This was the October release for Matty Collector, along with the repainted Zodac. She's sold out now, but went for $20 for a little while. Now it's ebay or a dealer if you're going to pick her up, but they do have a repaint planned for 2010.

Packaging - ***1/2
If you've picked any of these up, you'll know what the packaging looks like. They've continued with the retro look, and you can see Teela through the bubble pretty easily. She's pre-posed in the interior tray, but I didn't have any trouble with bent pins in the knees or ankles.

Sculpting - ****
Once again, The four Horsemen did an amazing job. The face is beautiful, with wonderful detail in the red hair, sharp cuts in the clothing, and excellent internal proportions.

Her neck joint is a little long from the side, but this extra length allows for the head to tilt much better than some past releases.

She's a big girl, standing about the same height as He-man himself. She's properly proportioned in comparison to him however, with a more svelte and feminine body. I think the height makes complete sense, making her look formidable on the shelf.

Paint - ***
The paint is decent, but a little sloppy on some areas of the costume.

The work on the face, hair and crown is excellent, with beautiful eyes, neat lips and a clean hair line. If all the cut lines were this well done, it would be a four star figure in this category.

Sadly, there's more slop around the gold and white sections of the outfit. It's not terrible, but it could have been a smidge better, considering the collector focus and exclusive nature.

Articulation - ***1/2
She has similar articulation to other releases in the series, with a ball jointed neck, ball jointed shoulders and hips, cut biceps, pin elbows, knees and ankles, cut wrists, cuts at the boot tops, and rocker feet.

The articulation works extremely well, allowing for deep stances, great fighting poses, and natural short stances. The tilt movement in her ball neck also works very well, due to the long post. Obviously, it doesn't have as great of range of movement with the snake headdress is in place.

I'll mention this in the Accessories section, but it's probably more relevant here - the second head does not fit on the ball joint out of the package, at least with mine. I had to carve out some of the plastic to get it to fit, and that sort of issue is always a disappointment to me.

There's supposedly a cut waist underneath the outfit, but you won't be able to turn it. There's no ab-crunch, but I can live without it, and I think the newly included rocker foot joint is much more useful.

Accessories - ****
We get a ton of goodies this time around, more than any previous release.

First up, there's the alternate snake chick head. This hearkens back to her Sorceress mom, who was affiliated with the Snake Men...I think. In any event, you can pop the heads off and on the ball joint to swap them. The regular head fits quite well on mine, but the snake headdress version won't fit over the ball. I had to whittle out the hole a fair amount to get it to work.

You can also remove the snake hood if you'd like to have a Teela wearing just the helmet, a nice touch.

To go along with the snake theme, there's also the Staff of Ka, which has a cool snake-like shape complete with cobra head. It's very sturdy, and she can hold it perfectly in both hands.

A warrior isn't complete without a sword, and she has a great looking version, one of the best of the series. Both the sculpt and paint look excellent, and again, she can hold it in either hand.

Next up is a small shield which pops on to either forearm. It's fairly basic, but a decent addition, especially for the complete warrior look.

Finally, she also has Zoar the falcon. The bird is fairly large, with articulated wings AND articulated feet. I was surprised by the articulation, and you can pose the bird pretty well. You can probably get it to stay on her forearm if you try hard enough, but I finally gave up and just went with putting him on the staff. This is actually a re-use of the falcon from the Wonder Twins set, and you'll have to come up with something to perch him on long term.

Fun Factor - ****
This whole line is one of the best things Mattel is currently producing. Hell, it's one of the best action figure lines out there these days...and sadly, few kids will ever get the chance to play with them. 

Value - **1/2
While I'm usually pretty harsh about the $20 price point, this time we're getting our first female (less re-use, at least so far) as well as a TON of accessories. I wouldn't say you're getting a bargain, but at least you're getting what you're paying for this time.

Things to Watch Out For -
Not a thing!

Overall - ***1/2
This is an excellent looking figure, and almost managed to score four stars overall. The only thing holding it back for me is the fact that the extra head didn't fit properly on the neck, as well as the *slightly* sloppy paint.  Even with those problems, I suspect she'll end up very high on my list as one of the best female figures produced this year in this scale.

Score Recap:
Packaging - ***1/2
Sculpting - ****
Paint - ***
Articulation - ***1/2
Accessories - ****
Fun Factor - ****
Value - **1/2
Overall - ***1/2

Where to Buy -
Originally she was at Matty Collector, but sold out pretty quickly. This is a line you want to buy the first day they are available, generally the 15th of the month. Your other option is hitting da 'bay.

Related Links -
Past reviews include:

- the most recent was Webstor, perhaps my favorite.

- before that,was Tri-klops, another one of my favs.

- prior to that was Man-at-arms, Hordak, Zodac, Faker, Mer-man and Stratos, starting out with He-man, Skeletor and Beastman together in one review. I still need to get around to doing He-Ro.

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