It’s hard to explain what it was like browsing the shelves of the video stores in the early days. Before chains like Blockbuster, we used to rent VHS tapes from the local TV & Appliance Repair Shop. I would often stop there on the way home from school and these guys didn’t give a crap about what they rented to a kid, as long as it wasn’t above an R-Rating. You had only the sleeve art and back of the box to go on, and it was always a gamble. But sometimes those gambles paid off, especially in the case of the gloriously bawdy, rotoscoped feature films like Wizards, Starchaser: The Legend of Orin, Heavy Metal, and yes… Fire and Ice. When I first rented Fire and Ice, I was around 14 and going in, I don’t even know if I realized it was was animated. But it kept me gripped to the screen with the excessive gore, some exciting action scenes, and lots of the beautiful Teegra running through the jungles in a bikini.
The figure comes in a window box with a folding front flap, secured by velcro. It’s very similar to what we get with NECA’s figures these days and I really dig it. It displays the figure well and it’s very collector friendly. Not to get ahead of myself, but everything here reminds me a lot of Loose Collectors stuff, so much so that I was surprised not to find their logo on the box. As for the movie, if you haven’t seen it, the film is a sword and sorcery type yarn set against the turmoil of the Evil Lord Necron and his Mama attempting to conquer the world against a holdout king, Jarol. It focuses on Jarol’s daughter, Princess Teegra, who gets kidnapped early on to be used as blackmail toward Jarol’s surrender. Meanwhile outland warriors, Larn and Darkwolf join the fray, meeting up with Teegra. A good chunk of the film is pretty much the main characters escaping one dire and violent situation after another, giving it the flavor of an old-timey serial. There isn’t much here in the way of what I would call good characters, but I always find it to be a captivating watch. Oh, and since the weather’s been really nice here, I decided to take this review outside!
Teegra comes out of the box wearing a plastic top and loin cloth, like she wore in the beginning of the film. But she loses these garments pretty early on in the film and we’re going to lose them right away here too. The top is very slightly transparent to mimic a sheer material and is sculpted to fit the figure very well, but it really nixes her shoulder articulation. The loin cloth is really difficult to get off, because the elastic is pretty tight and she’s got some epic measurements, so you run into problems whether you try to slip it off going north or south. I don’t know how many times you could get away with taking it off and on before the elastic stretches or breaks. The elastic also can get stuck in her hip articulation and it’s annoying to have to dig it out of her crevices. Neither garment really obstructs the beautiful view from behind, which is nice because the sculptors clearly poured some love into that behind. But I don’t know that I’ll display her with these articles very often.
And here she is as she appears through the bulk of the movie in just her skimpy bikini. The top and bottom are sculpted as part of the body and you get a little gold leaf paint on the ornaments. Everything else is just skin! They did a nice job capturing the rather shapely curves of her on screen appearance. The skin tone is tanned and pretty warm and even, although you do get some pinkish coloring in some areas, which I think looks pretty good. The sculpting for her abs is really impressively done, as well as her knees. I think these are some of the best looking knees I’ve seen on any figure of this scale. It’s worth noting that the characters commented at least a few times in the film about how cold it was, so it makes sense that her high beams would be peeking through her bikini top.
You get three heads to choose from, along with two hair pieces and all of these are excellent with a very clear Ralph Bakshi influence. The first head is sort of neutral with a hint of a smile, the second does a good job depicting her in one of her many struggles for survival, with furled brow and gritted teeth. The final is a big smile. My only nitpick with the heads are the teeth are just painted over and there’s no sculpted detail, but I guess that lends itself to the animated look. The rest of the paint is very sharp and I love her green eyes. The hair pieces include one with it falling naturally and one with it blown to the side, and it’s cool to be able to mix and match the different hair styles with all three faces. They both look great, but the wind blown look is much more dynamic for action poses.
The articulation here is pretty good, but it’s clear that the designers made compromises so as not to ugly up the sculpt with excessive jointing. And I think they made the right call, because it’s hard to hide joints on a figure that’s nearly naked. As a result, you get rotating hinges in the elbows and knees instead of double hinges. Sure, the range of motion isn’t as good, but the figure looks better for it. There’s some decent range in the ball joint under the chest, the ankles have both hinges and lateral rockers, and the hands are on pegged hinges to allow you to swap them out between the three pairs. These include accessory holding, relaxed, and splayed fingers. It would have been nice to get a pair of swap out feet with more of an arch to them, but no such luck. All in all it’s easy to have fun with her and all the joints are smooth and easy to work with.
Teegra comes with three weapons: A spear, a knife, and a stick. Yes, a stick! Don’t laugh, she stuck that thing right into somebody’s heart! The spear is the obviously the most significant of the lot and while it is quite thin, the sculpt and paint are very nice. The knife is a beautiful piece of work for how tiny it is. The detail on the wrapped grip and crossguard is awesome and there are even tiny nicks in the blade. The stick is… well, it’s a good stick. The accessory holding hands allow her to wield any of these in either hand.
Shaitan, Teegra’s Panther is also included as a mostly static piece with two swappable heads. You get a ball joint in the tail and in the neck and the second head has a hinged jaw. The sculpt here is pretty nice, especially the musculature of the beast. It’s a nice bonus to round out the package, but sadly Shaitan is killed off almost instantly in the beginning of the movie. Maybe someday they will release a Director’s Cut with a post credit scene where Dark Wolf barges in on Teegra and Larn’s ending kiss and exclaims, “Doc says Shaitan is gonna be OK!”
I’ll confess, while I have fond memories of Fire and Ice, I wasn’t exactly chomping at the bit to get figures based off of it. But I did rewatch it this week for the first time in probably ten years and still enjoyed it very much. And I’m very glad I picked up Teegra, as she’s a beautiful figure and very well executed in nearly all respects. It would be interesting to see TBLeague get a shot at her with their seamless body, either in Sixth-Scale or just One-Twelfth like this one. Frazetta Girls also released a figure of Dark Wolf, but I missed out on him, and that’s fine because at $90 a pop, I think I’ll be perfectly content with Teegra being my only figure from this film. And while Dark Wolf is sold out, Teegra is still available at a lot of the usual online toy retailers.