MOTUClassics.Com
Vault Review: Frosta

This review was originally published on November 20th, 2012.
Thanksgiving is almost here, and while Noisy and I are waiting for our most recent Matty order (and hoping it gets here before the holiday) I thought I’d fit in one more MOTU Classic review before the break.  It’s time for our look at Frosta.

Although Princess of Power is an established part of the MOTU mythos, I never really paid much attention to the cartoon or had any of the figures when I was younger.  So I’m always interested to see what kind of take the Four Horsemen will have on these characters.

This new Frosta figure seems to be a mix of a couple different influences, but the heaviest is definitely the Filmation cartoon.  This is the version of the character that always comes to my mind when I hear her name, so I’m personally pretty happy with this decision.   But I’m also glad they added to the figure by throwing in bits of detail like the snowflake pattern on her belt and the armored ridges of her bracers.

One of the things I like most about the different POP figures is their facial features and expressions.  Frosta has a very unique personality and could definitely give Catra a run on being… catty.  That personality came with a very specific look, and I think the 4H did a really great job of capturing it in the sculpt.  (The paint is an entirely different issue, which I’ll get to in a minute.)

Another aspect of this figure that I really like is her hair.  The sculpt is long and straight and flows over the shoulders without hindering the head’s articulation.  It’s also made out of a semi-transparent blue plastic with some light shades of white airbrushed on.  The hair is darker than the Filmation cartoon’s portrayal, but I still think the effect looks really nice.

As for the paint on the rest of the figure, that’s kind of iffy.  I think the various shades of blue turned out great, and I’m glad they made the gem in her corset more metallic than the rest of her costume.  The whites on her outfit are another matter, mostly because they’re not white.  Mattel has this habit of using off-white colors to make the figures look more realistic and less like toys.  I understand the reasoning, but sometimes white just needs to be white and I think this is one of those cases.  Continue to page 2…

27 thoughts on “MOTUClassics.Com
Vault Review: Frosta

    1. Can you blame him for hitting on anything that moves? I mean the guy has spent waaayyyy too much time alone in the bat-cave playing with his batarang.

  1. I’ll have to hunt her down later, just sticking to me DC subs for right now, but she does look nice. I do agree with what seems to be the main complaint that she should be WHITE, not “white-ish”. The dingy off-white color really stands out on the Batman pic and the one with the white Freeze hugging on her. I don’t think I’ve seen her compared next to She-Ra or Teela or even Mattel’s “white” Mary Marvel, or rather, “white-ish” Mary. @_@

    and yeah, my DC subs went out to Indiana before swinging back to StL but they maybe, could be, possibly might be arriving today or Wednesday, just ahead of the holiday rush.

    1. yep, got my Johns and Sams today!
      (along with a package from my sister, who misread my email the other day! LOL)

  2. Excellent review, even-better-than-the-usually-great pics, and the last panel had me guffawing loudly. Still waiting for this lady (and the other October sub items) to arrive, but it should be soon, I hope.

    Quick question: now that she’s in-hand, would you have noticed Frosta’s swapped forearms if Mattel hadn’t said anything? Personally, I think the one way to alleviate this swapped-bits problem (not that it bothers me in any way, but it seems to send others into apoplectic fits) might be to stamp the Chinese ideograms for “left” and “right” on the limb parts, instead of putting “L” and “R” on them, which the factory workers seem to be having problems with.

    1. Mine just arrived – I think I unnerved the postman by yelling ‘FROSTAAAAA!’ as I opened the door…

      The forearms are noticeable – the true outside of the arm is flatter while there is a curve to the muscle on the inside. If you line everything up right, it also causes her hands to stick out eeeever so slightly – enough to look spookily unnatural without being easy to tell exactly what’s wrong (I think I’d have noticed the oddness of it without Mattel mentioning the swapped arms, though I can’t honestly say I would have worked out that was the cause).

      Interestingly, she appears to have been posed in package to minimise the effect – with her biceps were turned inwards but the hands rotated so the thumb still pointed directly forwards, leaving the long edge of her bracers on the outside, so it looked right until you try to bend her arm.

      It caused me a little trouble with the shield too, since the arm it’s designed for is now upside down and on the other side – the grip scarred the softer plastic of her arm a little as it went on, but it sure does fit snugly now.

      But after all that gibbering, it is just a small thing – when she’s armoured up and posed and examined from more than a few inches away you can’t really see it. New PoP figures always make me happy, and she’s still a great looking figure – even if she does appear to be wearing yesterday’s dirty dress – and I really love the effect of the translucent hair!

  3. It looks like your Frosta has its forearms switched. I don’t have mine with me right now, but the gloves looked like yours before I did the swap to correct it. There should be some muscle definition on one side that makes it a dead giveaway it’s wrong.

  4. Also, ever since they created the new forearm for BG Evil-Lyn I find it odd that they don’t use it more often now. If they did that, this whole forearm issue would be moot since you could just rotate her glove.

  5. Great review!
    I too am hoping my Nov order gets here before the holiday…tracking says between wed 21st-Mon 26th so we are praying like hell they show up before Tanksgiving

  6. The forearm issue doesn’t bug me at all and I haven’t really notices if they were or if I got a fixed one. I dig the fig alot and surprised that her cape doesn’t get in the way much on some poses. Catra’s sure did though.
    I haven’t played with her hair and a light just her over flirty self and Dreago’s strength to shoulder lift without probs.

    Great review and only one where she isn’t hanging on Heman. I need a Freeze Captain Cold is too short.

    1. Forgot to add how majority of my MOTUCs are PoP. Just noticed. Aside from MaA, Marlena, Dreago and He-ro. I await the Great Unrest review.

  7. Frosta’s arms seem to be switched throughout production. Mine are too and it’s same issue that Clay states with the shield. Just feels wonky when applying it.
    I really dig the figure! I read alot of hate on the face and blah, but i do really love it! She’s surely a character.
    Only quibble with displaying is this hugeass snowflake-ventilator-staff…uff, i really wish they had included something of smaller size in there too, or a version of that thing that is like half the size of it.

  8. Great review as always.

    Her face keeps getting me, though. There’s just something there that isn’t right, a sort of vacuous “Doyyyyy” expression… A lot of the Horsemen’s female faces look like they’re kind of flat or punched-in and this one… yeah, this one has it.

    Other than that, it’s great that they finally got another PoP figure done. Only a few more heroes done and the essential ones should be taken care of (One can dream right?)

  9. The white isn’t even off-white. It’s grey (Mattel even say they use “Cool Grey 2C” as the colour, apparently). And it’s darker than any “white” they’ve used so far. Horrible, horrible design choice.

    I did the arm swap (very easy to boil and pop at biceps and hands and swap them).

    I have to laugh that Mattel is “compensating” subscribers with a free gift for the arms, because they’re so easily swappable. Compare this to the gaffs with Hisss, Roboto and Stinkor, which you can’t do much about without major stuffing around, and it’s just so laughable. Still, I’ll take any freebie.

      1. OMG, I wouldn’t be following that tutorial.

        Much easier to swap at the bicep rather than elbow and then swap the hands.

        I’ve never had ANY issues with the boil and pop method. I’ve found the hairdryer method to be useless.

        And non-subscribers get NOTHING. Have you learnt nothing by now? ;P

Comments are closed.