Yesterday I reviewed Celestia and Octavia, and today we have the Cutie mark Crusaders joining Spike! These guys are brand new and were released surprisingly quickly after their announcements, but they've been in production for quite a while if our interview is any indication, so time to see how they are!
Now go read about them and get flooded with pictures below.
Starting with Spike, who is probably one of the rarest of the licensee plushies over the years due to requiring a completely new pattern. Symbiote decked him out in all of his details, from the back and head frills to his cheek things. He even has the little swirly scale bit on his leg.
Like most Symbiote plushies, they go hard on the details via embroidery, and his belly scales are all lined up and embroidered as you'd expect. When I first saw Spike back when he was revealed, I thought his jowls looked a little weird. But having the actual plushie now, they work a lot better in person and from different angles.
Overall, it's great to finally have a Spike with a show-accurate style in the plushie world, and this one is now slouch at all in delivering on it. He's also much cheaper than the ponies, coming it at only $20.
Next up we dive into Apple Bloom, the first of their filly-sized patterns, and I have to say they did a great job of it. The fillies are all really cute, and just as detailed as their larger counterparts. Here's a bunch of shots of Apple Bloom from various angles so you can see what she looks like up above.
As expected, she has her trademark bow, which attaches between the two mane pieces on her head. Like Octavia yesterday, her mane lines are all embroidered, and her cutiemarks look great.
Sweetie was always my favorite CMC, and her much more complex mane is fully fleshed out in plushie form. She has the swirls you'd expect out of her stitched and formed out of separate pieces.
Her unique feature of course is the horn, which looks about how you'd expect with some thicker embroidery to make the grooves pop.
And finally, we have Scootaloo! There was a plushie of her years ago from a company I forgot the name of that got her colors slightly wrong, and I'm happy to see that their choices here are much better. She also comes equipped with that huge rooster mane cut that points her spikes up as they should.
The embroidery in her mane and tail is thick to represent the lines just like Apple Bloom, and for unique features she's rocking her trademark tiny wings.
Overall, I really like all four of these for different reasons, but mainly because we finally have a proper CMC set that has fully molded plushie manes and embroidery. It's about time. When 4DE died back in the day we were all so beyond disappointed. I can't wait to see what Symbiote has cooking next, especially since the interview mentioned much larger pony sizes. Will we finally have competition for the lifesize market that dominates our wallets these days?
Anyway, get these over here:
