Wedgie Woman is the alter ego form of Tara Ribble.
Appearances
Captain Underpants and the Wrath of the Wicked Wedgie Woman
In Book 5, George Beard and Harold Hutchins' nasty teacher, Ms. Ribble planned on retiring at the end of the school year. She forces everyone to make happy retirement cards for her. The boys make a Captain Underpants versus Wedgie Woman comic book instead (in the book, Captain Underpants is stopped by spray starch, which makes his underwear stiff and uncomfortable and so he loses his powers until he gets some fabric softener from some passing kids). The boys are sent to Benjamin Krupp's office after she reads this. Once there, Ms. Anthrope, the school secretary, made the boys run some errands by letting them pass out "Friday Memo" (a weekly newsletter that shows the events of the upcoming week) to the entire school while she goes out for lunch. Before that, they made their own Friday Memo by using Ms. Anthrope's computer to change a few events.
Later on, when Mr. Krupp learns about them changing letters on the sign and their comic book that they made about Ms. Ribble, he puts them in detention. They defiantly say they won't give Ms. Ribble her card. Mr. Krupp steals the card and says he'll give it to her personally. The boys secretly smile at how effective their use of reverse psychology was.
Mr. Krupp gives Ms. Ribble the card, which reads "Your one hot mama!" on the front. On the inside it reads "Will you marry me? Signed, Mr. Krupp." Ms. Ribble "agrees". On Saturday, the wedding is held in the school auditorium. Mr. Krupp is too shocked by the whole wedding thing to admit the truth that he doesn't want to marry her. George and Harold insist that the wedding should be in their math test schedule, which is on Monday.
At the wedding, George and Harold have no tricks planned (for once). On the altar, just before they get married, Ms. Ribble breaks up with Mr. Krupp, saying she couldn't marry him because he has a funny-looking nose (the joke is that the two of them have identical noses). Mr. Krupp is angry and says he never wanted to marry her anyway: it was just a trick of George and Harold's. Due to that, Ms. Ribble totally goes berserk and ruins the wedding. Ms. Ribble tries to attack the boys, but they luckily escape.
When school restarts, Ms. Ribble privately tells them that she has dropped their B's and C's to F's and G's (grade lower than an F. In Harold's opinion, there is no such thing as a G in the grading system), so they have to stay back in fourth grade.
George and Harold decide to use their 3-D Hypno-Ring to hypnotize Ms. Ribble into changing their grades back to normal. They try to be safe about this, giving her instructions not to do anything weird like turn into Wedgie Woman and try to take over the world. Unfortunately, it turns out that the 3-D Hypno-Ring, when used on a woman, accidentally causes her to do the opposite of what she is hypnotized to do.
Ms. Ribble declares herself to be Wedgie Woman and attacks George and Harold in their clubhouse. Their carton of Extra-Strength Super-Power Juice, (from book 3) accidentally lands on her head, so she now has super-powered intelligence and hair. Her hair forms into several tiny hands, which can extend great distances, which is ideal for giving someone a wedgie and holding them hostage in midair.
Wedgie Woman kidnaps the boys and uses her super-powered intelligence to build robot copies of the two boys, Robo-George and The Harold 2000. George thinks the Extra Strength Super Power Juice must have soaked into her brain. The robots are equipped with Spray Starch to take away Captain Underpants's powers.
The robots pose as George and Harold, except the two of them behave perfectly. When Mr Krupp snaps his fingers at The Harold 2000, he turns himself into Captain Underpants. He thought that the Robots were the real George and Harold and asked them to help (he stated that he's surprised that they were larger and can fly). He was defeated by the two robots and their spray starch. Meanwhile, George and Harold who were watching the action on Wedgie Woman's TV (built with a fish tank and an electric toothbrush) manage to escape from Wedgie Woman's deathtrap to find Captain Underpants.
Wedgie Woman then gives wedgies to all the police officers in town and hangs them from traffic signs, aided by her two robots, which have expanded to gigantic size. George and Harold find Captain Underpants, who is convinced the spray starch took away his powers (it didn't) thanks to the placebo effect (mistakenly called the placenta effect by George and Harold).
George and Harold make a comic book about how Captain Underpants is impervious to spray starch if he says, "I summon the power of Underpantyworld!” Captain Underpants reads the book, says the words and regains his powers. He then defeats the two robots.
At the showdown between Captain Underpants and Wedgie Woman, George runs away, shouting to Harold that he's going to get rid of his box of "EXTRA-STRENGTH SPRAY-STARCH." Hearing this, Wedgie Woman steals all the cans in the box and sprays them everywhere.
When the cloud of mist clears, everyone's hair is gone, including the Wedgie Woman's, which renders her powerless.
Captain Underpants is about to send Wedgie Woman to jail, but George and Harold assure him they can take care of this. Captain Underpants is told to go back to the school, put Mr. Krupp's clothes on and pour water on his head and he goes off to do that. The boys then hypnotize Ms. Ribble again with the 3-D Hypno-Ring, to make her lose her super powers, forget everything that happened in the last two weeks, & bake fresh chocolate chip cookies for the class everyday, thanks to the Reverse Reverse-Psychology.
Former Powers and Abilities
Genius Level Intellect: Using components from household items, she was able to construct her robots, Robo-George and The Harold 2000. This is also shown when she thought to cleverly use spray starch to demoralize Captain Underpants as mentioned in George and Harold's comic book.
Hair Arms & Hands: Upon having her hair doused with "Extra-Strength Super-Power Juice" her hair gained the ability to transform into a seemingly infinite amount of arms made of her hair, which she uses to give her targets wedgies with. The arms are apparently rather strong, as each arm is seen lifting a police officer by his underwear. Ms. Ribble no longer had this ability after returning to her old self.
* Evil Wedgie Robo-Claw (comic only): Wedgie Woman was depicted in George and Harold's comic book as having a robotic claw that could extend out of her hair part as she had become a cyborg. She would use the claw to give wedgies just as the actual Wedgie Woman would with her hair arms. She was also depicted as having super strength and speed as via her cybernetics ("we can rebuild her, make her faster, stronger, eviler!") It remains unknown whether or not Wedgie Woman actually had these additional powers, but she may nonetheless, have believed she had them.
Appearances
- Captain Underpants Theme-Song
- Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie
Trivia
- The Wedgie Woman is the only female human villain in the Captain Underpants series.
- Her hair seems to represent Medusa's. Only with arms instead of snakes.
- She is somewhat similar to Princess Shroob from Mario and Luigi Partners in Time.