Dot

"...and I'm cute!" Her full name is nearly as long as the end-credits of a movie, but you can just call her Dot! Dot looks cute as a button, and if you know what's good for you, you won't disagree. So Animaniacs premiered in 1993 - thirty full years ago. And there is a joke that I just got this instant when beginning to write. It's been in front of us the entire time, and yet it's almost entirely overlooked. The kids are the Warners and they're named after the company. Yes, fine. But the official name of the company isn't "Warner Brothers," it's "Warner Bros." - or, spelled out, "double-yu ayy ar en ee ar space bee ar oh ess period." Period. Or, like we say in web addresses... "dot." The company name is the Warner brothers and a dot! She's never been overlooked or excluded by the group name at all! Three decades that joke's eluded us! Judging by the last two reviews, this is where we're supposed to have some sort of interesting story for you about WB's promotional Animaniacs balloons, but at this point we're all out. So how about this instead: Dot's full name, Princess Angelina Contessa Louisa Francesca Banana Fanna Bo Besca III, was inspired by the equally ridiculous Pippilotta Delicatessa Windowshade Mackrelmint Ephraimsdotter Långstrump, aka Pippi Longstocking - a character who also influenced another long-named little girl, Françoise Appledelhi (though you may know her better as Edward Wang Hwe Pepelu Cybulski IV - or "Radical Edward" for short). Can you imagine those three distant cousins teaming up for some mischief? The havok that would result! Dot is easily the shortest of these figures so far - in fact, she's more the size we were expecting all of them to be. Rather than having separate ears, like the boys, hers are pulled together into an ersatz ponytail by a pink band with a yellow flower on the front. This points her ears up more than theirs, but she's still only about 4¾" tall. To be fair, she is the youngest of them (Tom Ruegger has said they're 14, 11, and 9 respectively), so being little makes sense. In addition to her flower headband, Dot's other garment is girly as well: a pink skirt. Remember, kids, "sex" is a biology thing, "gender" is a societal thing. If you think it's weird that she's wearing a skirt and gloves and nothing else, remember that the Warners were (according to their fictional history) created in 1930, just two years after Minnie Mouse was introduced wearing the same thing. Her tail sticks out through a hole in the skirt, rather than having to push it out of the way. Since the Warners have thick tails, not skinny ones, that makes sense. Due to her design, Dot has less articulation than her brothers. The articulation is fairly easy to predict at this point: swivel/hinges in the limbs (ankles, knees, wrists, elbows, shoulders) and balljoints for the body (hips, tail, waist, neck). So if she's got all that, what's missing? Ears. Yakko and Wakko both had separate balljoints for each ear, but Dot's aural top-knot is molded in place and thus immobile. So not something you'd be likely to really notice/miss, but it's worth mentioning for completeness' sake. It's not like they change position in the cartoon very much. Dot's accessories are less impressive than her bros': she gets the same stick of dynamite, which this toyline seems to think was a much more important part of the Animaniacs story than it actually was, plus a pool float that we think is supposed to reference Episode 37's "Boot Camping"? That one was green, because it was referencing Tiny Toon Adventures' Plucky Duck, but this one is translucent yellow with pink polka dots. It's not like the duck's head would have been recognizable as Plucky even if it was the right color - the sculpt's missing the tuft of feathers on top of the head, and the shape is more round than pointed. The inner tube is made from a soft enough PVC that you can flex it open and get it around her waits, and there's actually a point of articulation for the head to swivel. Other than that, everything is bodyparts - no, not because she's violent, alternate ones for her. We begin with an alternate bent tail, then seven extra hands: two fists, two splayed, one to hold the dynamite, one holding a rose, and one held flat with a butterfly landing on the palm. How dainty! Finally, she gets not one but two alternate heads! They're so tiny to begin with, it's much easier to give her bonuses than to do the same for the boys. The first is... nearly identical to the normal head? You have to put them next to each other to realize one has the mouth open slightly, the other has the mouth closed. That hardly seems worth it. The other head, though, has the eyes replaced with cute red hearts, to show she's in love with someone or something. Whoever you feel like! The butterfly in her hand? Some horrible monster? Anything! They still could have done swappable faceplates for the same effect, though. Super7's Animaniacs toys have been fairly average, sad to say. We've been waiting since 1993 for action figures of these characters and, being a small company, Super7 always over-charges for its stuff, so between long anticipation and financial commitment, these would have had to be clear homeruns in order to not disappoint anyone. But they're not. They're better than anything we've had from the property before, but that doesn't mean any of them is better than "fine" at most. -- 05/24/23

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