I was immediately intrigued by the look of the new Power Rangers Lightning Collection figures when they were announced, but I was slow to hop on a pre-order, so I missed Lord Zedd initially. I did see him at Target before the sale date, but was denied at the register. I haven’t seen him in a store since, but thanks to a tip from our friend at Preternia.com I was able to score the Zedd figure from Amazon the other day. Let’s take a look!
Lord Zedd comes in a snazzy white box with some really cool, minimalist artwork on the front and sides. I like how the boxes sport the different accent colors for each figure because it makes it easier to spot who is on the peg at a glance.
Zedd comes with his staff, a grenade, a lightning effect, two claw hands, a left fist, and a right grip hand. The pegs on the hands do feel a little overlong and I could see them bending if you don’t put the force directly in the center of the hand when swapping.
The claw hands are nicely expressive and both can actually hold the staff fairly well which is nice even if it makes the grip hand slightly redundant. I like the options.
The grenade, which I believe is the device Zedd uses to make the monsters grow large, is a solid little piece that fits well in the left claw hand, but not so well in the right.
The staff is cast in a gray plastic with some slight metallic quality and is pretty solid with no warping or bending out of the box. The edges are fairly sharp, but the plastic not terribly convincing as metal.
The lightning effect should be familiar if you have any of the recent movie Thor figures. It’s not the same sculpt, but it’s very similar in design and is cast in soft plastic and can wrap around figures or weapons.
The sculpt is really cool. They packed in a ton of gross, exposed muscle tissue detail into the body and the build is solid and a good match for the show.
The armor bits look sharp and the translucent plastic tubes running along the figure add a creepy look and adds a complexity to the whole figure.
The head is a little less cool. It has a lot of great detail (the exposed brain is fantastic), but I feel like the recesses in the mouth grill could have been deeper.
I wonder if it would have been better if the mask was a separate piece so the visor could have a translucent red lens. As it is, the visor is just a coat of metallic red paint and doesn’t quite match the impression I get from the show.
Articulation is very good on this figure. Zedd has:
- Swivel/hinge shoulders, wrists, neck, hips, and wrists
- Double hinged elbows and knees
- Ball and socket upper torso and head
- Hinged lower torso
- Swivel biceps and thighs
- Hinged butterfly pec joints
Zedd has really good movement and I especially like the way the two ab articulation points work together. The ankles are somewhat limited by the surrounding armor and even though he has double knees, they basically get a 90 degree bend due to the thickness of the parts.
I also like how the tubes don’t really get in the way of movement much. A couple times they popped out of the peg where they attach to the knee area, but they plugged back in easily, so I think it was designed to work this way.
Paint is a mixed bag. I mentioned earlier that I don’t care for the plastic quality on the staff and I think it could use a coat of metallic paint. The metal armor parts look pretty good, though the character really has chrome armor, I can understand that they aren’t going to chrome soft plastic pieces and what they used is pretty shiny.
I think the mask could use a wash between the slots on the mouth grill too.
He also seems like a slightly duller red than I would expect. There is a nice wash, but I think the initial red of the body is a little too dark and should be just a tad brighter.
I did notice that his hands should have metallic pieces of armor on parts of his fingers but these were omitted for some reason (I assume cost).
Overall I think this is a really successful figure despite my critiques. He’s really poseable and such a unique and weird design that he works on a cool figure level for me. He’s tons of fun to pose and play with.
