How many reviews have you read lately where the reviewer says something along the lines of “I’m not a Power Ranger fan but…” Well, get ready to read another one, because I’m not a Power ranger fan, but these figures looked too cool to pass up.
I don’t have anything against the Power rangers. Mainly I just wasn’t the demographic the show was aimed at when it started airing. I have a systemic aversion to anything that’s not a cartoon on Saturday mornings, so that was a strike against it. At the time I thought it was some kind of live-action Voltron derivative. Of course, at the time I didn’t know that Voltron wasn’t originally Voltron, nor did I know that MMPR followed a long line of similar shows in Japan, with some Power Ranger footage originating from a show called Super Sentai.
Basically before the internet it was ok(ish) to be ignorant.
A cool toy is a cool toy, though, and Hasbro has come out of the gate hard with their first wave of Power rangers figures. Brand new sculpts and excellent articulation…I was interested right away. Bandai Japan has been releasing figures through their S.H. Figuarts line, but a 20 dollar figure is much more palatable than 40 and up. But I already get enough stuff. Do I really need to start a brand new line? Do I? I figured I could just get the villains. The villains always had great, wacky, insane designs, so limiting myself to just the villains would be cool. Off I went in search of Lord Zedd.
Well, Lord Zedd is proving to be a bitch and a half to find, so in my desperation to get all tactile and sexytime with one of these Power ranger figures, I decided to pick up the red ranger. It’s only one figure, I tells myself.
I tells myself this while now making plans to pick up the white dude and the blue dude and whatever else they make in this stupid line. Look at what you made me do, stupid sexy toyline!!
After playing around with this figure for a while, I realized a simple thing that has made me shake my head and cry a little on the inside: I will never be satisfied with a Marvel legends Spider-Man figure that doesn’t have this level of articulation. It’s a mass market toy with mobility very near import levels and it has ruined me.
The figure has all the standard double joints with a great range, and butterfly joints that also do the job very well. One of shoulderflies was stuck, but a few hours in the freezer and I got that satisfying little *tic” sound that signaled it had been freed. Nothing is more satisfying than the sound of plastic breaking free of whatever factory-induced calamity that has befallen it.
The ankles and neck get a good range, the hips are good. Everything “standard’ works very well. All the normal points of articulation have a very nice clearance. If the figure rested on those points, it still would have been a fun figure to play with. But it’s the torso articulation that really does the job.
The recent Marvel Legends Beast featured this particular scheme, and it made him way more poseable than an ordinary figure. It’s a combo upper torso ball combined with an ab crunch that really puts a zing in his step. He can crouch forward, bend, go side to side, swivel lean back…it’s a huge range of motion and kicks all the rest of his mobility up a notch. The joints have been engineered with plenty of clearance all the way around so nothing gets in its own way. I already need the new upcoming ML Nightcrawler to be scrapped and remade on a body with this articulation. Damn it!
The red ranger comes with two sets of hands. He has two gripping hands, and a fist/karate chop hand set. The pegs are long and slide in and fit snugly in the sockets. They’re easy to swap. In addition to the extra hands, he comes with an unmasked head that features the face-printing tech. It’s mostly good, but the eyebrows seem a little off on mine, and a bit glossy. Hasbro’s face printing is really stepping up the real-people likenesses but there does seem to be the occasional aiming problem with certain figures. This one makes him look a little more surprised than he probably needs to be. I’m going to be leaving the helmet on him at all times anyway.
He also comes with a sword and a pistol. I like the aesthetics of the sword, it has a techy feel to it, and the black and yellow color scheme is a change from typical sword colors. It’s not as tight in his grip as I’d like—especially after the pistol stretches his hand—but it’s passable. I could heat his hand up ad squeeze it tighter if I really wanted it to fit snugger.
The pistol, however, fits securely in his right hand. The left hand has two fingers molded together so the pistol doesn’t fit as well in that hand. Not sure what that’s about. There’s an electricity effect that can be placed on the sword. I have no idea what he “does” so I’m assuming the sword produces electricity. I am a genius.
Looking at on-screen references, the figure looks like it replicates his in-show appearance quite well. This Power Ranger series is dinosaur-themed, so there’s a dino-theme to the costume, with the dino-esque mask and the teeth motif. Teeth motif. Moteeth? He does have mo teeth. The arms have sculpted scales. There’s a painted dinosaur on his chest. The helmet looks like a dinosaur with an open mouth. I like all this so much more than I ever thought I would…
Over the past quarter-century, Power ranger merchandise has been as almost as ubiquitous as Star Wars merchandise. At the height of its popularity the toy aisles were practically choking on it. But in all that time I never felt the slightest urge for any of it. But now Hasbro has gone and made a line of Power Ranger figures that I will not only be keeping an interested eye on, but will be actively collecting. I can’t say I will be a fan of the show—it’s still not really my thing—but the toys…the toys. Oh the toys. I really really needed to spend more money on toys.
