We’re wrapping up our look at the Power Rangers Lightning Collection with one of the more intriguing character designs in the bunch, Anubis “Doggy” Cruger a.k.a The Shadow Ranger from Power Rangers S.P.D.
The Shadow Ranger comes in a nice, bright white box with a large graphic representation of the Shadow Ranger on the front and sides. I accidentally stomped on the box by accident, but the figure held up well despite my wayward feet.
The Shadow Ranger comes with an alternate head, a collar for the neck for the alternate head, two grip hands, a left fist, a right two-finger salute hand, a sword, a cell-phone looking device, and an energy effect for the sword.
The alternate head is what drew me to this figure. He’s a weird, blue alien dog-like creature from the planet Siris. Between that and his name Anubis “Doggy” Cruger, they are laying on the dog references pretty darn thick and I have to say it does this Walrus Man fan’s heart good.
In order to give the unmasked look the character’s thicker neck, the figure comes with a little collar piece that you can slip over the regular neck once you pop the head.
It’s a pretty effective transformation with a little extra piece. It’s interesting that I haven’t been able to find a picture of Kruger wearing this outfit without the mask, he’s usually got a different uniform on, so I’m not sure how accurate this is (not an expert), but I like that they give you a dog version and masked version in one figure.
I believe the thing that looks like a cell phone is called a Patrol Morpher and it has a number of functions including capturing criminal monsters in a variation on the Ghostbuster’s ghost trap.
It’s got some nice detail and printing on it and one of the grip hands seems to be specifically designed to hold it.
The sword has a nicely detailed hilt and fits securely in the hook on the belt. There is a bit of clunky extra flashing around the mouth of the stylized dog head on the sword hilt that detracts from the detail.
The hand that holds the Patrol Morpher works fairly well to hold the sword two-handed.
The energy piece wraps around the sword and I think it’s meant to convey the power-up sequence from the show. It looks pretty cool wrapped around the sword in general.
The two fingered salute hand looks to be specifically designed to recreate some of Doggy’s poses in the show. The hands swap out fairly easy, though the right grip hand spins really loosely.
I fixed that by applying some dots of superglue on the peg and letting them dry before reinserting the hand. The extra friction from the dots keeps it from spinning like a pinwheel.
The figure matches the source material really well and has a normal human build, and is a bit bulkier than the teenage White Ranger.
The helmeted head has a nice detailed badge on the forhead and sharp, appealing lines.
The articulation is very good with:
- Swivel/hinge shoulders, neck, hips, wrists, and ankles
- Ball and socket head and upper torso
- Swivel biceps, boots, and thighs
- Double hinged knees and elbows
- Butterfly hinged pecs
- Single hinged lower torso
All the articulation has pretty good range of motion with the double hinged joints getting more than 90 degree bends and the upper torso ball getting a nice tilt. The only articulation issue for me is that the chest armor and thickness of the biceps does lessen the effectiveness of the butterfly hinges slightly.
Paint is very nice with cool metallic blue on the armor pieces and some nice detailed hits on the stripes and chest number. It looks like he’s missing some metallic blue paints on the gloves, which seems to be a theme for this wave and Overwatch figures so I wonder if it’s a tradeoff they are making to afford the multiple hands.
Overall, this is another fun figure for the line. I was initially drawn to him by the odd alien head, but I actually enjoy the helmet head a bit more having the figure in hand. It’s a sleeker look.
