Pumyra

No matter how things turn out, there's no question Mattel was dedicated to the Thundercats line: you don't go for a deep cut like Pumyra in year one unless you're expecting there to be a year two. A super agile climber, Pumyra resembles a puma and is known for her outstanding leaping abilities. She is a true asset to the Thundercats because she has a great understanding of medicine and serves as their healer. While she is skilled in combat, using a weapon that looks like a cat's tail, called a whipcord, Pumyra, by nature, tends to first try to solve conflicts without fighting. Instead, she leans toward compassion and working on creating compromise and mutual understanding. However, when combat is necessary, she uses her whipcord which launches pellets and spheres, similarly to an ancient sling. At last, a bio that's emphatically based on the '80s, not the 2011 reboot. If you haven't watched the new cartoon, well, just trust us when we say if the text had taken any of her character from there, it would be obvious. And because I'm not super-familiar with the original cartoon, this info was actually fairly useful! (Still written like a C+ high schooler trying to sound smarter than they are, though.) Pumyra had weird hair, even by Thundercat standards, and it's duplicated accurately here. She has a skunk stripe down the center; two thicker, raised areas on either side of that; a pair of locks dangling in front of her shoulders; and then a bunch of defined spikes in the back along the bottom. Plus, the white stripe tapers to an end ¾ of the way down, then the lowest edge of the hair is white again. What the heck are you doing, genetics?! When the prototype figure was shown at Toy Fair, fans were unhappy with the face. Conflicting with everything we know about Mattel, they took that feedback and immediately made changes for the better. But then why does the final product look more like the first version than the second? She still has the long neck, the pointed chin... the only real difference seems to be the height of her hair stripe. Pumyra wears a short brown dress with cutouts at the waist and a single padded red strap running over her left shoulder. There's a single golden band around her left arm, and a golden collar on her neck. Her red boots come to a point below the knee, with a single golden dot (button? clasp? gem? simple decorative element?) on the front. Her skin or fur or whatever it is Thundercats have is three shades of tan: a light cream color for her hands and forearms, mocha for most of her body, and then slightly darker hooked stripes on her cheeks. The body is slightly thicker than MotU Classics women, but still smooth and undefined. She has a bag on her right hip, and the tail-like belt that's tied on the left. And despite being younger and shorter than Cheetara, Pumyra's toy stands almost 7⅛" tall. Her articulation is nearly as good as the other (adult) figures in this line. She has swivel/hinge ankles designed to work like a rocker joint, hinged knees, swivel thighs, swivel/hinge hips, a swivel waist, swivel/hinge wrists, hinged elbows, swivel biceps, swivel/hinge shoulders, and a balljointed head. She doesn't have the swivel shins or the hinged torso that the men get, but neither her skirt nor her hair impede the movement of the joints in any significant way. The hands pop out at the wrist, so you get your choice of whether you want her to be holding something (both hands), gesturing (left hand), or making a fist (right hand). Speaking of "holding something," Pumyra comes with three accessories, only one of which seems to actually be hers - that one, of course, being her whipcord. It's basically a sling, molded as one single piece with three colored balls in the crook and ready to be flung at enemies. Since she normally wears her whipcord around her waist, her "belt" is a removable piece (since one object can't be in two places at the same time). She also includes the Totem Of Dera, a piece of the Treasure of Thundera that can heal the sick or wounded. That fits with Pumyra's status as the team healslut, but it's not something she ever interacted with on the cartoon. She also comes with what Mattel calls a "boomerang weapon," which is colored like the Sword of Omens, but isn't anything I recognize from the cartoon. Pumyra isn't quite as impressive as Lion-O or Jackalman, but then, she's not as flashy a character to begin with. She's not a major character in the story, being one of the three Thundercats introduced later in the series, and there are enough oddities here (the head, the height) to keep her from being as stunning as the previous offerings - to say nothing of the very bad artwork on the back of the box. It's nice to get her in the line (even moreso if we get more next year), but she's strictly middle-of-the-road, not something special. -- 12/18/16

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