on the bomb throwing hands.

I already pointed out the coiled version of the lasso that doesn’t like to stay pegged into his belt. You also get the unfurled version and this is just a recolor of the one we saw with his sister. It looks good, but his accessory holding hands are not tight enough to hold it unless you thread it between the fingers. It works and looks fine, but probably not how it was intended. The accessory is cast in a soft and pliable plastic, but unfortunately it isn’t posable. I would have preferred an actual wire.

And finally, you get the Hover Board, which is a recolor of the one that came with WilyKit. This one is fatter and an overall better sculpt than the one included with the Matty figure. My Matty board also had some terrible paint scuffs, whereas this one is super crisp and clean. There’s one foot peg up near the front and while I was worried it was too shallow, it does seem to hold the figure pretty well. The stand is transparent with a sculpted smoke base. It pegs into the bottom of the board and has a ball joint to allow for some tilting of the board. The stand’s sculpt is identical to Wilykit’s but hers looks more yellow while this one is closer to white.

Matty’s WilyKat was by no means a bad figure. I liked it a lot then and I still do, but i do greatly prefer Super7’s offering. I think the choice here will come down to personal preference. If you were more a fan of the LJN toys, maybe Matty’s will be more to your liking. If you lean toward the cartoon, I think Super7’s is the clear winner. Naturally, I had the Matty kittens standing in my Super7 display up until now, but I’ll be retiring them back to their packaging. I may wind up selling them off, but the packaging is quite nice, so maybe I’ll hang on to them so I can have one packaged example of that line in my collection. And with WilyKat in the mix, My core Ultimates ThunderCats team is now complete! Next time, we’ll cool things off and have a look at the second Lunatak in the line, Chilla!

It’s been a couple of months since I checked in with Super7’s ThunderCats Ultimates. Where does the time go? If you’re keeping score, I’ve been looking at Wave 8 and so far I’ve covered WilyKit, Captain Shiner, and Hachiman. So let’s wrap up the wave today with the first of the Lunataks, Alluro! The Lunataks showed up in Season Two, to give the ThunderCats all kinds of grief and they were pretty prominent characters going forward. Nonetheless, LJN never cashed in on them by putting any Lunatak action figures in stores. It’s a pretty crazy omission, but to be fair the line only lasted three years. As a result, I was really excited to see that Super7 was digging into this particular team next. Sure, if given the choice I may have gone with the Berserkers, but this was still a major win.

I don’t have much new to say about the packaging. It looks great despite Super7 nixing the slipcovers. The window shows off the goods and you get some character art and a brief character blurb on the back panel. Everything is collector friendly, but I’ve begun purging these boxes because I have to make space for a giant Cat’s Lair before the end of the year. Alluro was the Lunatak’s super creepy master of psy-ops. He could control people’s minds, making him a pretty powerful force to be reckoned with. And, I have to just say how much I loved Doug Preis’ voice work for the character. The voice work in ThunderCats often annoys me because there are so few actors voicing so many characters, and to be brutally honest, a lot of them don’t do a great job distinguishing between the multiple characters they do. I believe Alluro was the only character voiced by Preis in the series, which made him stand out. He did a great job giving Alluro a smug and creepy affect with a bit of Peter Lorre thrown in. Superb!

Alluro manages to stand out, even among a group of freaks like the Lunataks. He’s tall, with a broad and muscular chest, and arms that seem a bit too long for his frame. He goes topless, exposing his lavender skin. There’s a wide belt with a sculpted eye motif in the middle, and a loin cloth hanging below it. This rig is held up by a pair of brown suspenders and a couple of thin crossed belts underneath. Despite the modesty skirt, he actually has a pair of sculpted brown slacks, which give way to orange boots with some sculpted decorations and a pinched toe at the tips. For a pretty simple outfit, the layering here works well. The colors look great and this guy looks like he just stepped off of one of Rankin-Bass’ animation cells!

You get two heads to choose from: One is offering an evil smile and the other an even more evil-er laugh. I don’t know where the inspiration came from for Alluro’s features, but it’s really imaginative. He’s got a bald pate with a crescent moon symbol on his forehead. There’s a gray, mask-like coloring around his eyes and brow ridge. He’s got prominent cheek bones, a set of balls for a chin and big pointed ears. Meanwhile a mop of gray straggly hair cascades down his front and back. The whole portrait is rounded out by his yellow eyes with some mesmerizing rings for pupils. Both heads suit the character beautifully, and while I usually go for the more neutral expression for every day display, I may go for the laughing one here, because it just looks amazing.

If you’ve been on board with any of Super7’s Ultimates lines, you should know what to expect from the articulation here. The rotating hinges in the elbows and knees aren’t going to win any awards for extreme posability, but I’m OK with it. I will say that Alluro’s elbows feel like they have slightly less range than some of the other figures, as he can’t quite even do a 90-degree bend. Otherwise, the joints all feel great and he’s still plenty of fun to play with. You get four sets of hands: Fists, two sets of accessory holding hands, one pointing right hand, and one wide open right hand.

Alluro’s primary accessory is his Psych Club, which he uses to bend the minds of his adversaries. The club has a hooked end, which can be used to hang off his belt and the head is shaped like a crescent moon. There are two crystal orbs that can be plugged into the top, either blue or yellow, and these are ridiculously hard to install. There’s no give in the moon emblem and the sockets on the orbs feel like they are a little too far apart. I was able to get each one in after a lot of cursing and frustration, and now I’ll be leaving the blue one in there for all of time. Some heat would have probably helped. The rest of the included accessories are all from the Season Two episode Psych-Out.

First up is this scroll that Mumm-Ra gave Alluro to find the Egora Talisman, an artifact that gives whomever possesses it so much confidence that it makes them nearly invincible. Personally, I always thought over confidence was a weakness to be exploited, but whatever. The scroll is just a piece of plastic with a map printed on it. Which is odd, because in the episode, the scroll just seemed to have hints written in rhyme that directed him where to find it. As luck would have it, it was in a cave near Cat’s Lair, which alerted Lion-O and the team that something was up.

And then you get the Egora Talisman itself, which includes the cool little chest it was stored in. The chest has a skull motif sculpted into it, along with gold painted reinforced bands and corners. It opens and the Talisman can be stored inside. For such a tiny accessory, the Talisman is nicely sculpted and painted. In the episode, Snarf was the only one not crippled by Alluro’s mind control so he stole the chest out of the glovebox in Alluro’s ride and used the Talisman’s power to defeat him. Of course, we later learn that the Talisman inside was smashed and powerless and that Old Snarf beat him all on his own. Never underestimate a Snarf! Here endeth the lesson!

Alluro is another fantastic addition to the ThunderCats villains line up and I really love the accessories included from Psych-Out. It’s so exciting to see the Lunataks show up in Ultimates and embark on assembling a team that have never had figures before. Especially when we’re talking about characters that became regulars in the second season of the cartoon. I’ll admit I had my doubts as to whether we would see these guys in Ultimates, because are they really going to ever do Luna and Amok? But we got the answer to that right quick, as they are already in production. Of course, Chilla turned up in the next wave, but before I get to her, I’m going to round out the Thunderkittens with Wilykat… hopefully next week!

Even as I push my way through my look at ThunderCats Ultimates Wave 8 and try to get current, Wave 9 has already arrived! Fortunately, I only picked up half of that assortment so it doesn’t set me back quite so far, but I’m still doing all I can to get caught up with ThunderCats, so I can get back into Silverhawks. If you’re just joining me, I’ve already had a look at WilyKit and Hachiman from this wave, and today I’m checking out the nefarious Captain Shiner!

As we saw last time, we are no longer getting the sleeves on these boxes, which is disappointing, but has also convinced me to not keep these packages any longer. That’s not me being petty, just looking for any excuse I can get to get rid of empty boxes and conserve space. Nonetheless, the window box shows off the figure quite nicely and you get some character art and a blurb about him on the back. We first encountered the spacefaring mercenary, Captain Shiner, in the episode Sword in a Hole where he acquires the Sword of Omens for Mumm-Ra and throws it into what appears to be a Black Hole. This was a stand out episode to me when I was a kid, because I can remember honestly wondering how the hell they were ever going to get the sword back.. and in about twenty minutes, no less! By the end of the episode it seems like Shiner going to be another one of those adversary-turned-ally situations, like Hachiman or Snowman of Hook Mountain, but nope when we see him again in the ThunderCats, Ho! mini-series, he’s still an asshole!

Shiner always struck me as being based off an old 19th Century Austrian army officer, and I dig that! I mean, why not? We’ve had pirates and samurai and ninjas. Third Earth is just a melting pot for historical analogies. His uniform is not the most exciting thing around, as it’s mainly a gray suit with red striping on the trousers and an orange baldric across his chest. He does, however, have some really snazzy space boots and the purple and blue go a long way to make his coloring more interesting. What’s also interesting is Shiner comes out of the box with static arms that are sculpted crossed over his chest. I’m not usually a big fan of swapping out parts to make up for shortcomings in articulation, but I have to admit it looks good here, even if it is a dirty cheat.

Of course, you can pop the crossed arms piece off at the shoulders and give him his regular articulated arms and these work just as you might expect, with rotating hinges at the shoulders and elbows, swivels in the biceps and hinged pegs for the wrists. You get three pairs of hands, which include fists, accessory gripping hands, a relaxed right hand and a pointing left hand. The hands seem rather undersized to me, especially the tiny fists, which I found kind of weird and off-putting. The rest of the articulation is standard Super7 Ultimates stuff, although my figure’s right hip can be problematic. Sometimes it feels like it locks up and I have to fiddle with it to get it to move again. I’m not sure what’s goin on up there, but heat doesn’t seem to help and I just have to be patient and careful with it.

You get three different heads to choose from. These include a somewhat passive expression, an evil smile expression, and a maniacal laughter head. The later two are very expressive and all three are excellent likenesses for the character. The face is so lumpy and weird, and just full of personality. The monocle in his left eye is a permanent fixture, cast in a smoked translucent plastic so you can still see his painted eye behind it. The cord is attached to the monocle and plugs into the orange sash, so you have to unplug it every time you change the head. It’s not a big deal and it pegs in fairly easily, but if you turn the head too far, particularly to his left it will tend to pull out.

Shiner comes with three accessories, the first of which comes from his first appearance and it’s the captured Sword of Omens. This represents the sword in its dagger form with the Eye of Thundera wrapped up to contain its power. It’s actually the second time we got a Sword of Omens with the Eye wrapped up, the first one came with Pumm-Ra. And kudos to S7 for doing an entirely new sculpt for this accessory.

Next up, you get an energy pistol. I can’t remember if we saw these in his first episode, but I know his crew carried these in ThunderCats, Ho! As far as laser gun designs go, this one is pretty low effort and the accessory reflects that. There’s no real detail on it at all, just a painted orange screen for the energy emitter.

And finally, you get a set of shackles, which I presume are supposed to be one of the sets used to chain up the captive ThunderCats, in ThunderCats, Ho! This accessory is very well done with an actual chain and the cuffs can open and close. They are a bit big, even on the dudes, but fun nonetheless.

Captain Shiner is a solid enough figure, and yet this one leaves me a little underwhelmed. Maybe it’s because his outfit design is rather simple, but then I think the head sculpts make up for it. Maybe it’s because he feels rather light on the accessories, but that’s probably because of the crossed arms piece taking up a chunk of the extras budget. And sure, that looks good as a display option, but where do we draw the line between just substituting parts instead of making the articulation work better. The tiny hands do bother me quite a bit, and the wonky right hip joint is a nuisance. Part of me wonders if I should have waited for Shiner to turn up on discount, but then I didn’t want to risk not having him in my collection. Really good figures often get a week or so playtime on my desk for me to have fun messing around with before going up on display, but that won’t be the case for Shiner. Although he does look good on the shelf!

Last week I embarked on a look at the eighth wave of Super7’s ThunderCats Ultimates with a look at Wilykit, and today I’m pushing forward with the Samurai from The Red Sun Planet! Hachiman first showed up well into the first season of the cartoon, when he was summoned by Mumm-Ra and tricked into fighting the ThunderCats, but he and Lion-O eventually became allies… until many episodes later Mumm-Ra summoned him again, put a spell on him, and made him fight the ThunderCats… again! One of the recurring themes in the cartoon was making friends out of potential adversaries, and I think that was a good message to send kids, but maybe the writers hit that well a few too many times at the expense of Hachiman’s gullibility. Either way, Hachiman would turn up in a total of maybe a half-dozen or so episodes, enough for LJN to give him a figure back in the day.

Here he is in the package, and just like last time, we no longer get an outer mailer box or a slipcover. I don’t mind the mailer going away, as I always pitched them, but the fact that we’re not getting the slipcovers anymore has just about convinced me to not keep these boxes. The presentation is still really nice, but at this point I’m just looking for excuses to get rid of action figure boxes in storage and recover some space. The back panel still has some character art and you get a little blurb about Hachiman as well.

Out of the box, Hachiman is looking pretty faithful to his animated counterpart. He has blue Samurai armor with a little black and red trim, worn over a sculpted brown bodysuit. The armor is confined to the front, which I’d like to think is because a brave warrior like Hachiman does not turn his back on the enemy. From the back you can see the sculpted red cords that hold his chest piece on and just more of his sculpted brown undersuit. I was pleasantly surprised to see that the plates on his hips and shoulders are not too restrictive of his articulation. His chest armor has a swap out panel, one with an emblem on it and one without. I don’t remember him ever having that emblem on his chest in the cartoon and the LJN figure didn’t have it either, so I’m not sure the source of that piece. I can’t say as I remember every episode he was in, so maybe it appeared in one of the later ones. Despite being more cartoon accurate without it, I have to say I kind of dig what it adds to the look of the armor.

You get two head sculpts, one with the helmet and one without. The helmeted head looks great with some pretty nice depth of sculpt between the mask and his underlying face and he’s depicted as gritting his teeth in the heat of battle. The gold leaf paint on the trim and crest looks good, but could have had some sharper paint lines. I like that they went with two heads, rather than a removable helmet, because I don’t think this design would have worked as well had it been an accessory.

The sculpting for the unmasked head also looks pretty good and offers a more stoic and determined expression. His brow is furled and his tightly drawn lips are slightly downturned. The hair sculpt is rather soft and the paint on the head band shows some slop. My figure also has a stray black mark on the left side of his face, which I will try to wipe off at some point. Overall, I think the paint could have been a lot better on this head, but I’ll concede that the flubs are amplified by the camera close ups and it’s not as egregious with the naked eye. On the other hand, it is a $55 collector figure so, it should have been better. Do better, Super7!

Hachiman has a scabbard for his mighty sword, Thunder-Cutter, which pegs into his belt sash with a key-type tab. If I peg it in and put the figure on the shelf, it’ll stay put, but as soon as I start fiddling with him, the scabbard pops off, so I find it’s best to just leave it off until I’m done posing him and then attach it. It’s rather annoying, but I can’t really think of a better way to do it and still have the scabbard be removable. The scabbard has a gold handle and some sculpted with wraps and it fits the sword blade pretty well. Hachiman has hands for holding both the sword and the scabbard, along with relaxed hands, fists, and a pointing finger hand.

Released from its scabbard, Thunder-Cutter has a painted silver blade, black sculpted wrap on the handle, and the pommel and tsuba are both painted gold. It may not be as flashy as the Sword of Omens, but it’s still an attractive and elegant looking sword.

You also get a second version of Thunder-Cutter with a semi-translucent energy webbing effect piece wrapped around the blade. It’s actually the exact same sword and the effect piece is removable, so I’m not sure why they didn’t just include the effect piece, but hey… extra sword! The effect piece also has a hole for the pointing finger hand so you can recreate the scene where Hachiman asked Thunder-Cutter which way to go and it acted like a compass to point him in the right direction, while balancing on his finger.

I’m glad they finally worked Hachiman into one of these waves, because he was a great recurring character on the cartoon and he makes for a fun action figure. Yes, I would have appreciated a bit more care on the paintwork, especially the unhelmeted head, but what we got isn’t so bad that it ruins the figure for me. Getting him in hand does make me extra sad that we don’t yet have Nadya, the Warrior Maiden that he sort of bonded with and referred to as Little Sister in the cartoon, but the line does appear to still be going strong, so I have hope!

As promised, I’m back today to round out the week with a look at the very first vehicle released in Super7’s ThunderCats Ultimates line. Besides being absolutely stoked to be getting Mandora the Evil Chaser’s flying police motorcycle, I was also curious to see how this toy would turn out as an indicator of future possibilities. And I’m not just talking about the ThunderTank, but more so the variety of one-person vehicles released in LJN’s original toyline. Not long ago, I bought a vintage LJN Skycutter, which scales fairly well with the Ultimates figures, but I’d love to see Super7 get to work on their own version of the Skycutter, Nosediver, and other fun little vehicles! Hopefully, you already checked out my look at Mandora from a few days ago. If not it should be right below this one, otherwise… let’s get to it!

The Electro-Charger comes in a window box, with the window wrapping around the front and top panels. The front has the classic ThunderCats logo and it identifies the Electro-Charger as “Mandora’s Interstellar Transport Vehicle!” The back panel of the box has some shots calling out some of the toy’s features, as well as a cool photo of Mandora with her sweet ride. The toy is 99% assembled (only the rear antenna needs to be attached), so it displays great in the box, and the packaging is totally collector friendly. Just pop off the antenna, and you can use the box as a garage!

Out of the box, this thing looks absolutely amazing. The design looks a lot like a police motorcycle model kitbashed with a spaceship model, and I mean that in the most loving way imaginable. The clean white plastic looks fantastic, and the toy is all about those sweeping curves and smooth rounded surfaces. The translucent red caps on the front of the wings are reminiscent of the bussard collectors on the USS Enterprise, while the yellow star, windshield, and transparent yellow headlamp and side panels drive home the police motorcycle motif.

There’s sides of the space bike are fitted blue panels and silver exhaust tubing, with some lovely burn marks painted around the edges. The blue paint contrasts beautifully with the white and the silver paint on the pipes has a gorgeous satin finish. The two seats are ribbed and painted black with an extended back on the rear seat. Below that you get the Interplanetary Control Force emblem printed in yellow, a tall antenna, and a single yellow rear tail light. Super7 did a beautiful job recreating the cartoon model of this bike in plastic, and it sure is an impressive toy to hold.

The dashboard sports some excellent detail with a painted control console and a set of silver handlebars with black grips. You also get two console display options, thanks to swap out instrument boards which connect to the dashboard via magnets. The first option is a display screen, which I think is how the console appeared in Mandora’s debut episode. The second panel features a host of switches and buttons. This panel was showcased in the episode Cracker’s Revenge, where Captain Bragg’s avian companion Crownan had to operate the bike because Mandora was tied to it and it was speeding out of control.

Just like in the cartoon, the Electro-Charger has retractable tires to allow it to land and be driven just like a regular motorcycle. Depending on the episode, sometimes the wheels were deployed even when it was in flight. I’m guessing that was an animation error, rather than being intentional. There’s no mechanism to deploy the wheels, instead you first have to remove the two hatches, which are held on by clips. Once those are off, you can open the hatch on the back of the bike with the Interplanetary Control Force insignia to push down the back wheel, while the front wheel can just be grabbed and pulled out through the open hatch. There’s also a flip down kickstand in the middle, but I didn’t find it was really necessary, as the bike seems to sit fine without it.

The kickstand also houses the hole which the translucent flight stand can be pegged into. It’s a rock solid connection and it displays the bike in a slightly inclined manner. Mandora herself fits perfectly on the bike and you can use a few different pairs of hands to grip the handlebars, depending on how tight you want that grip to be. I found the looser grips work just as well and are easier to get her hands on and off the grips. And boy does she look fantastic on the bike!

The back seat is roomy enough for Lion-O or any of the other ThunderCats to catch a ride, showing just what a good sized vehicle this is!

And as I mentioned yesterday, the Electro-Charger comes with Mandora’s Enzyme Catalyzer, or Soap Gun if you prefer. There’s even a hatch just below the handlebars that has a compartment to store it, which is where she kept it in her debut episode.

The Enzyme Catalyzer consists of the gun portion and the soap tank with a rubber hose running between them. There’s a grab bar on the tank so she can hold it in one hand while wielding the nozzle like a gun. You also get a soap spray effect part to attach to the nozzle! I love it!

It’s hard to believe that so many decades later, we finally have Mandora and her Electro-Charger in toy form! This is a beautiful and impressive toy, but with a price tag that is not for the weak of wallet. At $150, this one really tests the ThunderCats fanboy chops, and I can certainly see sticker shock preventing some collectors from buying it. With that having been said, the bike showcases some top notch craftsmanship, and I have absolutely no issues with mine when it comes to the paint or the overall build. It’s quite simply immaculate, which really bolsters my confidence in the upcoming ThunderTank. I was maybe a wee bit concerned about the possibility of buyer’s remorse on this one, but that certainly has not been the case and sure am happy to be able to display this in my collection! While it was offered as a pre-order, a number of online retailers are showing it in stock as we speak.

From what I’ve been hearing, we’re about a month away from Super7’s behemoth ThunderTank shipping out, but this month, we got another vehicle in the ThunderCats line with Mandora and her Electro-Charger both arriving here last week. I know, I have a few older ThunderCats releases on my backlog, but I couldn’t resist pushing the Evil Chaser and her sweet ride to the front of the line. These were released separately, so I’m going to check out Mandora today, and then we’ll have a look at the Electro-Charger on Friday!

Super7’s Ultimates packaging looks slick as ever. You get a beautiful window box with a sleeve over it. Lift off the sleeve, which is adorned with a red foil Eye of Thundera, and you get treated to a great look at the figure and accessories inside the box. The back panel has some nice character art, along with a little bio blurb about the character. Working for Interplanetary Control Force, an organization of interstellar space cops, Mandora is known as an Evil Chaser, and appeared in around half a dozen episodes of the original cartoon, peppered across both seasons. In her debut, she travels to Third Earth to recapture a trio of evil fugitives, which Lion-O accidentally set free. And yes, Super7, I’d like figures of Plutar, Burnout, and most of all Quick Pick, please and thank you!

Out of the box, Mandora is ready to hunt down fugitives no matter where they hide! Her costume is the spitting image of her animated counterpart, with a black bodysuit, sleeveless on the left side, red and pink boots and gauntlets, a gray belt with white and red belt buckle, some pink shoulder pads, and, what is that a half-jacket? Half a chest armor? I don’t know, but it looks great! While the shoulders are sculpted separately, sadly they are not designed to be removable, so you can’t recreate that bare shoulder look from her debut episode. Bummer! She also has a gray scabbard on her right leg to hold her boomerang!

You get no less than three different heads to choose from, all sporting her RoboCop-inspired visor with yellow ponytail sprouting from the back and back-swept headphones. The only difference between the first two heads is the way her ponytail is positioned. The first has it dropping straight down, while the other is a windblown look.

The third head has the ponytail blowing in the opposite direction and Mandora gritting her teeth. Her visor is also changed to a tracking display. The paint on my figure’s second head could be a little cleaner, especially when you punch in real close with the camera, but I don’t have any issues with the other two. I might as well take this opportunity to address the skin tone. Super7 went with bare, unpainted plastic for the skin which looked really waxy in the promo shots. In hand, I think it looks fine, and I’d even go so far as to say I think it turned out better than if they had painted it.

Mandora has pretty much the same articulation as the other two ladies of the line, which means it’s definitely serviceable, but far from the best. The legs have ball jointed hips, rotating hinges in the knees, and both hinges and lateral rockers in the ankles. The neck is ball jointed and there’s a ball joint under the chest. The arms have rotating hinges in the shoulders and elbows, with hinged pegs for the hands to swap them out. And boy do you get a lot of hands! You get fists, relaxed hands, grasping hands, accessory holding hands, you even get a right pointing hand and a right thumbs-up hand. As for the articulation, the biggest issue remains the range of motion in the elbows and knees, which does feel limited. Thankfully, there are slits cut in the back of the shoulders to keep them from hindering the shoulder movement.

As for accessories, Mandora has an inventory of goodies that hits most of the beats. Her trademark boomerang is front and center, actually she has two of them: One standard, and one with a trailing motion effect. The boomerang is nice and colorful with a white base and blue and red accents. The motion effect has a semi-transparent red trail that looks great.

Next up, you get a set of handcuffs with real chain connecting them. The cuffs do not open, but you only need to pop off a figure’s hands to slip them on.

She has her ID badge with her picture printed on a sticker.. Depending on which episode you’re watching, Mandora sometimes flashed her badge with her picture upright and sometimes with the badge part at the top and her picture upside down. The sticker on my figure’s accessory is kind of rough, with some chipping on the edges, but it’s pretty small and hard to notice with the naked eye.

And lastly, you get her computerized ticket book and the tracking device she used to hunt fugitives. Both of these are pretty simple accessories, but cool additions nonetheless. Pity we didn’t get some tiny paper tickets to hand out to Snarfer. Assuming we actually get Snarfer. Yeah, I’m pretty sure we’ll get a Snarfer.

I was super excited when Mandora first got solicited and now that I’ve get her in hand, I’m thrilled to have her in my collection. It always surprised me that she didn’t get an LJN release in the original toyline, as she’s a damn cool looking character, and she sure came back for a good number of episodes. Now, naturally the big omission with Super7’s figure is her enzyme-catalyzer (aka. soap gun). Super7 didn’t forget it, but rather chose to bundle it with the Electro-Charger. I was always going to pick up her ride, so I don’t mind it getting put in with the bike, but I can see why some collectors might consider it a cheap move. Not everyone is going to buy both the figure and the bike. So yeah, I think they should have included it with the figure. Come on back Friday and we’ll have a look at the Electro-Charger!