Funko My Little Pony Princess Luna and Princess Celestia Vinyls

Okay, now that I've finished my first revised draft of my story, it's time to take a breather from that and start going through my ridiculously large list of draft posts. I have a good couple of month's worth of material if I just sit down and finish them! ;)

I thought I'd begin with my review of the Funko Vinyl Princess Luna and Princess Celestia figures, which I ordered from Hot Topic last fall. As far as I know, these two have not been released in any other stores yet, and are still pretty hard to find. They are no longer available on the Hot Topic website. (Sorry!) The Funko Vinyls do end up getting into places like Barnes and Noble eventually, though, so keep an eye out for these in the coming months. :)

Aside from the blind bag-sized minis, the Funko Vinyls are my favorite My Little Pony figures because they look so much like the original characters. I've had to downsize some of my collections in the past few months, and many of my G4 MLP brushables have moved on to other homes. I just find that I prefer the Funkos over the brushables because they look so much better.

We'll take a look at Princess Luna first:

Here she is in her beautiful packaging.

Box details:

All of the Hot Topic pre-release Funkos have this sticker on the front of the box.

The top of the box. 

Side view

Back of the box

Other side

And the bottom

Luna is easily removed from her package. I know I've mentioned this before, but the Funko Vinyls and Funko Pops are a toy reviewer's dream. I can take them out of their packages for extensive photo shoots and reviews, and then put them right back in as if they were never opened. I wish more toys and collectibles could be packaged like this.

Here is beautiful Luna. I've always been more of a Princess Celestia fan myself, but I loved how perfectly they captured her and knew I wanted her for my collection. Luna is just stunning. I think my favorite part of Luna is the sparkly, see-through parts on her mane and tail. It's a great way to portray her mane and tail as they appear on the show.

Here she is from the back...

...from the other side...

...and from the front.

A close-up of Luna's face.

Luna has her moon-themed necklace.

She also has her lighter blue shoes.

Her moon cutie mark is nicely painted.

And, like all of the newer Funko Vinyls, it is on both sides. (Another feature I wish the Hasbro brushables would apply to their line. They did cutie marks on both sides in the 80s. Why not now?)

Each of the newer Funko Vinyls has a number on the bottom of one front hoof, and the My Little Pony logo on the other front one.

The Funko Vinyls do tend to have some flaws here and there, and Luna is no different.

There's an odd line on one wing where it looks like they had to add some extra plastic.

This seam line on her face is rather rough and a bit dirty-looking.

And she does have a bit of a paint glob here on her mane. (This picture really gives you a great close-up of the gorgeous detail on the sparkly part, though.)

While this isn't a flaw, I did find it odd that her mane doesn't go all the way to the back of her crown at the top of her head. It just looks a bit funny from the top. :}

Let's move on to Princess Celestia, and then we'll look at some comparison pictures.

Here she is! :)

Box details and artwork from the front:

The top of the box.

Side view

Back of the box.

The other side.

Bottom of the box.

Here is Celestia in her clear plastic packaging. Just pop her out, and she's ready to go. :)

Celestia is quite lovely and detailed, too.

Here she is from the back...

...the other side...

...and the front.

And here's an extra look from the front at a slight angle. ;) 

Celestia's face. 

A closer look at her crown. As you can see, there is a very slight paint flaw on the jewel. 

Celestia's necklace

I love the detail of her mane...

...and her tail, too. I wish they had made it sparkly like Luna's, though. Celestia's mane and tail don't have the same see-through sparkles that Luna's do in the cartoon, but they do still sparkle.

I love the sculpt on her wings and her nicely painted cutie mark. (It's on both sides on Celestia as well...I just forgot to take a picture.) ;)

Celestia has her tall, golden shoes.

She also has the number and MLP logo on the bottoms of her hooves.

Celestia doesn't have as many flaws as Luna. 

She does have a slight paint flaw on the logo on her hoof (which is not a big deal).

There are also few gaps in the plastic between her mane and her head and her horn and her mane. Other than that, she's in perfect condition.

Here's a side-by side comparison of the two princesses together. And here I just have to call attention to one of my first major disappointments when I received both (Luna arrived in the mail first). Scale is a big thing to me as a collector. It probably comes from having a dad who does model railroading. That, an being an "artist" who struggles with proportions in my drawings, so I'm always paying attention to them. ;) While I love both of these figures, I'm disappointed that Celestia and Luna are basically the same height. Anyone who watches the show knows that Celestia is quite a bit taller than her younger sister. 

To be honest, something seems a bit off to me about Celestia's scale in general. Her head is a little too big for the rest of her. It's almost as if her head is the right scale for Luna, but her body needs to be taller and longer to fit her head. Does anyone else see it? Check out this image of her at My Little Pony Friendship is Magic Wiki and see if you agree.

Celestia is still lovely and this scale issue isn't a deal-breaker for me, but I would have been thrilled to see her the right size in proportion to her sister, especially since Funko paid attention to so many other details.

Both gals are well sculpted, and I'm happy to have both in my collection. Luna is definitely my favorite of the two, though.

So while we're on the subject of scale, I thought it would be fun to compare Celestia and Luna to some of my other ponies and see how they compare.

Here's where the Funko Vinyl scale issues really come up. My Twilight Sparkle Funko Vinyl is huge! Even as an alicorn, Twilight's head only comes up to Princess Celestia's shoulder, or right about there. I really wish Funko had been able to keep all of the characters of their line in the correct scale. I know that they were probably going for a similar size for all of the figures, but honestly, I don't think I could display these two together. It would bother me too much. I know, I'm weird. ;)

My Twilight Sparkle all-vinyl figure from Hasbro is actually just about right. However, in this picture, Celestia's head really looks too big for the rest of her...at least to me. If I were to display a Twilight next to her, though, I'd go with this one.

The brushables, like my brushable Fluttershy, are about the right scale, but the all-vinyl ones look better next to Celestia since she's all-vinyl. Too bad Hasbro only made Twilight, Apple Jack, and Pinkie Pie in all-vinyl. I wish they'd done Rainbow Dash, Fluttershy, and Rarity, too. 

The blind bag ponies are, quite obviously, much too small in scale. ;) In this instance, though, the scale is so different that it could actually make for a fun display shelf. Giant Celestia surrounded by tiny ponies. ;)

Allow me a very quick rabbit trail here. Taking pics with my blind bag Twilight Sparkle reminded me that I hadn't shown you guys my new blind bag Alicorn Twilight Sparkle. :D She's only available in the My Little Pony Rainbow Magic Game. The game was simple and fun enough to play a few times with the girls, but I totally bought it for the Twilight pony. ;) I picked it up in Target several months ago for around $10. You can see what the box looks like HERE. I would highly recommend buying this in person if you can, though. There was apparently an older version that came with a regular Twilight, so you want to make sure you get the right one. (Even the picture on the Target website I linked to shows the regular Twilight.)

Here's a picture of regular Twilight next to Alicorn Twilight. You can see there are slight variations to the color.

And here she is with Flash Sentry, just because. Yes, we're cool with Twilight and Flash in this house. Except he was kind of an unnecessary character in Rainbow Rocks. Maybe they didn't use him much because everyone was so up in arms about him from the first Equestria Girls movie. I do wish they'd made pony Flash more orange, though. He's a little too yellow.

Here's mini Alicorn Twilight with Funko Vinyl Alicorn Twilight. Which brings us back to the original subject of this post. :} Returning from the rabbit trail now. ;)

Luna and Twilight are a little more in scale with one another, although Luna should still be just a touch taller and possibly a little bigger in her proportions to match Twilight perfectly.

The brushable-sized all-vinyl ponies from Hasbro are much too small to work with her, since she's closer in size to them than Celestia is. This is about the size of one of the Cutie Mark Crusaders. ;)

Here are all of my Celestias together. From left to right, Hasbro brushable Celestia, Funko Vinyl Celestia, blind bag-sized Celestia from the Toys R Us Exclusive "Friends Forever Collection" (purchased on sale at Ross), and Hasbro Celestia from the Costco "Midnight in Canterlot Pony Collection."

My Luna collection is quite sparse by comparison. I had a Hasbro brushable Luna but just sold her on eBay as part of my "downsizing the collection movement" of the past couple of months. ;)

My only other Luna is this little blind bag-sized one, from the same set as my little Princess Celestia.

So, it's time to share my official rating on these two gals. I'm going to follow my usual rating system. However, since some of my toy-related categories don't apply to collectibles, I added an extra category. Do any of you have any suggested categories for future collectible reviews? Especially if they begin with "p"? ;)

PRINCESS CELESTIA:

Pleasing Qualities: 5 out of 5

   Overall, I'm very happy with Princess Celestia. Funko put a lot of beautiful detail into her. I love the look of her flowing mane and tail and the accuracy of her color (I'm still recovering from all of the pale pink Celestia's at the beginning of the Hasbro toy releases). ;) Her extremely minor paint and plastic flaws are not enough to take away from everything else.

Posability: N/A (These figures are meant to be displayed and are not marketed for their posability.)

Playability: N/A 

  Again, I'm not going to rate these because the Funko Vinyls are marketed as collectibles, not playthings. However, since their box says they are for ages three and up, I figured I would discuss that a bit. I would be extremely hesitant to give these to a three-year-old. Not for safety reasons, but because I think that the manes, tails, and horns could be easily broken, especially if these were thrown around or slammed too hard against the floor. I have a three-year-old niece who loves ponies, and while I love her dearly, I don't know that I would be comfortable giving her these to play with...especially the ones that belonged to me. ;) As far as actual playability, I think a brushable pony, with its moving head and brushable mane and tail, would be more appealing to her.

Price: 5 out of 5

   For a MLP collectible, Celestia is very affordable, especially since I purchased mine during one of Hot Topic's frequent 20% off site-wide online sales. I believe the regular retail price for these is $18.99. They are pretty spendy right now on the secondary market, but they should eventually be released to other stores, when they will be more reasonable again.

Portrayal (i.e., Character Depiction): 4.5 out of 5

   Overall, I think Funko did an excellent job on Celestia. I'm docking half a point on portrayal because her head still seems a bit out of proportion to me, and I wish her hair was sparkly like Luna's. I also really wish they would have kept Celestia, at the very least, correctly proportioned to her sister. I can kind of understand why they didn't keep her proportions accurate to the smaller ponies, because she would have to be much bigger than the rest of them. But at least keeping her the right proportion to Luna would have been nice.

Would I recommend her?

   Yes. Most of the things I noticed about Celestia are minor details that would only be noticeable to a scale-obsessed fan like myself. ;) Celestia is a beautiful collectible and looks great on display. I would highly recommend waiting until she is released in regular stores, though. She'll be a better price then.

PRINCESS LUNA:

Pleasing Qualities: 5 out of 5

   Luna is incredible. She's beautifully portrayed and looks amazing on display, in or out of the box. Even though my particular Luna has some minor flaws in her paint and mold, I'm still giving her a perfect score because her positive qualities make me not even care that much about the little issues of a paint blop and some rough mold edges.

Posability: N/A (see above)

Playability: N/A (see above)

Price: 5 out of 5

   See above for the reason. ;) 

Portrayal: 5 out of 5

   I think Funko captured Princess Luna perfectly. From her sparkly hair to all of her details, she is a spot-on replica of the cartoon character. :)

Would I recommend her?

   Absolutely. I'm not even a huge Luna fan, but this is one of my very favorite pieces in my entire MLP collection. She's just gorgeously portrayed. A must-have for any Luna fan. :) As with Celestia, though, I would recommend waiting until she is released in regular stores unless you want to pay at least twice what I paid for her.

I hope you all enjoyed this review. :) Next time around, we'll be taking a look at the Funko Vinyl Shining Armor, Princess Cadance, and Spike figures. There will also be other non-MLP related posts coming up, so don't despair if you're a doll person waiting to hear about dolls. ;) 

For those of you who are MLP fans, which is your favorite, Princess Celestia or Princess Luna? (Both as figures and characters.) Why?

Build-A-Bear, American Girl, and Disney Store Fun :)

Hey guys! Hope you had a great weekend. I'm working on organizing some more "real" posts for you here, but in the meantime, I thought I'd draw your attention to some fun sales currently online.

First off, the American Girl website is offering free shipping with a purchase of $100 or more (use the promo code FREESHIP4). If you're interested, though, you need to hurry. Today is the last day of the offer. You can visit their website HERE.

Build-A-Bear Workshop's website has several plush friends that are part of a special "2 for $35" deal. I wanted to be sure I mentioned this here because almost ALL of their plush My Little Pony Friends (aside from Shining Armor) are part of the promotion. :D So if you've been eyeing any of the Build-A-Bear My Little Pony plushes, now is the time to get them. These usually cost $25-$27, so getting them for $17.50 each is a real deal. Also, unlike some other places, you don't have to buy them in even numbers. As long as you have at least two of them in your cart, you will get the special price. You can buy three, five, or however many you want. :) You can see all of the friends for sale HERE. (I'm not sure how long this promotion will last, but it started sometime at the end of last week.)

Finally, the "Twice Upon a Year Sale" is still going on at the Disney Store website, with up to 40% off on some items. The DAC dolls and Classic Princess dolls are a part of the sale, so if you're interested in those, this would be a good time to pick them up. You can see all of the sale items HERE.

In other quick, updatey news, I'm two chapters away from completing my first revised draft of my book! :D A lot of it is rough and clunky, but now I have a basic structure to go back and edit. It was scary losing over half of my story with this revision, but it needed to be done to make it the strongest story possible. I can't remember if I've shared this, but my goal is to try to get the manuscript to the interested agent by September. Thank you for letting me focus on my writing these past several months. It's so exciting to shoot for this dream. :)

I'll be back with more soon. In the meantime, Happy Shopping, everyone! :)

New Season 5 Zelf Pics Found Online

Hey everyone! I had to share some fun news. There's a website called characteronline.com which sells toys in the UK, and they have several stock photos of the upcoming Season 5 Zelfs. They aren't available to purchase yet, but the pictures are up.

There have been rumors floating around that the Season 5 Zelfs might not show up in the USA. I hope this isn't true. It's already hard enough to find them as Toys R Us is the only place that sells them. We only found the Lil' Zelfs in the eggs once or twice, and the mushrooms never made it to our part of the US. :( I guess if all else fails I can shop at Character Online myself: they ship worldwide. :D (As long as the shipping isn't too pricey.)

Anyway, here are my very favorites from the line:

First up is adorable Talleen the Giraffe Zelf. (Original image HERE) I love her sweet little face and her fun spots. I think she'd look really cute with my Dorothy Doe. :)

Here she is in her packaging. I wanted to share this picture too so you could see how the packaging has changed yet again. My mom pointed out that having the name at the top of the box might be helpful when we call Toys R Us and ask about their stock (it'll be easier for the store employees to see the names). The pattern on her hair is cute. My daughters like that feature, too. I'm wondering how it will hold up over time and whether it will get all separated.

My next favorite it Snowanne the Snow Leopard Zelf. (Original image HERE) I don't normally collect the Super Zelfs (the largest ones), but Snowanne may just change my mind. Isn't she just the cutest? :D

Here she is in her package. Ooh, and she's glow-in-the-dark! I don't have one of those, yet! ;)

Those two are the ones I want the most. Here are a few of the other ones I think are super cute:

Batrina the Bat Zelf (Original image HERE)

Zebbie the Zebra Zelf (Original image HERE)

Koolah the Koala Zelf (Original image HERE)

 Here's Crystella, the light-up Crystal Princess Zelf. (Original image HERE) 

She's the same size as the big "Color Me Zelf" that's currently in stores. (Twenty four centimeters, according to the site...so right about nine and a half inches tall.) I'm not sure that she's one I'll add to my collection (especially if I had to order her from the UK...shipping would be quite spendy), but I think she'll definitely appeal to the target audience.

There are no pictures on the site yet, but the limited edition medium Zelf is a mermaid this time around. :D I'd love to get her, but I've long since given up trying to find the Limited Edition Zelfs. 

If you'd like to see the other Season 5 Zelfs up on Character Online, click HERE. They start on the second line.

Which of the Season 5 Zelfs are you the most excited about? 

Thank you to The Zelfs Buy Sell Trade Group on Facebook and Lori (Veni Vedi Dolli) on Flickr for making me aware of this website and the photos. :)

And the Winner Is...

It's time to announce the winner of the Cathy Elliott book giveaway. We had a total of six entries.

And the winner of the giveaway is...

Kirren! Congratulations! :)

I'll be emailing Kirren shortly to officially notify her of her win. She'll have one week to get back to me. If I don't hear from her by next Friday, a new winner will be chosen.

Thank you to all of you who entered or stopped by and commented.

UPDATE: I've heard from Kirren, so the results are final. 

Last Day to Enter the Book Giveaway!

Hey everyone! Just a reminder that today is the last day to enter the giveaway for Cathy Elliott's two books, A Stitch in Crime and A Vase of Mistaken Identity.

You can read all of the giveaway details HERE.

Have a great day! :)