While He-Man got to hang out with Orko, She-Ra's Princess of Power cartoon enabled her to have tons of magical talking associates. The 5 3/4-inch Madame Razz comes with Broom - another enchanted being - plus that doesn't even get in to the likes of Kowl and Where's Waldo ancestor Loo-Kee. She was, for all intents and purposes, the Aunt Sassy or the Mon Mothma or what have you of the show. The mature character was a little flighty, and is essentially a caricature of one of your aunts, Orko, and Dumb Donald combined with what I assume were the craftier elements of the early 1970s. As a 100%-tooled character, the fact that she exists is reason enough to buy her.
Not entirely unlike Yoda, Regina Razz is a Twigget, a small person from the franchises surrounding the various swords of power. It appears there are other definitions as well, but the important thing here is that Razz is a halfling of sorts and is surprisingly totally cool with the mini dresses and short skirts all the young ladies on Etheria wear these days. (Again, shades of Aunt Sassy.) The figure's overall look is dynamite. I have but one quibble, and that's that her ankles are a little weak for her particular body - I'm less interested in these sorts of joints on shorter figures because, let's face it, this is a figure that's just going to be standing around. Action stands need not apply, she needs a doll stand if you don't get her balancing correctly. Thankfully she seems to balance adequately on my desk, but as to the long term I'm a little concerned.
Brand-new sculpts in this line are to be treasured, and the Four Horsemen adapt Filmation's designs to plastic nicely. She has painted buttons, subtle shading, and even a belt on her red top - it looks like the cartoon, only better. She was given glossy yellow eyes peering through her oversized hat, plus purple lips that you'll only see if she's at or above your eye level. Her cartoonish eyelashes look wonderful, and her graying hair is sculpted so amazingly well that it should make you mad most of it will never be seen unless you pop off her ball-jointed head to see the follicles touching her neck. The Four Horsemen did a really spectacular job here, plus there's a tuft of hair popping out of the back of her hat and a flower coming out the front. Why? I have no idea. I assume it's a nod to the VW Beetle.
Her somewhat chunky, stumpy legs are ball-jointed and can move surprisingly well. The hip movement is superb, the knees move fine, and the ankles... well, let's not worry about them too much. They ain't great, but everything else is. As curly-toed shoes go, she's queen. Some of the 2014 Dinobots tried to beat her, but they couldn't top it. There's a little rounded tip on each one, too. Her sculpting is pretty clean with a few subtle creases, giving her a look that really does feel like a Filmation animation model translated to a toy far better than you might expect given the source material. Well, a collectible - she's not much of a toy, she's a "pose and look good" figure.
Before we move on to Broom, it's worth noting her elbows and pants have little green patches "sewn" on them. From the front you'll never notice them, but they're apparent when you examine the figure. Patches, kids, are what people used to put on their clothing before the late 1990s, at which point any and all worn clothes were left as-is for style purposes or burned in a pile at the center of town.
Rounding out the package is accessory/sidekick Broom. He's a broom! For being so skinny, he's not bad. The head sculpt looks like the animation model come to life, and the thin bristles made me think he wouldn't be able to stands. Not only could he stand, but he has foot peg holes, too, which I frankly can't believe. Each arm has the ability to swivel and move laterally, making this an above-average sidekick figure. He's about 4 1/2-inches tall, a fair size given the cost. He doesn't do much, but when it comes to some of these figure a $20-$25 hyper-poseable figure would just be silly. Here, you really do feel like you got your money's worth with this duo.
Because she's somewhat prominent in the cartoon, when I rewatched She-Ra cartoons recently I thought "Madame Razz, now she'd make a fun toy, but that'd never happen." And yet, here she is. We're in a charmed era as we're getting remakes - or makes, I suppose - of a number of obscure characters from 1980s toy franchises. As the MOTUC line winds down I see a lot of neat stuff on the horizon, but as a fan I'm in that "fat and happy" phases where it seems really good figures like this one don't so much impress because we've had so many good figures already and have had a steady stream of them for so long now. This is a line we kind of take for granted, and will probably miss when it's gone - of course, if and when it does finally cease to be, at least we'll have a pretty fantastic toy line. If you told me I'd be happy to have a small smattering of She-Ra's characters in my toy box 10 years ago, I'd have called you a liar.
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