Jewel Lords SOLITAIRE!

GO-BOTS Rock Lords Series 3: Rock Jewels - SOLITAIRE from Tonka 1987

The Go-Bots cartoon series was full of awesome female characters, unfortunately very few were made into decent toys.  Of the few that were immortalized in plastic, the best of the bunch would be the Rock Jewel, Solitaire.  The Rock Jewels (or Jewel Lords) were a subset of a subset:  Go-Bots > Rock Lords > Rock Jewels.  The Rock Jewels had the distinction of having clear gemstone rockforms.  Solitaire was introduced in the 1986 theatrical release of Go-Bots: Battle of the Rock Lords where she was a heroic ally to the Go-Bots.  She was voiced by Margot Kidder soon after her reprisal of Lois Lane in Superman III.  The character seems an odd choice to be made into a toy, but she is definitely the best fembot representation from the 80s (in my humble opinion).

PEZ Dark Knight Rises CATWOMAN Dispenser!

Comic Version Selina PEZ for June's DKR-Themed Assortment?

If this photo posted on the Official PEZ Facebook page (by a member, not PEZ itself!) is real and not an elaborate fake, then I will be drunk on little candy bricks all summer as a horde as many of these beautiful ladies as I can find :)  I've mentioned on this blog before that I am a collector of many many many things.. it's genetic.  I can count the family members who don't obsessively collect things on one hand.  One of my first and longest-running collections is PEZ.  At my last inventory I had over 800 different dispensers and that was years ago.  Anyway, I mention this because it's a very rare thing indeed when two hobbies come together like this.  I will definitely get one dispenser for my PEZ collection and one for my Catwoman collection, and a few dozen more for posterity.

Hallmark Keepsake Ornament CATWOMAN!

The 2012 Hallmark Keepsake Catalog Unveils Our Favorite Femme Fatale

Originally shown as a prototype at the 2010 San Diego ComicCon and then not seen since, we will finally get this great ornament for the upcoming holiday season.  Hallmark was pretty forthcoming about why she never appeared in the 2011 catalog; they weren't aware of Catwoman's role in the Dark Knight Rises film and decided to delay her a year to take advantage of her predictable popularity in 2012.  This is going to be an absolutley crazy year for Catwoman merchandise, but I'm already excited to add her to my tree this Christmas and my small collection of heroine ornaments.  I did some research and learned that most Keepsake ornaments show up in Hallmark stores in July, with the remainder appearing in October.  Retail price will be $14.95.  I'll post a review as soon as I nab her!  Meowwww!

Transformers: Prime ARCEE!

Three New Figures of Arcee from the CGI hit Transformers: Prime by Hasbro

She's back and bluer than ever.  The most popular fembot in all of geekdom gets a total redesign for the Hub's new action-packed CGI series Transformers: Prime, and much to everyone's surprize, there are already THREE versions of this incarnation in plastic.  Did I mention this series has only been on the air for a little over a year?  It's impressive that Hasbro is including her in the initial waves of all of the toy lines, but it just makes it all the more baffling that they never produced a classic G1 Arcee like fans have been begging for.  They clearly understand the popularity of the character.  My bet is that the Hasbro execs can't risk putting a pink toy in the boy aisle... which is ridiculous, but I almost guarantee that's the case.  If she had to be redesigned in boy colors to get these figures, then it was worth it, because these are some of the nicest fembots I have ever seen.

Mattel's Women of WWE!

The Badass Women of World Wrestling Entertainment by Mattel

I have both fond and frightening memories of female entertainment wrestling.  These are all centered around G.L.O.W., the Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling which crept into my television watching schedule in the late 80's to both fascinate and scar me.  It doesn't help matters that my most prominent mental image of this show was an outrageously made-up Mimi-Bobeck-type character that would grab her opponents legs and bite them.  It seemed like American Gladiators on acid, but that didn't stop me from tuning in for more.  A few years ago I started noticing a great explosion in the quantity and quality of wrestling figures in the toy aisles.  I'm not quite sure why the popularity increased, but I quickly realized that Mattel had acquired the toy license from Jakks Pacific and the female figures suddenly looked amazing.  I'm not a fan of wrestling, but these figures really appealed to me and over time I found myself owning four tough little ladies.

The Women of STARTING LINEUP! (Part One)

Flo-Jo & Jackie Joyner-Kersee - Starting Lineup: Timeless Legends - 1996 Kenner

I've always had a certain level of contempt for Starting Lineup toys.  I grew up in the 80's watching all my local comic book shops be slowly taken over by sports cards (and the collectors that came along with them).  Then in 1988 the toy aisles started to fill up with these wildly popular sports action figures.  It wasn't fair!  Sure, it was cool that suddenly collecting toys wasn't exactly the geekiest thing in the world anymore, but the sheer real estate of the action figure aisles was precious in those days and these stactions took up valuable space!  I felt like I was getting bullied out of new superhero toys by little plastic football players.  Grrrr... Well, needless to say I became a much more open-minded and accepting person later in life, and now I can appreciate my former angst in a purely nostalgic way.  But I still didn't like Starting Lineup.  Then I discovered that it wasn't quite the boys club I had always assumed it to be.  In fact, they produced Eight female athletes over the years.  The hunt was on.

Masters of the Universe Classics SORCERESS!

The Guardian of Castle Grayskull Makes Her Long-Awaited Debut from Mattel

The Sorceress is one of the most iconic women of 80's cartoon/toy culture.  She was always mysterious, protective, powerful, and wise, guiding the most powerful men and women in the universe toward victory time and time again.  I remember going to this feed store where I grew up in rural Pennsylvania and seeing the original Sorceress action figure having on a peg in their shabby toy aisle (I believe it was the last 5 feet of the birdseed aisle).  That figure was actually quite a shelfwarmer there because I would love to go "visit" her and beg unsuccessfully to have her purchased for me.  She must have easily been there for a year, collecting dust and being ignored by all the other country boys.  It was twenty years before I finally got my vintage Sorceress, and another five before I got my hands on this wonderful toy.  A long wait, but well worth it.

Masters of the Universe Classics SHADOW WEAVER!

Mattel's 2012 Club Eternia Exclusive Figure - The Evil Horde's Shadow Weaver
 It was a very tricky thing on Mattel's part to to make such an important character in the She-Ra/Princess of Power Universe such a hard-to-get figure.  For those unaware, the only way to get Shadow Weaver was to join their Club Eternia subscription program wherein you essentially agree to buy any and all MOTUC products that Mattel will produce that year, sight unseen.  The perks are that you're guaranteed to get every toy released and you get this awesome exclusive figure.  The cons are that you're spending a LOT of money on products that haven't even been announced yet.  This is my first year subscribing so I'm still testing the waters.  Previous years have had interesting (but non-essential) characters as the Club Eternia Exclusive.  Shadow Weaver is anything but non-essential though.  She appears in almost every episode of She-Ra and was always a fan favorite and a constantly formidable foe to the Great Rebellion.