Willow

Buffy may be the Slayer, but Willow's not without charms of her own. Shy, bookish Willow Rosenberg is Buffy Summers' best friend. Her naiveté, honesty and loyalty make her the perfect confidant with whom to share her secrets. As one of the brightest students at Sunnydale High, her computer savvy and hacker skills are put to good use in gathering the necessary information to aide Buffy in her slaying missions. So. Buffy the Vampire Slayer. When this campy movie came out in 1992, who could have predicted (and who would have believed) that eventually the Slayer would have a tv series, comic books, and even action figures? But here we are, with a few years between us and the silver screen version, and Buffy seems not only deserving of these new incarnations, but almost demands the attention. Buffy the Vampire Slayer (the series) is consistently one of the most highly-praised hours of television around, and even a switch of networks can't quell the show's rabid fans. These figures, from Moore Action Collectibles, are all based on the characters' likenesses in the first season of the tv show, so Willow has the long hair that's not really been seen since - in fact, her hair has been getting progressively shorter as time goes by. Sculpted by Clayburn Moore and Andre Jaume, Willow nicely captures the right balance between high school frumpiness and burgeoning adulthood. While the pose seems a bit self-assured for such a shy character, the dramatic dynamism that is usually so evident in MAC's work has certainly been toned down, keeping Willow from looking like an exaggeration. Willow was available in the first wave of Buffy figures, which also included the Slayer herself, the heroic Angel, and the beastly Master. There's also a limited edition version of Willow painted in new colors - where the standard version had blue jeans and a white shirt, the variant is wearing a dark blue blouse and, well, tight red pants. Moore Action is best-known for their attractive female sculpts, and the figures are usually aimed more at collectors than kids; so while this figure does have eight points of articulation, she won't hold up to heavy play. Willow stands six inches tall, and comes with a faux-cobblestone base emblazoned with the Buffy "B" logo. She comes with a teddybear backpack, laptop, and English and Calculus textbooks, befitting her bookwormy status. Or perhaps to sum it up best, a quote from Willow herself in the episode "Prophecy Girl": "I'm not ashamed. It's the computer age; nerds are in. They're still in, right?"