You won't find these guys on TV, unless you have your computer hooked up to the set. This is an online cartoon, but there are also DVD's available that compile many of the best episodes. If you hit the website, you can watch many of the shows right there. And yes, I did read that this show is now hitting the G4 network, but is that *really* tv? Hey, not in my area yet!

Tonight's review covers two of the action figures based on the show - Cuddles the rabbit and Shifty the raccoon. It's nice to know that while we can no longer have fun stereotyping people, we can still stereotype the animals. These are produced by Stevenson Entertainment Group, who have also done Alias figures and Chitty, Chitty, Bang Bang, among others.

I picked these up at my local Hot Topic, where they were 75% off the original $16 price tag, or just four bucks each. That's a good deal, so if you're interested, I'd head down to the mall right about now.

If you have any questions, comments, or suggestions, you can always reach me at mwc@mwctoys.com. If you enjoy this review, take a minute to check out my other site at Michael's Review of the Week, and let me know what you think. Now on to the review!

"Happy Tree Friends Cuddles and Shifty"

The Happy Tree Friends must be doing pretty well - they had quite a large booth at the San Diego Comic Con this year, showing episodes on a big screen. It was drawing quite a crowd too, since everyone loves to see the cute and cuddly get destroyed.

Packaging - ***
The packaging follows the same fairly basic appearance as the cartoon, with bright colors and basic designs. I like the boxes though, and they hold up really well to shelf abuse. They are also easy to store for the MIBBers, and are *somewhat* collector friendly, although there's a few more twisties than you might like.

Sculpting - ***1/2
These are about as dead on to the cartoon as you can get, although you should keep in mind that the cartoon is pretty simple. Still, we've seen often enough that a company can take the simplest 2-D design and manage to botch it completely up in 3-D. Thankfully, SEG didn't have that problem with the line.

When you buy one of these figures, you're really buying two. Almost. Shifty comes with two heads, two tails, and two complete torso/leg set ups. One is his nice, normal self, while the second is him sliced and diced. I'm not sure why my Shifty had the exact same head sculpt for both heads - I was expecting something in pain - but maybe I got stiffed by a factory error. The rest of his parts come bloody and sectioned. You can put the second body together, showing off just his oozing blood, or split it up into the various cutlets.

Cuddles comes the same way, but his second head shows the serious damage that can occur when you're not careful. he also comes with an extra arm (actually, I thought there was two extra arms, making a complete extra figure, but I couldn't find the second one in the package. Another factory error perhaps?). The additional left arm is ripped off at the wrist, exposing the bone.

Both gruesome sculpts look great, taking their cue from the cartoons themselves. I'm sure you'll come up with all kinds of interesting ways to display them!

Paint - ***1/2
The paint scheme here is bright and basic, with bold colors and lots of them, but very little detail work, at least on their exterior.

The interior has some additional details though, since you can see their pink and red insides. There's also plenty of blood dripping down from the cuts and wounds, and while it's cartoony, it's pretty distrubing as well.

The quality of the application is good, with less bleed than I expected. While there aren't many small details, the finish and colors of the larger areas are consistent and clean.

Articulation - **1/2
Like most cartoon based action figures, these have the bare minimum of articulation. There's neck, ball jointed shoulders, and cut legs. Of course, there's the additional cuts through the wounded torso, but I'm not counting those.

There aren't a lot of poses you can do, but the basics are here. The ball jointed arms pop off, so they can be popped on the other torso cutlet, but they don't fit as tightly to this second body. On both Cuddles and Shifty I had trouble keeping the arms on the wouldned version, but they fit nice and tight on the regular torso.

Accessories - ****
Since I'll be placing value on these as if you were buying one figure, that makes all those extra body parts accessories, which really boosts the score. How many figures do you find - especially in this scale - that have all those body parts to almost build a complete new version?

On top of extra torso, head, tail and arm pieces, both figures also come with an identical Happy Tree Friends stand, and a small cardboard background. The figures stand fine on their own, but the display stands and background pieces match up well with the cartoon style.

If that's not enough, Shifty also comes with a bank vault. He's been a bad boy. It would have been really nice if his hat was removable, but you can't win them all I suppose.

Fun Factor - ***1/2
These are like a twisted version of Mister Potato Head. Hey, that gives me an idea...

Okay, so you have to be somewhat sick to find these 'fun', but I suspect a lot more folks are sick than are willing to admit it. Besides, it's all good, clean fun - well, except for the maiming and the slicing and the killing.

And no - these cartoons are NOT for kids. Trust me on that one. Unless you want your kids growing up as twisted as your weird Uncle Larry, then keep them away from this stuff. However, for the more discerning older twisted freak, like me, these things are hilarious.

Value - ****
I'm grading these on what I paid, which is what you should pay if you have a local Hot Topic. At the bargain price of $4 each, these are a steal. Even at the original 50% off markdown, they are a solid bargain, but if you're paying $16 each, you can drop this score two whole stars.

Overall - ***1/2
This overall score is helped out by the bargain basement price, and if I was paying full price I would have cut a half star off the overall. Still, if you love the cartoon you'll love these, because they manage to carry the same sick, twisted vision right into the three dimensional world.

After buying these two, I realized that both Shifty and Cuddles are sliced up in a similar way. Have no fear, not ever figure is the same. For example, Giggles has holes in his (her?) body for arrows to fit through. So yes, there is a little variety in the mayhem you can put on the shelf.

Where to Buy -
Hot Topic would be the place to go, although I'm betting you can also find them at places like Spencers or various online specialty stores.

Related Links -
Be sure to hit the Happy Tree Friends website, and check out the cartoons for yourself. One of my favorites is The way you make me wheel, featuring both Lumpy the Moose and Handy the amputee beaver, two of my favorite characters.