Princess Fiona (Shrek)

by McFarlane Toys

Princess Fiona, the heroine of Shrek, is so much more than she appears to be. This also applies to her action figure likeness.

At first I thought there was something wrong with her left arm. It looked like it was a few seconds away from popping out of its socket. And what’s up with her right leg? Pulling her leg resulted in her left arm swinging free. Adding two and two, I finally deduced that there was a connection between the two. Squeezing the arm to her torso resulted in her leg shooting out to the side. (And it gave an answer as to the slit on her dress.) The kicking action hilariously revealed itself and from there I tested the strength of her kicks. (I mean, c’mon, who kicks straight out to the side?) Figures like The Heap (Spawn 12) that have huge feet weren’t affected, but 3 ½" G.I. Joes actually catch air and 12" Star Wars figures topple backwards. Loosely packed Lego structures are razed by Princess Fiona’s lightning fast kick. I haven’t been brave enough to take her apart to see what kind of mechanism makes the action possible, but it must be durable because even after kicking all the figures at the office, it still operated like it did off the bubble. And to top it off, she’s also tough. Even after 15 minutes with my son, no limbs got snapped off!

As fun as it is, playability takes a huge hit when it comes to accessories. Princess Fiona comes with eggs frying on a fire, a rat on a stick, a forked stick, a leaf, and a handkerchief. The biggest one is the fire but the remainder are very small. While all the pieces lend to recreating scenes from the movie, you might as well kiss them good-bye. An upside for the accessories is that they all fit snuggly in her right hand (one at a time).

The overall attention to detail and likeness is very good. It’s almost like she stepped right out of the movie screen. The face and hair are particularly well done. The 

paint job is very good too, with the green coloring a perfect match to that of the movie. The sculpt is good but she’s a little tippy (for display purposes) owing to her small feet. Amazingly, even though she’s a female figure, her chest size isn’t inflated to a comical / tragic size. And since boys and girls equally accept Shrek, Princess Fiona is in demand by both groups. Articulation is limited but the different accessories make up for this (if you can find them). I think a swappable-head that shows Fiona’s true form would have been another good accessory, but who knows, we may yet see another Fiona figure. (If you haven’t seen the movie yet, I won’t spoil it. I’m also assuming that if McFarlane has another Fiona figure in the works, it won’t be released until Shrek has been out for a few more weeks. And plus, there are also pictures floating around that shows "a bird in tree" accessory.)

- Omni