Dark Knight Rises FUNKO POP!

Catwoman Makes Her First Funko POP! Vinyl Appearance in the New DKR Lineup!

I'm not the biggest fan of of the vinyl toy renaissance of the past 10 years, but I must admit I'm a HUGE fan of the Funko POP! line.  They're cute as hell, very reasonably priced, and available pretty much anywhere you can buy action figures.  I only own a few at present, but I'm hugely tempted to dive right in and become wholly obsessed.  But until then, I'm sticking to the Bat-Family females.  With the diversity we've seen so far from the POP line, I'm a little surprised that the first Catwoman we've seen has been a movie version.  I thought for sure we would have seen a comic style Selina by now (with multiple exclusive repaints for good measure).  But either way, I'm super-excited to add a second bat-lady to my collection.

Arkham City Series Two CATWOMAN from DC Direct!

The First DC Direct Catwoman for 2012, but definitely NOT the last!

The Catwoman season is upon us and the first offering from DC Direct is a winner.  This action figure had me nervous since we first saw her at NYCC this past Fall.  I felt that her face looked awful, her neck too short, and her body too posed.  These trepidations were only amplified when I saw the official solicit pics in December.  Something about her face just looked trashy and exaggerated.  Then I started watching youtube videos of the game and I realized that Selina looked like a prostitute in the game, too.  I was really debating skipping this figure (which is an extreme reaction from a diehard bat-lady fan like myself).  Then, luckily, some in-hand pics started popping up on eBay a few weeks ago and suddenly she looked pretty good.  The only difference was a much-toned-down paintjob around her eyes and lips, but that subtle change made a world of difference to the final product.  Continue on to see more pics.

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.