Tag Archives: mighty morphin power rangers

April 27, 2023

Super7 Mighty Morphin Power Rangers Ultimate Tyrannosaurus Dinozord

By Joe

Today we are wrapping up our look at Wave 1 of Super7’s Mighty Morphin Power Rangers Ultimates! action figures with the lone zord of the wave: the Tyrannosaurus Dinozord. The T-Rex zord was the vehicle of the Red Power Ranger and main body of the Megazord. It was basically the only one of the original five zords that could function on its own in a meaningful way. The other four rarely did anything, but on occasion, the T-Rex went into battle and took on some monsters in its dino form. As such, it made sense for Super7 to do a figure of this particular zord since it can standalone as an action figure while something like the mastodon or pterodactyl really would not. And it’s also because Super7 either isn’t allowed to produce, or has no desire to produce, zords that can combine into other zords like the famous Megazord.

For me, a very casual Power Rangers fan, the appeal of this line is that Super7 can produce zords that are more accurate to the show. Whenever a company makes a combining one, they have to work within that framework. The zords in the show existed as both models, or puppets, and as actors in a suit. When the Megazord was formed, it then transitioned to a costume which could basically cheat the proportions. As a result, any figure that does the same isn’t going to resemble the one on TV. It does in a general way, but usually the proportions are off (especially the head) and any articulation the figure has needs to be able to be integrated without causing an issue for one of the individual components. When I look at my vintage Bandai Megazord, it almost feels like they prioritized the individual zords over the Megazord. Or, they simply determined that was the best way to go. The head is tiny, but since it needs to fit inside the head of the T-Rex that was something that couldn’t really be avoided. The shoulders are huge as well and the body is quite thick. There’s also the issue of the T-Rex tail which kind of just disappears. It’s still a tremendously fun toy, especially for 1993, but for collectors that want a screen accurate Megazord it’s not really going to cut it.

For the T-Rex, the same is basically true as it needed to be more narrow to accommodate the transformation. The head also needs to fit in the chest and something has to be done with that tail. Ignoring that allows Super7 to just look at the character onscreen and let that dictate where the figure goes. It obviously can’t scale with the Power Rangers in the line so that part is essentially made up, but Super7 is a company that tends to feel bigger is better and that’s certainly the case with the T-Rex. The box alone is massive. I was pretty amused when I got my figures in the mail as I ordered just the Green Ranger, Goldar, and the T-Rex and each box was different in size. I knew this one would likely be the biggest, but I still wasn’t quite prepared. And that’s mostly due to Super7 packaging the figure from the side and leaving the tail fixed. They could have sent it out disassembled, but what’s the fun in that?

The Tyrannosaurus stands at roughly 8″ in height. I say roughly because this is a character that’s always going to have its knees bent to some degree so I’m basically selecting what I feel is a neutral position. Lengthwise, he’s going to need about 10.5″ of shelf space for that tail and that’s with a gentle curve in it. Not only is the figure pretty big, but it has some heft too. It’s solid which helps give it more of a premium feel over the other figures in the line and really over just about every other Super7 figure I own. And in terms of show accuracy, I’d say it’s pretty damn close. There’s a lot of paint on this figure and the metallic portions have a nice shine to them. There’s some black linework on the shins and around the silver portions of the tail. There’s lots of places that are just blocks of color consistent with the look of the show and most of the paint is cleanly applied. There’s a little slop on the linework on the left shin of mine and the right eye could have been better. It’s also missing linework on the top of the head which is disappointing (the paint is present on the promo images) as the head is one of the few places where there’s a plastic look to the figure. Basically everywhere on the body, Super7 decided to paint this guy, except for the head which is mostly red plastic. Normally, you would see the opposite as we did with The Simpsons since the eyes are naturally drawn to the head. I wish they had painted it, but it is what it is. The proportions also strike me as a touch imperfect when comparing it to the suit on the show. The head should probably be a little bigger and the hands boxier. The knees also should indent on the sides, but here they’re basically flush, and the red areas around the shoulders should be more rounded off. These are nitpicks, for the most part, and the only thing I really miss when comparing it to the screen is just more of that black linework., but I think most people will be happy with how this figure looks.

This one is probably not going to scale with any Power Rangers in your collection.

There may be some temptation to display this guy with past iterations of the Dinozords. I only have one such era of releases, the 1993 and 94 stuff from Bandai. I did also get the Hasbro Megazord for my son, but that thing is pretty small and neither vintage nor collector grade. As for the old Bandai stuff, this figure isn’t that much bigger than the Tyrannosaurus released back then. He’s just a little taller, but way more bulky. The vintage one does have the proper linework on the head though so at least it has that going for it. The Dragonzord is another one some may want to place with this figure and, size wise, it more or less works. That Dragonzord is pretty damn chunky and not exactly screen accurate, but it’s a fun companion. If you want to go battle mode with your Dragonzord, then it suddenly dwarfs the T-Rex. That’s to be expected since the Megazord does the same to the Dragonzord. There was apparently just no way to get those forms right as a combining toy, and since it was for kids, it’s not like Bandai was that concerned about accuracy. This figure will presumably scale much better with future Super7 zords.

Naturally, a big, robot, dinosaur isn’t going to articulate particularly well. Super7 basically got most of the joints one would expect into this figure, it’s just not particularly functional. The head is on what feels like a double ball peg and can look up and down pretty well. The large panels on the side of the head prevent natural rotation in that the head will always want to turn to the side when trying to rotate, but it has a lot of room for nuance posing. The base of the neck is where you get your rotation and it’s on a ball hinge so you can get a little extra “up” range as well. For the arms, it’s the silver parts that move. The “shoulders” are on ball hinges and can move up and down and you get about 90 degrees of movement. Their range out to the side is very minimal. There are elbows that get you something less than 90 with a swivel as well and the wrists swivel and hinge and those are fine. There’s a basic twist in the waist area which begins where the silver portion of the chest ends. The hips are big ball hinges that go out the side a small amount and rotate a minimal amount. The knees are hinged joints that barely move and are rather useless and the joint is mostly going to be used for a swivel as the lower leg can rotate there a decent amount. The ankles are on hinges that don’t go back very far, but do go forward a decent amount. There is an ankle rocker but the range is pretty limited, but it’s enough to accommodate the range at the hips. The tail is on a series of ball joints. The first segment doesn’t move, but each one after that does so you get full rotation at each segment and a little up and down movement that allows the tail to be curled. If you have a heavy duty stand, you can even get this guy into his kicking attack pose where he stood on his tail in the show. Lastly, there’s also a hinged jaw and that works fine.

There’s 30 years of toy advancements staring right at you.

I’m actually surprised at how comparable they are in size.

The Tyrannosaurus isn’t going to do a whole lot on your shelf aside from stand there and look cool. I like the range at the head as it imparts some personality, even though I think the suit in the show didn’t allow for that. The hips are limited, but allow the stance to be widened which looks nice, or you can go for a more straight up and down pose. There’s also enough range going forward at the hips that the figure can be posed like one would pose an actual T-Rex which is more horizontal. It’s a pretty cool look, though not something you would have ever seen on television out of this character. It’s also easy to stand and there’s not much rub at the joints that will impact the paint as they mostly go as far as they’ll go and then stop. In the end, I think it’s fine as this isn’t supposed to do a whole lot and it’s technically more articulated than it is in the show.

Here’s some tiny Jasons for your dinosaur to play with.

If you like novelty coins, you get this too.

The accessories for this figure are also another area of limitation. What really can this thing even come with? Super7 decided we needed some hand options so we get a set of fists, open hands, and more neutral hands. I’m a little surprised they didn’t just make the hands articulate, but this is honestly probably better for us. There’s also a pair of mini, in-scale, Red Ranger figures. One is posed with the hands on the hips and the other is in a summoning pose. They’re very minimally painted as they’re just red, slug, figures with the white of the gloves, boots, and belts applied. I certainly wouldn’t expect a fully painted figure at this size, but I feel like those tiny, novelty, figures are better painted than this. Adding a white diamond to the chest would have helped to break it up a bit and some black for the visor. Without it, these look too cheap to really do much with. Lastly, we get a replica Power Coin that features the snarling T-Rex on one side and the zord symbol (I think that’s what it is) on the reverse. It’s a really heavy, chunk, of metal and it features some shading which looks nice. It’s neat, but not exactly practical and I have no idea what I’ll end up doing with it. I wasn’t expecting much, but I do think we could have used an effect piece for the mouth cannons. I honestly don’t know if it ever used them in the show, but who cares if it didn’t? Some little blast effects or something like a breath attack would have been pretty damn cool.

Making friends with the other dinosaurs. This guy will probably pair nicely with the upcoming Grimlock Ultimates! from the Transformers line.

Ultimately, which is how I pretty much have to end a review of a Super7 Ultimates! release, I think this figure gets the job done. It’s supposed to be a more screen-accurate depiction of the Tyrannosaurus Dinozord from the TV show and it succeeds in that department probably better than any other release I’ve seen. There have been some really cool, and really expensive, Megazords over the years, but usually the T-Rex has to be compromised in some way to facilitate the transformation. Here, we don’t have to worry about that. Aside from some missing paint on the head, I’m really happy with how this figure turned out. It’s a chunky, hunk of plastic that moves about as well as can be expected and will look great in any Power Rangers collection. He doesn’t scale at all with the Rangers, which is to be expected, but will look fine battling someone like Goldar and I assume the monsters to come will follow suit. For me, this line is all about the zords and monsters so I’m generally pleased with what I’ve seen. I decided to pass on the Yellow Ranger and Putty, so this will be my final review of the first wave. I do plan on picking up the Dragonzord when it comes out and eventually I’ll have the Megazord as well. And like Goldar, this is a Super7 release that actually meets its asking price of $55. I’m actually surprised they didn’t try to get more for it as they will with the Megazord so I guess be happy for that. This is an easy recommend for me though.

Looking for more Power Rangers toy coverage? Well, look no further:

Super7 Mighty Morphin Power Rangers Ultimate Green Ranger

We continue to finally offload some long standing preorders this year and up next is Mighty Morphin Power Rangers from Super7. It was June 2021 when these figures were announced to the surprise of many. Why? Because Power Rangers are now owned by Hasbro, probably the biggest toy producer in the world who has its…

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by Joe April 13, 2023April 4, 2023

Super7 Mighty Morphin Power Rangers Ultimate Goldar

Last week, when we took a look at the first Power Ranger in Super7’s line of Ultimates! action figures based on Mighty Morphin Power Rangers I expressed some surprise that Hasbro would license out this brand since it competes with their own Lighting Collection. I do feel like the actual Rangers are pretty safe. People…

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by Joe April 20, 2023April 13, 2023

Bandai Mighty Morphin Power Rangers Megazord

It was now a couple of weeks ago I posted about some toys I always wanted as a kid, but never got. Shortly after, I rectified some of those decades old injustices by purchasing the Dragonzord with Green Ranger from Bandai’s Mighty Morphin Power Rangers line of action figures from 1993. The Dragonzord was my…

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by Joe June 30, 2020June 25, 2020

Leave a comment | tags: action figures, hasbro, mighty morphin power rangers, red power ranger, super7, super7 ultimates!, tyrannosaurus dinozord | posted in Television, toys

April 20, 2023

Super7 Mighty Morphin Power Rangers Ultimate Goldar

By Joe

Last week, when we took a look at the first Power Ranger in Super7’s line of Ultimates! action figures based on Mighty Morphin Power Rangers I expressed some surprise that Hasbro would license out this brand since it competes with their own Lighting Collection. I do feel like the actual Rangers are pretty safe. People who are into MMPR will buy a set of Rangers from both companies and be happy. When it comes to the monsters though then I think Hasbro could have an issue. In truth, the monsters have been a relatively small part of the Lightning Collection. The few that have been released have been of the deluxe variety with an increased cost relative to the Rangers. They’ve also been kind of terrible from what I’ve seen. A few look like they’re sculpted well enough, but Hasbro really cheaped out on the paint apps for most of them and they just look awful as a result. It’s surprising because MMPR is an in-house brand for Hasbro now. I may not like it, but I understand when a Marvel Legends figure or a Star Wars release has less money put into it because those have the additional burden of a licensing fee, but that’s not the cast with Power Rangers.

Goldar has some size on Tommy, and I’m happy to see he doesn’t completely dwarf a Lightning Collection release.

Since Hasbro has declined to make any monsters worth my money, I naturally saw Super7’s line as a potential replacement. I like having villains, especially monster types, that are bigger than the heroes so the larger scale of Super7’s figures didn’t seem like an obstacle to me, but really a potential benefit. Though so far I’ve only committed to buying one such figure, but if it’s any good I may change my mind. And that figure is Goldar. I don’t need or want a big MMPR collection, but Goldar always felt like a character worth having. He’s Rita Repulsa’s general and basically her right hand man…monster. Despite his inability to actually defeat the Power Rangers, he was kept in that position when Lord Zedd usurped Rita’s throne and attempted to take matters into his own hands. As an enemy, I think Goldar was the first monster the Rangers battled in their Megazord, though I also haven’t gone back to watch the show in years so I could be misremembering. I always liked him as a design. He’s some sort of armored wolf, and as the name implies, he seems to like gold. He looks scary, and even though he wasn’t exactly batting a thousand, I always felt like he was a threat to the Power Rangers and not the show’s version of a Bebop or Rocksteady.

It’s probably not screen accurate, but this works for me.

Super7 apparently felt like Goldar was rather important and he was chosen to be the main villain in the first wave of Ultimates! Like Tommy, he comes in the same Ultimates! styled box with a green slipcover over a window box inside. He does get his own “power coin” logo on the slipcover and there’s a bio and still from the show on the back of the inner box. Once removed, Goldar stands a mighty 8″ or so to the top of his head, a touch taller if you count the horns of his helm. He looks rather resplendent in his golden armor which appears to be fully painted. Like the Green Ranger, it looks like Super7 committed to giving us a nice finish by casting the figure in the appropriate color, but then painting over it with the same. It gives the figure a much more “premium” appearance which is a good thing considering he’s priced at $55. The inner parts of his suit are painted red in accordance with the character design and there are a few gems or something painted as well. The face looks really nice as it’s blue with shading around the eyes. The teeth are cleanly painted and the furry…things…that drape over his shoulders look fine too. The crown of his helm is done in a translucent, yellow, plastic that almost looks like stained glass. It’s an unexpected, but welcomed, embellishment. If I am to nitpick the paint I’d first go to the black strap on the calf area which do nothing to convey the illusion of an actual strap. They’re flatly painted and unconvincing. Some of the red could have also been applied cleaner. It’s pretty hazy around the kneepads and some of the hands are a bit messy. In Super7’s defense, the hands are hard to paint as there are gold plates over the digits with red underneath. Hasbro declined to attempt such a thing and I’ll say for the most part they look good enough. I also feel like the feet could have used some shading as they’re the only part that looks “plasticy” to me.

Goldar is also sized well to compete with zords. I’m curious how he’ll stack up against the upcoming Megazord.

I figured we should sneak in a comparison to another Super7 figure featuring some gold accents that a lot of people seemed to have issues with. And we might as well put him up against another big boy in Apocalypse.

As for the sculpt, well there’s really little to complain about. Super7 absolutely nailed the portrait with Goldar which is something I wasn’t sold on with the Lightning Collection release. This looks like the character to me and I feel like if he started talking on my shelf I wouldn’t even be surprised. Most of the body has a nice texture to it as the gold is dented like a golf ball in several parts. I am not an expert on the show, but it looks accurate enough to me. All of the details I associate with the character are present like the giant codpiece and the bundled up tail on his rear. Super7 has received numerous criticisms from me over the years, but rarely is sculpting an issue and this guy is no different. He might really be one of their best which is not faint praise.

This ornately designed chest looks pretty damn nice.

These things are less interesting, but you get five of them!

Goldar has a rather expensive look to him so I was expecting Super7 to skimp on the accessories, but he’s actually pretty robust. For heads, we have two options which are essentially mouth closed and mouth open. Both look great, though I think I like the open one just a little bit more. For hands, we get a whole bunch: fists, gripping with horizontal hinges, gripping with vertical hinges, and open hands. For those gripping hands he has his rather large sword which is painted very nicely with hits of silver and gold and the red gem in the center. He also has his little wing nubbins on the back which can be removed and replaced with open, black, wings that also look quite nice. They’re entirely sculpted in plastic and the feathers are nicely textured and the paint is clean. In addition to all of that, we get some episode specific stuff. There’s an elaborate chest that contains the power coins after they stole them or something. The chest has a hinged lid so it can open and close and the paint job is pretty damn spectacular. Goldar also has the five Badges of Darkness which I think he gave out to the Putties to create evil, clone, Power Rangers. They’re identical and they just resemble grey stones with a light blue gem in the center of a star carving. Nothing special, but those more interested in episode-specific trinkets will get more mileage out of them than I. His extra stuff at least feels more purposeful than most of the stuff the Green Ranger came with.

The alternate head is definitely a keeper.

“I will destroy those teenagers with attitude!”

Goldar is not a character that looks like he’ll move very well, but again, Super7 kind of surprised me here. For starters, his head is on a hinged-ball peg. I do not like that, but at least he looks up and down okay and can turn his head. He just doesn’t really get much in the way of more nuanced poses. His head sits high on the ball, so he gets more than the Green Ranger, but Super7, please just go back to using double ball pegs. The shoulders are the hinged ball joints that peg into the arm and he can lift his arms out to the side past horizontal. This really surprised me as he’s got some rather large shoulder pads, but they do a solid job of getting out of the way. Rotating the arms all around isn’t going to happen, but you get enough. He has a biceps swivel and a single-hinged elbow that can’t quite hit 90. You also get a rotation point at the elbow as well. The wrists rotate and he has the proper hinge for the gripping hands, so that’s a plus. They are a tad loose though and his heavy sword can be a touch finicky to pose, but it seems to hold in position well enough. In the diaphragm, we get what’s probably a ball joint of some kind that lets the figure rotate, but also tilt to the sides. He arches back a little, and crunches forward a little as well. In both cases, it’s more range than I expected. He does have a waist twist below that and some hinged ball joints at the hips. Goldar can just about hit a split before the armor at his hips gets in the way and he can kick forward to almost horizontal, though he can’t really kick back at all. You get some rotation at the thigh and the single-hinged knee can go about 90 degrees. It also rotates a little at the joint. The ankles feature the usual hinge and rocker, though the shape of the plating of the armor does restrict things a bit. The hinge goes back well enough, but you don’t get much forward. The rocker is also limited, but I think you’re going to get enough out of it to keep his feet flat even in some rather wide stances.

He’s not some super-articulated ninja figure, but he can look tough and swing a sword so that works for me.

I would say Goldar articulates pretty well for such a design. I admit, some of that opinion is colored by my low expectations going in which were influenced by both the look of the figure and my own experience with Super7. I think they did a good job though and I don’t really feel like other companies would do much better. Yeah, you could slip in some double joints at the elbows and knees and maybe get a little better than 90, but is that really going to up one’s enjoyment of the figure? I think the easiest point for criticism is the head as Super7 should ditch the hinged ball peg. I suppose a hinged joint in the diaphragm could get more ab crunch? That’s probably a little more expensive to implement though and presents gapping issues usually. He basically reminds me of a NECA figure and his range is pretty comparable to Warduke. And since he has a less restricting his torso, he probably moves better than that figure. That figure is probably a little visually more impressive, but it’s definitely more subjective than usual. At least Super7 is comparing well to something that’s much cheaper since usually they present worse and cost more, a true double whammy.

A lot of people have had a lot of issues with these parts so do be careful.

I think the wings are worth the hassle as they do look rather nice once applied.

One thing I do need to talk about though is the quality control issues people have been having with this figure in particular. I have seen and heard from lots of folks who had issues with the head and wings. I didn’t actually mention the wings in the articulation portion, but they do connect via a ball and socket joint on the figure’s back and they have a hinge as well. The left wing seems fine, but the right is a bit iffy. The socket feels like it’s off just a tiny amount, probably not enough to notice with the naked eye, but it’s noticeably tight. People have been snapping the peg when trying to rotate or use the hinge. I noticed before even inserting that wing that the hinge also stressed the plastic when pushed all the way. I guess naturally that means don’t push it all the way, but it still should not be. With the head, I’ve seen folks have a hard time getting the alternate head on and snapping the post as a result. One person I talked to snapped it just rotating the head after getting it on. I mentioned in the review that the heads seem to sit high on the ball and I think that’s by design to help clear the stuff around his neck. If so, it’s a bad design because every toy collector is going to think they need to seat that head all the way down and if that’s breaking things then Super7 deserves to have to eat some costs replacing them. Just elongate the post, or find another solution, this one feels half-assed. Out of an abundance of caution, I heated the little wing nubs on my figure before removing them and also heated the wings before inserting them. Once in, I’m just leaving them alone as I posed them via the hinge before inserting them. For the head, the default one came off without any issues and I heated the open mouth one before putting it on. It seems fine, but it doesn’t really want to rotate so I won’t force it. I prefer the look of the open wings with the open mouth so I would have been bummed if they had broke in some way. I technically didn’t have any issues with my figure, but I feel like a lot of others had to suffer broken Goldars in order for me to have such an experience. I guess tread lightly and make sure you purchase from a place with a good return policy if it comes to that.

Quality concerns aside, I think this is one of the best Super7 figures I own. It’s rare that they hit in all three phases for me: sculpt, paint, articulation. Usually they try to close the gap by tossing a bunch of junk into the box with their figures, but with Goldar that’s not needed. And better yet, most of his “junk” actually feels purposeful. While I liked the Green Ranger as a figure, I couldn’t help but feel like it was overpriced. With Goldar, I don’t really get that feeling. I think he’s actually pretty damn good and for $55 he’s the rare Super7 figure I can say is worth it. I have a lot of Super7 figures that I’m happy with, but objectively feel are overpriced. Goldar gets to be both objectively and subjectively a good figure. If you’re one of the folks who had a different experience with the head or wings then you might feel differently, but I’m reviewing both the figure and my experience with the figure and for me this is exactly what I wanted out of this character. He looks good with the other releases in the line, and extra menacing with the Lightning Collection Rangers. He can face off with Super7’s Green Ranger, and look good battling the T-Rex zord and he’s probably the star of this inaugural wave. If King Sphinx or Lord Zedd turns out this good then I may need to add some more bad guys to my collection in the future.

Interested in more Power Rangers action figures review? Gives these a shot:

Super7 Mighty Morphin Power Rangers Ultimate Green Ranger

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Leave a comment | tags: action figures, goldar, hasbro, lightning collection, mighty morphin power rangers, super7, super7 ultimates! | posted in Television, toys

April 13, 2023

Super7 Mighty Morphin Power Rangers Ultimate Green Ranger

By Joe

We continue to finally offload some long standing preorders this year and up next is Mighty Morphin Power Rangers from Super7. It was June 2021 when these figures were announced to the surprise of many. Why? Because Power Rangers are now owned by Hasbro, probably the biggest toy producer in the world who has its own line of action figures to sell. This has become somewhat the norm though as Hasbro has licensed out both Transformers and G.I. Joe for action figure lines, both to Super7. Is Super7 just paying a tidy sum that Hasbro is happy to take? Or is it that Hasbro just doesn’t view anything that Super7 could produce as actual competition to what they’re doing? That’s probably likely as Super7 deals in a different MSRP from what Hasbro does and is going for a different aesthetic. Well, sort of. With Transformers, Super7 is doing figures based on the cartoon that don’t transform. Hasbro probably knows that Transformers fans aren’t going to stop buying Transformers that actually transform, so have at it, Super7! With G.I. Joe, Hasbro has the Classified line which is somewhat of a reimaging for the franchise. It’s also in the 20-25 dollar range and sold everywhere. Super7’s G.I. Joe figures are based on the cartoon, in a different scale, and cost roughly twice what Hasbro is putting out so it seems easy to see where the confidence is coming from. With Power Rangers though, that’s a bit more confusing. Super7 is, so far, just doing the Mighty Morphin era of the show, by far the most popular. The figures are 7″ scale and, like the comparison with G.I. Joe, basically double the price of Hasbro’s figures. Conceptually though, they’re not much different since both companies want to mimic the show. The larger scale, more paint, and more accessories also have a chance to make Super7’s offering look a lot better than what Hasbro is doing. About the only restriction it would seem placed on the Super7 version is there’s no combing zords. Or Super7 doesn’t have interest in doing those. Either way, out of all of the Hasbro properties Super7 has started making action figures for, this is the one that seems most likely to negatively impact Hasbro’s sales of its own line. As long as it’s good.

The Super7 packaging we all know…and love?

It took awhile, but Super7’s first wave of MMPR figures is here. When the line was first unveiled, I wasn’t sure where my money would go. During the great lockdown that was 2020, I started buying a lot more action figures. One line I dabbled in was the Lightning Collection. At first, I just wanted the Green Ranger as that was the character I liked the most. Toys for MMPR were insanely hard to track down in 93-94 and that toyline from Bandai is one of the black holes of my youth. Also not helping matters was the odd space the show occupied. As a 4th grader when it premiered, I wasn’t sure if I was too old for it. It debuted at the tail end of summer vacation where I lived, so kids like me got to decide if we liked it largely free of peer pressure before school started back up. At that point, it became clear the consensus was that MMPR was a baby show, you would be ridiculed for admitting you liked it, even though it was the highest rated children’s show on Fox so likely everyone was watching it and just lying about it. At any rate, the only figure I would ever own of a Power Ranger as a kid was the auto-morphing Green Ranger and I only got it because we happened upon a fresh case at the store. I was with my grandmother, who was usually good for a toy or something on an outing, but even she was excited by this as she had tried in vain to score Power Ranger toys for my sister and I with little success so she eagerly shoveled out the cash for a pair of figures for the two of us. Had one of my friends been there though when that happened, I may have had to pass out of peer pressure. It was such a conundrum and I hated the pressure to outgrow toys.

I’m only sharing those details to enforce that I have a special attraction to the Green Ranger as a toy because of the scarcity and pressure to not even like the show as a kid. During 2020, I also finally acquired a vintage Bandai Green Ranger and Dragonzord and that was the gateway to get into Lightning Collection. I eventually added the entire MMPR team, but since then, I’ve been able to avoid adding more (not counting the TMNT crossover figures). The first wave from Super7 would contain the Green Ranger, Yellow Ranger, Goldar, Putty, and Tyranosaurus Zord. Goldar had some appeal as I didn’t care for the Hasbro offering, and the T-Rex looked cool, but did I need another set of Rangers? No, but I obviously gave in for my boy Tommy. There was some temptation to just wait it out as Super7 figures have mostly hit clearance at some point, but my will wasn’t strong enough to wait.

The Green Ranger comes in the standard Ultimates! packaging. There’s a green slipcover, which is consistent across the line and not a Green Ranger thing, and once removed you get a nice window box and a bio on the back. The Green Ranger stands at 6.5″ and it’s likely all of the male Rangers to follow will be featured on this same mold. The body is of a lean man which is consistent with the in-suit performer of the show. The shade of green in use for the costume is a more olive green than the brighter color Hasbro used for its figure. There’s really no sculpted folds in the green and the presentation comes across as very clean, and maybe a touch minimalist. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. I suppose Super7 could have attempted to add that sheen the spandex suits seemed to possess, or even dirty up the boots and gloves, but simple was apparently the approach. The dragon shield is the Japanese version that the character was most often shown in as opposed to the frumpy, shiny, one used for the scenes shot in the US. The gold is a somewhat matte, yet metallic, finish and it’s a good approximation for how it looked on TV. There’s some black paint around the diamond and it’s cleanly applied. The helmet has a glossy appearance which also matches up with the show. The paint of the red diamond in the center and the teeth around the visor looks good.

Cool sword, but what is with that massive handle?

Other areas where the paint looks nice is the black trim of the belt and the morpher in the center. The words “Power Rangers” are even legible on the morpher which is impressive. Areas where the paint isn’t so great is the gold trim on the gloves and some of the green triangles on the gloves and boots as well. The right forearm on mine has one triangle that stopped short so there’s a gap of white between it and the gold band. On the left forearm, some of them just weren’t applied with enough opacity, or a residue of some kind got onto it after the fact. I left it in place for the images here, but after completing them I actually swapped the forearm on my left arm with the alternate left arm that comes in the box (we’ll get to that in the accessories). I’m tempted to do the same for the right arm, but my alternate right forearm doesn’t have great paint either. Aside from those issues, I do think he looks rather sharp. This shade of green just does something for me and it was the main driver of why I decided to get this figure. He does have his show accurate, black, holster for the Dragon Dagger on his left hip and all of the details of the gloves and boots are in place. There is one line missing from the helmet that should come out from the diamond and I’m torn on if I wish there was some black linework added there. Would it be too much, or would it add more pop to the presentation? It also looks like the red diamond should be outlined in gold and not the silver Super7 went with. One thing this figure does have over the Hasbro one though is that the white diamonds on the costume are painted on as opposed to ignored. Overall, I think I like the presentation of this figure vs the Lightning Collection offering, but concede it may fall short for those who want a more “stepped out of the TV” version of the character.

Because this is a Super7 Ultmates! release, we get a whole bunch of accessories. Tommy has a set of fist hands, gripping hands with a vertical hinge, gripping hands with a horizontal hinge, open/clenchy hands, a flute playing right hand, and a two-finger gesture left hand that I think is also intended for the flute. The Green Ranger’s signature weapon is his Dragon Dagger and Super7 included a damn fine representation of that weapon. The sculpt looks great and the paint is super impressive. I like that the center button on the handle is depressed so it slots into his special right hand very well. You could also have him wield it with his standard gripping hands too, but that’s not as fun. If you think the Green Ranger needs something more impressive to wield, he does come with the Sword of Darkness. It’s well-sculpted though the paint isn’t as crisp as it is on the dagger. I don’t like the very chunky handle which I’m assuming is show accurate, but maybe a little creative license could have helped here. It does have a real tassel tied to the end which is a nice touch and at least it isn’t warped and bent like the Hasbro version. If you don’t like it though, there’s also the Sword of Power. I don’t remember this thing, but it’s a big, black and gold sword that honestly I think looks stupid, but maybe I’m in the minority. He also has a gun which the internet tells me is the Mega Heater. I don’t remember it at all. It looks rather goofy, a very DIY type of thing made-up for the show, but if you like it you have it.

The figure comes with 3 different heads, but when two of them are this bad do they even count?

If you prefer your Rangers un-morphed and therefore unmighty, there’s a pair of unmasked heads. These are supposed to resemble the late Jason David Frank, but the likeness is terrible. Not helping things is that the paint is also poor. It’s not that it’s sloppy, it’s just unimaginative. The face is a solid color with no shading and the sculpt is too soft to create natural shading so it looks like a blob of nothing. One head features Tommy with a ponytail and the other he has the headband and a more tortured expression as it’s supposed to be Tommy from when he was under the control of Rite Repulsa. If you do happen to like these heads though, swapping them is pretty painless. You also get an activated morpher he can hold which is just as well-painted as the one on the belt. Sure, it makes no sense for him to be already in costume while in the process of morphing, but Super7 apparently felt like it had to include a morpher with each figure. The handle on it can slot onto either the gripping hands or even the clenching hands. It is pretty tiny though, so good luck in not losing it.

Shiny shields and one-color accessories, if that’s how you want to roll.

Lastly, we get some vintage toy inspired accessories. The Green Ranger comes with a shiny, vac-metal, dragon shield that can replace the show-accurate one he comes wearing. This shinier shield is a callback to the 8″ Bandai figure as well as the auto-morphing one and it snaps together in pretty much the same manner. To complete the look we also get a set of spare arms that lack the gold bands around the bicep. The old toys didn’t bother with that detail. They also didn’t have the gold trim on the boots and gloves or the green triangles instead of diamonds, but Super7 can only give you so much. Plus, the extra arms allow you to display your Green Ranger “naked” without the shield as he did pass it off to the Red Ranger on at least one occasion in the show (though I think the gold bands stayed on his arms when he did, but I could be wrong). I doubt many will want to display their figure in that way, but at least Super7 gives you the option. More likely is that some fans will want to buy doubles of the Red and Black Rangers to display with and without the shield. If Super7 had wanted to juice sales of this guy, they would have made the shield specific to him, but it looks like that’s not the case. Lastly, this figure also comes with two vintage style weapons in the form of a gray dragon dagger and a white blade blaster in gun mode. The dragon dagger is a replica of the one that came with the auto-morphing figure while the blade blaster came with the larger scale figure. It’s possible it came with the auto-morphing one too and I’m forgetting it. I don’t have that figure anymore though so I can’t comment on how well they nailed that weapon’s likeness, but the blade blaster is pretty spot-on to the one I have. I don’t know why anyone would ever use it, but it’s here.

I guess the gun is okay, but do we really need it?

The last thing we need to talk about with this figure is articulation. Being that this is a character from a martial arts-based show, he needs to move pretty well. Unfortunately, that has never been Super7’s strong suit. They openly dislike things like double-joints and seem loathe to break-up their sculpts in other ways. They did try something new with this figure, but in general, articulation is the one area where Hasbro’s Lightning Collection is always going to win out. One joint that it does have in common with that line though is the ball-hinged neck. I don’t know why Super7 went in this direction and away from double-ball pegs, but it is what it is. This figure looks up and down pretty well and you get full rotation, but there’s no nuance posing afforded by this design. The helmeted head doesn’t want to slide around on that ball at all. The shoulders are the usual ball-hinge design and they get full rotation while also being able to raise out to the side. The hinge feels tight, maybe due to how the arms had to be designed to be removable easily, while the rotation is pretty loose, but not so loose that he can’t hold a pose. Both style of arms feature a biceps swivel which looks better on the arms without the gold bands, but there’s not much Super7 could do there. The elbows are single-hinged and they do rotate at the joint as well while the wrists swivel and hinge and get plenty of range.

Maybe Super7 includes stuff like this to remind us of how far things have come?

In the torso, we get a joint I absolutely hate. Super7 felt the need to add an ab crunch to these figures and I think that’s fine. With the women Rangers, it’s a diaphragm joint that’s on a ball or double ball peg, but the males get this hinged ab crunch that looks awful. It’s basically an inverted design compared to what most companies will do where the hinge in the middle of the abdomen is the thin portion. Most companies will thicken that part to make it less noticeable and they also often have some chiseled abs to work around that this design wasn’t going to benefit from. Still, what Hasbro did looks much nicer while this looks awful. I continue to be shocked that a company that thinks a double-jointed elbow is too ugly to feature on one of their toys would okay this thing. Just do ball-pegs like the women! To add insult to injury, the joint doesn’t even work that well. The figure bends back a decent amount, but going forward is just so-so. Plus, this figure has the shield to contend with most of the time (though that also helps to hide the joint too) so the joint is largely just an eyesore and they would have been better off skipping it entirely. Below that is a waist twist, which is just a basic waist twist, so it’s fine.

For the hips, Super7 is using a hinged-ball peg that goes into the crotch. Going out to the side, the figure can basically hit a split, or at least it would if the scabbard wasn’t in the way of the left leg. There is a thigh twist there, but it doesn’t have much range and might only get you about 45 degrees rotation going out away from the center of the figure. Kicking forward, the figure can basically do 90 degrees and it can kick back maybe half that, more if you want to really flex the diaper piece that is over the crotch. The knees are single-hinged and can bend back about 90 degrees. There’s a little shimmy to them, but I don’t think it’s truly intentional as the knees are cut in such a way as to prevent rotation. It’s not needed anyway as there’s a boot cut below that and the ankles are the traditional hinged and ankle rocker setup. They work fine as they go back pretty far and the rocker has generous range to help keep the figure’s feet flat on whatever surface you place it on.

You can sort of fake a playing pose with the dagger, but it’s a lie and you’ll always know it’s a lie.

In terms of posing, the figure is okay. He’s best suited to stand in a ready position with a weapon in-hand. He’s not going to be very good at kicking poses or sword-swinging ones either. The lack of butterfly joints also means he can’t do a proper morphing pose with the Power Morpher, but considering he’s not un-costumed I don’t think that’s a terrible loss. What is borderline unforgivable is that this guy can’t play the Dragon Dagger. With some forced perspective type shots, you could fake it for a photo, but that won’t do you much good for the shelf. Id you don’t need him actually squeezing the buttons then you can get the mouthpiece to the mask, but in order to do so I had to make the figure grip the very end of the dagger and it looks pretty silly. Limitations aside, the joints at least feel solid. The only loose ones are the shoulders, but they’re not giving me problems. The hinge in the head is also very loose, but again, it’s keeping the head where I want it so it’s not an issue at the moment. The figure does possess somewhat of a cheap feel to it, though it’s not awful. It’s mostly with the arms which again I think is a symptom of the removable design. The floppy hinge joint in the neck looks awful, but that’s only apparent when the figure has no head.

“Ha ha! Foolish Ranger! I am so much more ‘premium’ than you!”

The big question with this release, and it’s often the case with Super7, is the figure worth the $55 asking price? It’s a bit of a hard sell at that price and some of the other figures in the line aren’t really helping the cause. It’s a 6.5″ figure with okay paint for the most part, a decent sculpt, mediocre articulation, and a bunch of accessories. This is one of those Super7 figures that feels like it started with a price of $55 and then someone had to get the final product up from a much smaller cost to justify the price. And that’s apparent in the abundance of accessories that no one is really asking for. The vintage inspired stuff is cute, but how many people are actually going to use that stuff? The heat gun, the Sword of Power – these are all things I can do without and would actually prefer to not have around if it meant the price could come down. Super7 seems to have this thing where every figure in the line has to be $55, but other figures can certainly top that, but that $55 is a hard floor and in some cases it does the product no favors. More people would buy this if it were $40 and it wouldn’t look silly beside the likes of Goldar and the T-Rex zord. From Super7’s perspective, it makes people who buy the more impressive looking items feel better about that price, but I don’t know if it works that way. And it could be, and quite likely is, that Super7 would argue those other figures should be priced higher than what they are and maybe that’s true. All I know is, I’d like this figure a lot more at a cheaper price. I still willingly paid $55 for it and I don’t hate myself for it, but the pragmatist in me would advise others to wait for a sale. It’s the Green Ranger, he’s popular and not going out of stock anytime soon so there’s no harm in waiting. Where the price really hurts is that I’m only willing to get my favorite Power Ranger at $55 and he’s likely to be lonely on my shelf as a result. He’s just going to have to make due with being placed beside his Bandai and Hasbro counterparts.

Is Tommy Oliver your favorite Power Ranger too? Maybe you would like to check these out too:

Hasbro Lightning Collection Mighty Morphin Green Ranger

In the early days of the ongoing Covid-19 Pandemic I found myself filling the social hole in my heart with toys. That has continued, but in the earliest days I went backwards. I grabbed some toys that I had wanted as a kid, but never got, and I talked about them here. One such toy…

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Bandai Mighty Morphin Power Rangers Dragonzord

So a week ago I did a post that I titled The Toys that Got Away. It was about toys that I had pined for as a child, but for one reason or another, was unable to ever acquire. It wasn’t intended to be a sympathy piece or anything, because I had an awesome childhood…

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Hasbro Power Rangers x TMNT – Tommy and Raphael

When Mighty Morphin Power Rangers arrived on Fox Kids in 1993 it quickly became a ratings juggernaut. It was the hottest property around aimed at kids and seemingly everything got knocked down a peg as a result. By contrast, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was embarking on its downturn. The third film wasn’t nearly as successful…

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Leave a comment | tags: action figures, green ranger, jason david frank, mighty morphin power rangers, super sentai, super7, super7 ultimates!, tommy oliver | posted in Television, toys

April 12, 2022

Hasbro MMPR x TMNT Shredder

By Joe

We’ve looked at the two-packs from Hasbro’s Mighty Morphin Power Rangers x Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles line of action figures based on the comic book crossover, but have we saved the best for last? Coming in on his own is the arch nemesis for the turtles: The Shredder! And since this is a line specializing in combining the two properties, he can’t just be regular old Shredder, he needs to be something more! Now, maybe there was a thought to having Shredder somehow acquire Lord Zed’s staff or even Rita Repulsa’s magic (imagine Shredder in a Rita costume), but rather than do that they just gave him the powers of the former evil Power Ranger, Tommy, and his Dragonzord coin.

Is it just me or does he look huge in the box?

Shredder as the Green Ranger is a design unique to him. There’s obviously elements of both the traditional Power Ranger costume and Shredder’s, and the design is involved enough that he couldn’t be directly lifted from an existing figure. That is likely why this figure did not arrive in a two-pack but as a single carded figure with the MSRP of around $30. He comes in an oversized Lightning Collection box with new art and he looks sort of massive from the outside, though he’s not demonstrably larger than other figures in the line standing right around seven inches. Some of the body here is likely recycled from other figures in the line, or from other Hasbro lines in general, but there is quite a bit that’s new for us to dig into.

There’s a lot of good here, but some not so good.

First off is the head sculpt. Shredder comes with his helmet permanently affixed to his head, which is often the right way to do a proper Shredder. The base look of this Shredder gives me strong 2003 vibes as his face is all black with red pupils and the mouth guard is painted silver. It makes him look pretty bad ass, but also accomplishes the task of merging the helmet with the Green Ranger helmet since having his exposed flesh painted black conforms to there being a visor there. Atop the helmet is the Green Ranger’s dragon theme with the red eyes and ridge in the center. The center diamond is there as well and then it’s rimmed with the silver “tines” customary to Shredder helmets. The sides are silver and they’re staggered in the design resembling blades one after the other. It’s a very striking Shredder design and I think the artists involved did a great job blending it with that of the Green Ranger. Unfortunately, the same can’t be said of the factory as the main head and the top of the helmet are separate pieces glued together. The top of the helmet is on crooked and set back too far on my figure and looks terrible. He should look like the box art with the center of the top piece lining up with the center of the mouthguard and the two should nearly touch. It’s not terrible enough for me to attempt an exchange or try to order from somewhere else, but terrible enough to drive me nuts. I’m very tempted to try to pry it off and re-attach it because it really does ruin what is otherwise a solid sculpt.

That mis-aligned helmet is driving me nuts. Even more so than the yellow knees.

Below the head we have the customary Dragon Shield. Shredder’s version of it is a bit weathered looking with sculpted spikes near the shoulders. They’re less pronounced than the comic art, but it’s still cool that Hasbro sculpted a new Dragon Shield. His arms are bare and end with his Shredder gauntlets, only now they’re gold with the actual blades on the back of his hands in silver. His belt is a purple sash and the Power Morpher is off-center, which is a nice touch to differentiate Shredder from the others, and he’s sporting a soft goods, purple, tattered, cape. It would have been cool if it was a wired cape, but it has some personality by virtue of the holes cut into. The only thing, design wise, I’m not crazy about with this figure is below the waist. He has the same gold and silver combo for the greaves on his shins, but the knee portion is a separate piece so there’s visible green in-between the knee and boot. From what I can tell, this isn’t the case in the book either and it’s supposed to be one piece. I’m not sure why Hasbro did it this way as they didn’t have to and it wouldn’t have cost any more money. And they also sculpted the kneepad in gold which creates unsightly gold lumps of plastic above the knee on the joint. The better move would be to simply paint the kneepad, especially since it’s actually the top of the boot, but Hasbro likes to cut paints apps wherever possible.

I always like open hands with Shredder, even going back to the Playmates original.

The boots and misaligned helmet are the only true eyesore to be found on this guy from a design point of view. The straps on his forearm gauntlets aren’t painted, so on the open hands he has “flesh-colored” straps that look kind of dumb, but not as bad as the knees or helmet. Those looking for true comic accuracy will likely be a little disappointed that the blades aren’t more pronounced, but this is a toy intended for a mass market release so some safety measures likely play a role. Aside from that though, the only other issue from a presentation is one also found on the standard Green Ranger and it’s the omission of the white diamonds on the shirt. On the Green Ranger, Hasbro kept the white pieces for the butterfly joint so he had a hint of the side diamonds, but with Shredder they just ignored them all together. This is fairly common with Hasbro and the manner in which they cut costs as they often eliminate painted details. It’s been acceptable for the company when their prices made them perhaps the best bargain in the hobby, but with their prices creeping up into NECA territory it’s becoming a problem. I’ll have more to say on that subject in the not-too-distant-future. Here, it’s relatively minor though I do think a little dash of white on the torso would have done the figure well.

Go ahead, Tommy, try and take back your Dragon coin.

This guy commanding a premium price might have lead you to believe he’d come with a bunch of stuff, but that’s really not the case. He comes with open hands in the box and a set of fist hands. The claws were straight on 3 of the 4 hands I got, with the open right hand being bent in the package. It’s nothing a little hot water can’t remedy though. He also has a pair of effects pieces. I guess they’re an energy effect or something? The claws slide into them and they’re a translucent blue. They actually can poke all the way through as there are slits on both sides so you can adjust the effect as you see fit. You could also have them shooting forward from the blade, but I think they’re intended to be more of a slashing effect and that’s how it’s depicted on the box. They’re fine, though personally I would have gone with more of a lightning look as the flame look Hasbro appears to be going for makes them look like water. One of mine also has some black flakes of plastic within it, which is a bit of a bummer, but honestly only noticeable from up close. That’s it though. No sword, no alternate head, just two sets of hands and two effects parts. It’s not terrible, but not exactly overwhelming either.

The articulation on Shredder is mostly as expected. If you’ve handled a Lightning Collection Ranger or a Marvel Legend then you should know what to expect. He has a ball hinged-head and probably some articulation at the base of the neck, but if so, it’s useless given the cape and Dragon Shield. He’s able to rotate and look up and down fairly well with basically no tilt due to the size of the helmet. His shoulders are ball-hinges with a butterfly joint. The spiked pauldron is pinned above the actual shoulder so it moves with the butterfly joint and doesn’t really interfere all that much with the range. It’s quite good and the cape and shield help hide any gaps left behind when the butterfly joint is fully extended. The left shoulder on my figure is really tight and hard to rotate, but I don’t feel like I’m going to break it, it just needs more breaking in. He has a biceps swivel and double-jointed elbows that give you about a 90 degree bend. No forearm swivel which stinks because the gauntlets are frozen in place which makes posing a bit annoying at times. The hands peg in, per usual, and can rotate and also feature a horizontal hinge.

There are some out there who wish the green on Shredder was a bit more like the Green Ranger, but I enjoy the muted shade.

In the torso, we have a diaphragm joint that’s pretty floppy. I don’t really like it as a result, but you can swivel there and get Shredder to bend forward and back an acceptable amount. He has an ab crunch below that, but the sash gets in the way so it doesn’t offer a ton. It’s a floating belt, but it’s way too tight. There also appears to be a seem underneath it that might be a waist twist, but I can’t get him to go. At the hips we have the standard ball pegs with thigh cuts below them. He can kick forward to about horizontal, but his cheeks prevent his leg from going back. The knees are double-jointed and work fine, which is good since I already mentioned they’re ugly. He does have a boot cut and at the ankle we have hinges and a rocker. The rocker works fine, though it’s a little loose while the hinges appear to be ratcheted. They’re annoying though because I can’t quite get the feet into a neutral position. The toe seems to always be pointed up a little, or down. I guess it’s not a huge problem as it just makes the most vanilla of posing difficult, but it is odd. I don’t have too much trouble getting him to stand even with the loose rockers. The only hindrance, really, is the floppy upper torso as he tends to bend back after being set down.

I think they scale pretty well. Shredder is taller and leaner, but still pretty damn beefy.

What we have with Shredder is what should be the best figure in this line if not for a few errors. I genuinely like the color palette on this guy as the muted green contrasts well with the bright Turtle Rangers and original Green Ranger. The gold paint and texture of the metallic parts of the armor look awesome, which is why the gold plastic knees really stand out as an eye sore. That torso really could stand to be tightened up though as I don’t like it. I’m more forgiving when it comes to the ankle hinges as I’m sure they had to use that ratcheted design for a reason and a standard one probably would have been too loose. The low accessory count is a bit of a bummer, but he does look great just armed with his claws and, even though it isn’t wired, I think the cape turned out very well. He’s a striking figure, but he is sold at what is a premium price for a Hasbro figure so I do think some of the flaws should not be readily overlooked. At the same time, he looks a million times better than the monsters released in the Lightning Collection so at least he has that going for him.

Shredder is the final figure in this line and is currently still available for preorder at various online stores. Gamestop is stocking this line as well and they can be found both online and in-store while supplies last. I would say normally if a line like this is a success then it will likely get reissued, but I have no idea what kind of arrangement Hasbro made with Viacom when it comes to the TMNT license so it’s possible they’ll be one and done. I wouldn’t wait on it if you’re interested. Given how terrible the helmet turned out on my figure, I would say take a look locally if you can to make sure the one you’re buying looks okay, but I suspect most will have to resort to online orders and hope for the best.

Leave a comment | tags: action figures, boom! comics, hasbro, mighty morphin power rangers, shredder, teenage mutant ninja turtles | posted in Comics, toys

March 15, 2022

Hasbro MMPR x TMNT April O’Neil and Michelangelo

By Joe

We have arrived at the last two-pack in the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers x Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles line of action figures from Hasbro and it’s that bodacious dude, Michelangelo, along with the ravishing reporter April O’Neil. There’s not going to be a whole lot to say about these figures at this point as, if you read last week’s review of Leonardo and Donatello, then you know that the turtles in this line are all essentially the same figure. And when it comes to April, she’s basically just a standard Lightning Collection pink ranger with some minor differences.

Michelangelo, like Donatello, has to assume a different preferred color and for him it’s yellow. This isn’t completely foreign to Mikey as the original arcade game had him as yellow instead of orange for some reason, and even the follow-up, Turtles in Time, kept the yellow buttons and joystick (though his character sprite was corrected to feature the orange pads and mask). Mikey is the standard turtle ranger body sharing more similarities with Raph due to both having a belt without a shoulder strap. His weapon slots on the belt are unique to him as is his helmet, which takes the form of the sabretooth tiger from MMPR. Mikey can actually claim to being the best looking ranger in this set since it’s very easy to paint white over yellow. He’s a very a bright yellow and the white paint on his gloves covers up the yellow plastic quite well. Unfortunately, the yellow diamonds on his boots are painted terribly because nothing can be perfect. He also has a red spec under the tiger nose on his helmet that I’ve been trying to scratch away. There’s also still a lack of paint, in particular with the helmet, but that’s par for the course with Hasbro. The lower part of the shell does stick out more with my figure. One could attribute that to Michelangelo’s almost exclusive all pizza diet, but it does look like the tab underneath the gold piece isn’t seated properly and it doesn’t seem to want to go in. It’s a minor imperfection, but an imperfection nonetheless. His articulation is exactly the same as his brothers, so I don’t feel a need to go over it a third time. It’s good though.

Not sure about that effect piece for Mikey.

For April, she is essentially just the pink Power Ranger with one obvious difference: no skirt piece. I don’t know why that was eliminated, but it appears to be consistent with the comic. I don’t mind as the skirt is just a restrictive piece when it comes to articulation and doesn’t really add much to the look of the character. In comparing her with my Lightning Collection Kimberly, I do notice a new helmet design. This one is noticeably taller and not nearly as long when viewing it from the side. I don’t know if this was a running change for the pink ranger figures or if it’s just more accurate to the source material for this comic. I am surprised that Hasbro would re-sculpt it though and I do think it’s more pleasing to look at. Otherwise, her shade of pink is also noticeably brighter. Her torso is still a darker shade of pink than the rest of the figure, but it’s less noticeable here and at least the limbs, diamonds, and the pink portion of the helmet look to be a similar shade of pink. The prior figure was all over the place and my pick for worst in the line, so at least if Hasbro is making me rebuy it, it looks better. The only thing that looks worse is the morpher on the belt as Hasbro omitted the silver paint, as it did for the turtles as well. Her articulation is the same as the previously released yellow and pink ranger so if you want a complete rundown check out that review.

It’s so hard to get April into a good bow pose.

The accessory loadout is also quite familiar here as both figures come with extra hands, an alternate portrait, weapons, and an effect piece. Unlike the last set, we do have some extra stuff which I’ll get to. First though, let’s talk about Mikey who has fists, gripping hands, and open hands. These are the same hands released in the other sets, only Mikey can actually benefit from the wide-fingered sai grip hands as his weapon can fit between the fingers. And his weapon is a mash-up of the power dagger and nunchaku. Basically, he has four daggers instead of two and they’re joined by a chain. The chain is sculpted plastic, which I’m kind of torn on. I like the look of real chain, but that sucks for posing and would look terrible in the combined blaster (not that these look much better). The plastic chain here though is just boring gray with no paint applied to even simulate steel. They’re also not very long so most classic, Mikey, two-handed poses are unachievable. I also wish the chains were bendy to the point that they held their shape for better swinging poses. There’s a purple effects piece that doesn’t look great because it’s hard to come up with a convincing swinging pose. Even the box art just kind of gave up and depicts Mikey just standing there with the piece dangling. It’s a good concept for a weapon, it’s just the execution that’s cheap. The dagger portions of each ‘chuk also key together which looks better on the combined weapon and when inserting them into his holsters. His weapons are the toughest to holster, though rather, getting them in isn’t too hard, but getting them out can be a pain. I feel like I’m going to break them every time so I’ll probably refrain from doing it too much.

Hasbro at least improved the coloring on the pink ranger body.

As for April, she comes with the weapons one would expect, plus some extra stuff. She has a pair of gripping hands out of the box, and strangely, Hasbro didn’t include Kimberly’s arrow nocking right hand which works much better with the included arrow than the standard gripping hand. She also has a left fist and right open, chop, hand. As for weapons, she has the same as Kimberly including the line’s only blade blaster. It has the white and red deco as opposed to the silver Kimberly’s came with, but is otherwise the same. The bow is now silver instead of white and the included arrow is a hot pink that basically matches her costume as opposed to Kimberly’s gray. She also has the translucent, pink, blast effect arrow that is slightly darker than Kimberly’s. Since this is April, to make her feel more like that character Hasbro included a stick microphone and camcorder. The mic has a white, triangular, box on it, but there’s no graphic for the station April works for so it looks kind of stupid. The camcorder is a shoulder-mounted design and it’s fine. It’s just black, molded, plastic and the only paint is on the lens. I get why she comes with this stuff, but I don’t know if I’ll actually use it. I’d definitely trade the microphone for a proper collapsed blade blaster she could holster, but that’s a criticism I have of the Lightning Collection as a whole.

That’s not an ugly portrait, but it doesn’t look like April.

Like the other figures, these two come with an unmasked portrait. Michelangelo’s is a wild, open-mouthed, expression that’s befitting of the character, but could use more paint. Hasbro painted his tongue and teeth, but left the rest of his inner mouth green which is a bit odd. Maybe it’s the expression, but this one looks especially goofy on the turtle body. As for April, it looks like Hasbro recycled the Evangeline Lily head from its MCU line for her and stuck a different hair sculpt on it. It doesn’t look bad, but it also doesn’t look anything like the character from the comic so I suppose that does make it kind of bad. It at least looks better on April’s body given she’s better proportioned, but I doubt I’ll use it since I plan to keep the turtles with their helmets on.

Mikey’s daggers peg into each other to at least keep them tidy on here (or when holstered), but they still look goofy.

As promised, I will mention the combining effect that’s available to all who collect the entire line. Just like with the standard Lightning Collection releases, the weapons can combine to form the giant, blaster, the Power Rangers are fond of using. The turtle version is mostly the same, and yet not as fun. The bow and power axe are exactly the same so they combine in the same manner. One of Raph’s sais slots into the top where the power sword goes, but it’s not as long as said sword so it doesn’t look quite as neat. Leo’s swords and Mikey’s dagger-chuks clip underneath the bow and this is where it starts to look dumb. Because Leo’s swords tab together to form a lance, only one actually has a hole on the bottom to resemble a gun barrel with the other having a plastic tab. Mikey’s chuks apparently go in chain forward which just looks ridiculous. I mean, the whole thing is supposed to look ridiculous by nature, but this takes it further with the weapons appearing to not even be able to fire. If the chains could detach on at least one set of the ‘chuks that would be fine, but Hasbro didn’t want to go that route. This could also be comic accurate, for all I know, and if so then this is a criticism of the design and not the toy. It’s still a fun novelty, but it’s not as neat looking as the MMPR version.

That’s it though. Again, if you have enjoyed the prior two-packs then you’ll like this one. This might be my least favorite of the three though as Mikey’s weapons aren’t as fun to mess around with and April is just a basic Power Ranger, with an odd, unmasked, head sculpt. I’m at least relieved to see that Hasbro made some improvements to the Kimberly figure I was so down on, but it also could have been improved further given her torso is still an odd color. Hasbro also did a comic shaded variant of the pink ranger which might have made more sense for this line, though she would have clashed with the other releases so I get why they didn’t go that route.

This may be the last of the two-packs for this line, but it’s not the last release. That honor falls to Shredder as the green ranger. I haven’t been able to get my hands on that one yet, but rest assured, when I do I’ll be back to tell you all about it.

And now with the OG team. Billy’s back there, I swear.

Leave a comment | tags: action figures, april o'neil, hasbro, michelangelo, mighty morphin power rangers, teenage mutant ninja turtles | posted in Comics, toys

March 8, 2022

Hasbro Power Rangers x TMNT Donatello and Leonardo

By Joe

Donatello and Leonardo are here to join the team.

It’s been a minute, but we’re back with another two-pack from Hasbro’s Power Rangers x Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles line of action figures. If you’re unfamiliar, this series is born from the Boom! comics crossover in which the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers meet the turtles and somehow their powers end up getting handed over to them. I haven’t read the story, so I don’t know why any of that took place, but it did lead to some cool character designs and that’s why we’re here.

The first set I received was the Raphael and Tommy Oliver two-pack which was my introduction to this morphed turtle character sculpt. Because of that, this set is pretty damn familiar because, like many TMNT toy lines, the sculpt for each turtle is essentially the same. The only differences separating the turtles in this line are the unique, unmasked, head sculpts and the belts and weapons. And the other major difference is just the color scheme. With this set, Leonardo is logically the blue ranger, but since there is no purple ranger, Donatello had to take the black. It might have been kind of fun if the black ranger simply became the purple ranger in the hands of Donatello, but this is fine and I don’t fault Boom! for sticking with the traditional colors for MMPR.

If you read my review of Raph and Tommy, then you know that I generally like this ranger turtle sculpt. It’s chunky and embodies enough of what makes the turtles unique while also mixing it with the classic MMPR look. For turtle fans, the biggest change from what we’re accustomed to is in the scale and proportions. These guys are big when the turtles are traditionally on the shorter side. They make Tommy look like a chump as they’re about the same height (six inches), but far more muscular. April, who is in the other two-pack I haven’t reviewed, is a little shorter than the turtles this time. The other big change is in the proportions as it relates to the head. The turtles usually have pretty big domes relative to their body, but here they’re much smaller and closer to more human proportions. It’s not something that I really notice with the masked heads, but swap to the unmasked ones and the contrast becomes obvious. Hasbro has to go off of the art, but I do think they could have gone a little bigger. Aside from that, the sculpt is fine and captures the fun mash-up this crossover embodies.

Both turtles get alternate methods of utilizing their weapons. For Leo, that means his swords combine, but for Donnie he just has a separate, standard, power axe.

Leonardo and Donatello, as mentioned before, are the same as Raphael. The only difference is they feature the chest strap on their belt (just like the vintage toys) which contains the center diamond. On Raph, that diamond is glued into the chest, but on Leo and Don it just pegs in as part of the belt and can be pulled off. Leonardo’s belt crosses over his left shoulder while Donnie’s comes over his right. The insignia on the morpher is unique to each turtle: triceratops for Leo and mastodon for Don. The holster on the rear of the belt is also unique as it’s catered to the weapon of choice for each turtle. Donnie’s is interesting because we’re accustomed to companies making a tube on his back, but Hasbro chose to do the same, but with a slit through the side. Instead of jamming the staff portion of his weapon through one end and out the other, you can just push it in through the slit which is made of a soft plastic. It doesn’t look as neat, but it is easy and there would be less of a chance of paint rub with this design, though his weapon isn’t painted on the staff portion.

If you want, they can go mask-less, though I don’t know how many would want to do that.

The body of each turtle is essentially three colors: white, gold, and the primary color. Hasbro is able to engineer these guys in a way that allows them to use mostly colored, unpainted, plastic. The only paint appears to be the gold bands on the arms, the white on the forearms, and the diamonds on the gloves and boots. On Donatello, the white isn’t really opaque enough on the forearms so the black plastic shows through a bit. It contrasts with the white plastic hands which have a slight off-white hue. By contrast, the boots are quite clean, but that’s because Hasbro was able to do them in white plastic. Oddly, the knees and elbows are an ever so slightly different shade of black. Since they’re a joiner for the articulation it could be they’re a different type of plastic. It was more noticeable on Raph, but with Don it’s probably only apparent to me because I’m looking for it. On Leo, it’s slightly more uniform than Raph, with the exception of his left knee which looks darker than the rest. His forearms at least look a little better, but there’s more paint slop in general on him than Don as well as mold release imperfections on his limbs.

On the helmets, we have a little more going on. There we get some silver for the mouth guard and some of the features like the triceratops horns and mastodon tusks. Maybe it’s the shape of the turtle head, but Leo’s helmet comes across a little plain. He still has the black visor with red eyes inside as well as the yellow triceratops eyes on the side, but it feels like there could be a little more going on here. It could also be just the shiny, blue, plastic which gives off a cheap look. Donatello’s helmet is a bit better as the mastodon design has more linework. None of it is painted though so it’s not as striking as the black ranger figure from the Lightning Collection nor does it look like the art on the packaging. The silver paint on his mouth guard also isn’t as clean. Both come with an unmasked option which look okay. The design for these turtles is a bit more froggy than I personally like, and the heads look really small on the body. Leo gets a stoic expression while Don has a traditional turtle mouth and features goggles and a skull cap instead of the standard mask. I’ll probably never use these heads in my display, but I like that Hasbro gives collectors options.

There’s a very different approach to the shade of blue used when it comes to Leo vs Billy.

On the accessory front, we have weapons, effects, and hands. Like Raph, Leo and Don each come with a set of gripping hands, fists, and open hands. The gripping hands are the same from turtle to turtle so they have a vertical hinge and a wide gap between the fingers to accommodate Raph’s sai grip. That’s not really useful for the other turtles, and the grip isn’t perfect for Leo which is on the loose side. I love the vertical hinge, though I wish Hasbro had cut out a bit more room for it as there isn’t a ton of range there. For weapons, the blue ranger’s lance has been split into two, short, swords. They can connect like the lance to form basically a really dangerous looking weapon, but I suspect most will have Leo dual wield swords, per usual. Donatello gets two versions of the power axe. One is basically the standard axe, only the quality is less than what was released previously as it’s very soft and gummy and I had a hard time getting the “pump” action to work. Trying to move it just caused the entire barrel to bend, but some hot water freed it up, though it’s still not a smooth action. He also has a pole axe version which is what fits into his belt. It’s kind of neat, though the paint job on it isn’t terrific. The bulky turtle hands also don’t grip the standard axe very well in a firing pose. They also each get an effect part. Donatello has a green, flame, effect while Leonardo has a blue lightning effect that’s very similar to what the blue ranger came with. I don’t know if I’ll use either, but I’d rather have them than not. And there isn’t really anything missing, just shortcuts taken to keep costs down that harm the figures in a mild fashion. I’d rather have better gripping hands than what was packaged with Raph, but it’s more of a nitpick than a true criticism.

The power axe mold is unchanged from the black ranger release, just the paint and overall quality is different, which means the blast effect from the prior release works with this one as well.

The articulation for both turtles is the same as what we saw with Raph, which is mostly very good. The pin-less engineering on the double knees and elbows works very well as they look nice and the range is better than 90 degrees in both places. The range in the ankle pivots helps to make standing them fairly easy, though the shell does add weight to the rear of the figure making it a little tricky to do just a standard, vanilla, upright pose. They have articulation in the torso, but the shell limits it to basically just a waist twist. Hasbro did cut the bottom of the front of the shell in two to better facilitate this. The joints are all pretty tight, but not to the point where I needed to heat anything. The only joints that don’t really work are the butterfly joints in the shoulders. There’s just no clearance because of the shell on both sides, so I don’t know why it’s here. Even with that limitation, these are some of the most dynamic Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles ever produced, probably surpassed only by the S.H.Figuarts versions. Obviously, the costume makes these almost a completely different animal in terms of aesthetics, but I can see why some people are interested in seeing what Hasbro would do with a proper line of TMNT figures.

Reviewing this set is pretty easy after having reviewed the Raph and Tommy set. If you liked what you saw there, then you’ll be pleased with what’s present here. Hasbro does skimp on the paint, but the sculpts are interesting and the figures are pretty well engineered. It all comes down to style: do you like this mashup of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles? If so, then you’ll enjoy what Hasbro has put together. I think these make for a fun display whether you’re more of a MMPR fan or a TMNT one, and if you happen to like both, well then this was practically made for you. And I do like how Leo and Don turned out especially. The black and gold color scheme just works, while I’ve always been partial to Leonardo. I like the lance/katana cross more than Raph’s sai/power sword combo (it helps that Leo’s weapons are painted better) and I definitely like the versatility of both weapons here. Even though this two-pack is essentially the same figure times two, I think I like it a little more than the Raph and Tommy set. Sorry Tommy, you’re just not nearly as interesting as a turtle in a Power Rangers costume. Check back next week when we take a look at the final two-pack in this series: Michelangelo and April O’Neil.

Come back next week and I’ll tell you all about how the weapons combine!

1 Comment | tags: action figures, boom! comics, donatello, hasbro, leonardo, mighty morphin power rangers, mmpr, teenage mutant ninja turtles | posted in toys

December 29, 2021

Hasbro Power Rangers x TMNT – Tommy and Raphael

By Joe

When Mighty Morphin Power Rangers arrived on Fox Kids in 1993 it quickly became a ratings juggernaut. It was the hottest property around aimed at kids and seemingly everything got knocked down a peg as a result. By contrast, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was embarking on its downturn. The third film wasn’t nearly as successful as the first two and the toyline was starting to show its age as it went into a lot of wacky offshoots. The Power Rangers formula became the new thing to imitate. Footage of martial arts shows from Japan edited into something American kids could identify with was both cheap and effective. And given that TMNT had already been successful in live-action before, it’s perhaps not surprising that Saban made one of the first attempts at reinvigorating the franchise with The Next Mutation.

The Next Mutation ended up being a flop. Either kids were sick of TMNT, disliked the cheap costumes, or failed to gravitate towards the new characters. No one can be certain, but during the show’s lone season it did cross over with Power Rangers. Of course, by then the Mighty Morphin era was over so kids who loved TMNT and then jumped to Mighty Morphin had little reason to enjoy the crossover. It wasn’t their preferred take on either franchise, and it seemingly failed to do much to boost either property.

Looks like we have ourselves a Foot Soldier, or do we?!

Eventually the turtles would come back to animation, and now more than 30 years removed form the cartoon’s debut it’s a supremely nostalgic, and profitable, property once again. Power Rangers, for its part, has never truly gone away though it has changed hands a few times. Now a Hasbro property, the Power Rangers can still be found on television and there’s always rumors of another movie. And in the pages of Boom! comics, the Mighty Morphin team can seemingly live forever! It was in those comics that the crossover fans wanted to happen finally did. The turtles, basically as seen in the pages of IDW, met-up with the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. I don’t know why or what the big threat was that caused it to happen, but it did lead to some slick designs which are now being immortalized in toy form by Hasbro.

Hasbro has been around for ages, but it’s never been able to get its hands on Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I’m not sure if the company has ever put forth a strong bid for the property when it has come up for sale. It seems most times this happens the franchise is in a dry spell which has probably made it easy for Playmates to retain ownership. That ownership has been tested over the years though as we’ve seen TMNT product from NECA, Super7, and even DC Collectibles. Now it’s Hasbro’s turn, but they’re giving us something pretty different.

Released as part of its Lightning Collection, the new Power Rangers x Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles line is being released as three two-packs and a single carded figure. Each two-pack contains one or two of the turtles as they appear in the comics when morphed. Yes, the turtles become Power Rangers and the end result is pretty cool. Their limbs are pretty much the same as the regular rangers, just beefier, but they seem to all gain the Dragon Shield in the form of a gold shell. The front of which contains the signature white diamond, while the rear looks almost like a sunburst. The helmets are largely the same though, just form-fitted for a turtle head. They also gain red eye-slits in the visors for some reason.

The first two-pack I was able to get my hands on is the Tommy Oliver as Foot Soldier with Raphael as the Red Ranger. When it came to crossing the two franchises, Boom! had to decide what was more important: color or weapon of choice. If going by weapon, Leonardo should have been the Red Ranger since both wield a sword and are the leader, but you can’t make Leonardo red. Instead, Raphael gets the nod here and his sai are just given a Power Sword makeover. As for Tommy, it’s my understanding he goes undercover as a Foot Soldier in the story, but the figure basically doubles as a generic Foot Soldier as well. It’s just a shame he’s sold in a two-pack since some collectors would likely buy multiples. Instead, it’s Shredder as the Green Ranger that gets the solo treatment.

I think most are going to be interested in these sets for the turtles, but lets get Tommy out of the way. He’s basically a standard Lightning Collection release. I believe most of this body is reused from the Putty figure, but I don’t have that figure to say for certain. It’s fairly similar to the Ranger body from the Lightning Collection and contains all of the same articulation points. The Foot Soldier head is obviously new and contains some nice, subtle, details on it to show how the mask separates. I wish there was some dry brushing on it to bring it out, but Hasbro isn’t one for paint. Most of the figure is just cast in colored plastic: purple and gray, with some shiny, steel, bits on the forearms and rear of the hands. It’s a new look for the Foot Soldier, but it’s also pretty obviously a Foot Soldier to anyone familiar with TMNT. It’s solid, though a bit underwhelming. The alternate Tommy head appears to be the same one that came with the Green Ranger figure, but with the bandana tails coming straight off the back of the head and painted purple. There’s also very little paint on it so it doesn’t have the more matte appearance of the Green Ranger release.

Raphael, on the other hand, is basically all new. His body is of the pinless variety, so no pins in the elbows or the knees which is definitely welcomed. The red is basically all colored plastic so there aren’t any harsh variances like there were with the Jason figure I looked at. The joining pieces for the elbows and knees do appear to be a slightly paler red. I don’t really notice it on the knees, but I can see it on the elbows when inspecting the figure closely. It’s no where near as bad as it was with the Jason figure, but still a bummer. The ends of the gloves are painted white with the red diamonds which are pretty clean, but there is some chipped paint near the wrist on mine. The hands, which are cast in white plastic, are also a touch more off-white than the paint which is a little annoying. There’s also some chipped paint on the gold armbands. It’s pretty standard stuff for a Hasbro figure, but still worth pointing out.

A Power Ranger that actually looks intimidating.

The sculpt on Raph is pretty cool though. He’s quite bulky and his limbs are longer than usual. He stands a full six inches putting him on par with Tommy so this is definitely a taller turtle than we’re used to seeing. The change in proportions does give him an undersized head as well. It doesn’t bother me with the helmeted look, but it stands out when swapped with the turtle head (which we’ll get to). I do like how the shell was designed, and since these proportions are more human, it probably shouldn’t come as a surprise that the rear of the shell is a bit more sleek than usual. The white belt is still a floating piece and it has the morpher on the front and a place to store his sai. He doesn’t have a power blaster, but I don’t know if they used them in the books.

As for articulation, both figures are the same, but different. Tommy, as noted, is pretty basic Lightning Collection stuff. He’s got a ball peg in his neck that lets him look up, down, swivel, and tilt. The Tommy head has less range due to the hair, especially if you add in the cowl. The shoulders are ball-hinges with butterfly joints. They go back pretty far, but not forward much which is weird as one would prefer the range be reversed. The elbows are double-jointed and go past 90 degrees. There’s a biceps swivel and the wrists swivel and hinge. The hinges are vertical, which earns Hasbro a big thumb’s up! In the diaphragm is what’s probably a double ball peg. It doesn’t go back really at all, but it does allow the figure to crunch forward a bit, rotate, and tilt. Combine it with the ab crunch though, and you get a lot more forward and back. The legs are on ball pegs and allow the figure to almost do a full split. He can kick forward too, but not back because his buttcheeks get in the way. The thigh can swivel on that ball peg and also below it as there is a thigh cut. The knees are double-jointed and go past 90 there and there’s a boot cut and hinged ankles with good rockers.

Tommy can also serve as just a generic Foot Soldier for Raph to beat on.

As for Raph, he has all of the same including the vertical hinges on his gripping hands. The only differences are his butterfly joints are basically useless and he has a joint in the base of the neck so his up and down range at the head is quite good. He also has no diaphragm joint given that he’s a turtle and all. Hasbro did give him a waist cut which splits the shell in the front. It’s basically just what you see below the belt, and while it does look a little funky to have a turtle in a pose that results in his shell not lining up, it’s worth it to have that extra articulation. Likely owing to his more bulky design, Raph also doesn’t get much out of his double-jointed elbows. He can basically just do 90, and go no farther whether you’re bending with the top hinge or the bottom one. On the plus side, nothing was stuck on my figures and they seem to pose reasonably well. Raph is a bit harder to stand, likely because of the shell, but with a little patience I’ve been able to get him into some dynamic stances.

On the accessory front, things were a bit surprising. The few Hasbro figures I buy seem to be of the bare bones variety, but maybe since half of this release is an in-house brand it helped to get more accessories into the box. For Tommy, we get the Foot head and the Tommy head. The Tommy head also has two extra pieces, a cowl to go around his neck and a facemask that can slide over his chin and mouth creating a cool look. He has gripping hands equipped in the box and a set of fists to swap to. He has a katana which can slot into his belt or be gripped in either hand. There’s also not one, but two, effects pieces. A translucent, blue, punch effect and a translucent, yellow, lightning effect for the sword. You could give the lightning effect to Raph too, if you prefer, though the blue punch is tough to get on Raph’s hands.

I suppose you could display him like this if you want to.

As for Raph, he has three sets of hands: gripping, fists, and open. The open hands are great for posing or for holding his helmet and I do wish Tommy had a set as well. The gripping hands have the correct hinges, as noted before, and are also just barely wide enough for Raph to grip his sai with the center blade through his fingers. If you’re worried about paint rub, warming Raph’s hand first makes it even easier to achieve such a pose. As for the sai, they’re pretty cool and look just like mini Power Swords, but with extra blades. They slot into his belt just fine and the sculpt and paint look pretty terrific. There’s a yellow slashing effect piece that can fit onto the center blade of one which looks decent. If you wish, you could give that to Tommy, but it looks a little silly on his much longer blade. Lastly, we have the unmasked head which features a battle ready expression from Raph. On its own, it looks fine, but on the figure it creates a real pinhead situation. It’s not as bad looking as the promo images made it seem, but I’m still never going to use it. I want to display these guys in morphed mode so even if I loved the alternate head I likely still would never use it.

Group shot! I used the flash to accentuate the contrast between Raph and Jason’s chosen shade of red.

Overall, this is a pretty solid two-pack. Admittedly, I don’t care that much about Tommy and if Hasbro had just paired the turtles up across two two-packs then I’d probably skip Tommy (and April, who comes with Michelangelo). Having him in hand though takes away some of that sting as he’s a solid release. It would have been awesome if he could have been given pin-less arms and legs, as the elbow joints are my lone sore spot with the figure, but it’s not a big deal to me. Raph is the real star though and I’m pretty happy with how he turned out, which is definitely a good thing since the other turtles figure to be the same figure just in different colors. Better yet, I got these guys from GameStop where they were on sale for $42, which is a very nice price in 2021 for an action figure two-pack. Now my real problem is figuring out where the hell I’m going to put these guys until the rest show up.

1 Comment | tags: action figures, boom! comics, foot soldier, hasbro, idw publishing, mighty morphin power rangers, raphael, teenage mutant ninja turtles, tommy oliver | posted in Comics, toys

March 12, 2021

Hasbro MMPR Combining Dino Megazord

By Joe

I wasn’t going to do a post on this particular figure, but there probably is some curiosity about it and how it works with the Hasbro Power Rangers Lightning Collection, so here we are. Last year, I fulfilled an almost lifelong ambition and acquired a Bandai dino Megazord from 1993 based on its appearance in the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers television show. The toyline was white hot in the early 90s, and it was something I had to make due without as a kid (and for the record, I did just fine, so don’t weap for my childhood). It turns out, the kids of 2020 also enjoy Megazords from the 90s and my own children spent a fair amount of time playing with it, assembling it and disassembling it enough that I went to eBay and grabbed them some Power Rangers from the same era to play with. When Christmas came around, it made sense for my son to ask Santa for a Megazord he could call his own, and the big man delivered.

It was late last summer, or early fall, that Hasbro rolled out its own version of the classic Bandai toy. The zords were scattered across three blister pack releases that could be purchased at big box retailers and online at various toy and hobby websites. What was most attractive about the set was that it was really affordable. Each release retailed for $15 so kids, and collectors, could assemble a Megazord for a mere $45. I’m pretty sure it cost more in 1993 dollars to do the same. Of course, this meant the release was compromised compared with past iterations. The zords probably lost about 25-30% of their size and are primarily assembled with colored plastic with little or no paint. On the plus side, there were no stickers to place as the decals came on the toys, though they still appear to be as prone to peeling and such as stickers applied by the consumer.

The dino zords have never been particularly fearsome on their own.

As mentioned already, Hasbro chose to distribute these dino zords across three releases. The mastodon and pterodactyl come bundled together as do the triceratops and saber-toothed tiger. The tyrannosaurus, being the largest of the five zords, comes solo, but Hasbro did toss in the power sword so it wouldn’t feel so lonely. I’m not sure why Hasbro opted to do things this way rather than simply sell it as one, complete, set. They probably could have even jacked the price up another five dollars and sold it at 50 bucks. It’s just unlikely anyone would want just one set and not all three, because lets face it, most kids don’t want to play with the individual zords. All this does is make it a little harder to find everything you need. Thankfully, the zords weren’t terribly difficult to track down, but I know in my frequent trips to Target I rarely saw all three sets readily available, it was usually just one or two

These toys aren’t technically in the Lightning Collection, but are in that lesser line Hasbro mostly markets to kids. All that means is that these aren’t technically being marketed to collectors, though I’d wager most of the people buying stuff based on the Mighty Morphin era are folks my age. The engineering on all of the zords is very similar to the Bandai originals as Hasbro has largely preserved the transformation as it appeared on television. The sheer amount of plastic utilized though has been significantly scaled back. It can be seen in the tail of the T-Rex zord which has a lot of chunks just cut out of it and the rear of the mastodon which is fairly open. It’s definitely not a set as attractive as the old ones, though there are areas where things have been improved slightly. The T-Rex, for instance, has its mouth canons sculpted in now and they look pretty nice. Some of the joints are also tighter, specifically the tails of the triceratops and saber-toothed tiger, though I’m also comparing a relatively new toy to one almost 30 years old. Given time, maybe they’ll be just as loose.

Top: new sword, Bottom: old sword. It’s not great.

Where this set comes up short though is just in the details. The wheels on the saber-toothed tiger, for example, aren’t painted black and are just sculpted gray like the rest of the legs. The canon at the tip of the triceratops tail doesn’t articulate so it looks pretty lame, plus it doesn’t have actual wheels to roll on. I also miss the chrome details some of the old figures had, though I mostly miss it on the Megazord’s power sword. It’s just unpainted plastic with some of the design sculpted on just one side of the blade. It’s very bland and is the aspect of this release I see the most complaints about. Hasbro also utilized a new peg system for the legs of the Megazord which works fine, but it also means the T-Rex now has red pegs jutting out from its knees. I also dislike the head of the T-Rex and how it snaps in place with the Megazord head contained underneath. It doesn’t seem to want to actually snap and it just feels very cheap. The “horns” on the Megazord itself can slide all the way to one side and just seems junky, even though it does, in the end, get the job done.

The new one can’t articulate its canon, but at least it can hold its tail up unlike gramps here.

The pterodactyl zord didn’t have to make too many compromises, though I’ve always really loved that old decal on the front of the original so that’s a bummer.

Playing with the zords on their own doesn’t seem like a great experience, based on how my kids interact with it. Thankfully, combining them is fairly easy even for a kid. The legs take a bit of effort to seat properly, and the pterodactyl can be a bit finicky, but it goes together largely in the same manner as before. I actually like how securely the mastodon clips on with this release, though I hate how easily the legs of the mastodon pop off. The tail of the T-Rex also no longer has a joint towards the end of it so it sticks up more pronounced than before and isn’t particularly pleasing to the eye, but it’s not a big deal. You can also still do tank mode, but it’s just as janky as before and more of a novelty than a fun way to play.

The tyrannosaurus continues to be the only zord that’s any fun solo, though those new, red, knee, pegs are an eyesore.

The mastodon turned out kind of junky on its own and it differs most from the original as the head is now all black, but at least it functions very well as the arms of the Megazord.

Once together, the Megazord does very much look the part. Once again, we’re missing some of the details of past releases, but it’s certainly far from an ugly thing. The face is where some extra paint would have really been welcomed as that vintage Bandai release just looks sharp. And, of course, the sword sucks, but I already mentioned that. What is better than before though is the articulation. The classic Megazord can’t do much of anything, but this one at least has some joints. The arms can rotate and raise out to the side a bit and the Megazord now has elbows! It can bend them about 90 degrees and also swivel too. At the legs, it can kick forward and back still, but it also can fan its legs out slightly for a wider, more natural, stance. The legs also swivel there as well. There are no knee hinges, unfortunately, but you can swivel the lower legs at the knee pegs. The only thing missing that really should be here is a head swivel. It just seems like that would have been a very easy and cheap thing to include that would have really added some personality to the poses available because even a kid wants to put this somewhere prominent in his or her room when it isn’t being played with.

Tank Mode is still a thing, if you care.

I had to pull back so damn far to get that whole sword into the shot.

Obviously, this thing doesn’t scale at all with the figures in the Lightning Collection. Even the original doesn’t and in order to scale properly it would likely need to be six feet tall. It’s big enough at around 9″ tall though that I think it can be a reasonable centerpiece in your MMPR display. And if you’re ambitious, you could paint this thing up into something a bit more special. Hasbro sculpted most of the details one would expect, it just didn’t bother to paint them. As a toy, it seems pretty neat, to me. Admittedly though, my kids haven’t played with this much since Christmas and my daughter even told me she wants to play with my Megazord, not this one. Go figure. I think she just likes the sheer size of the original one, and as easy as it is to transform this one, it’s a bit easier for her to transform the original. Mostly I think it’s just a case of her being more familiar with that one and not wanting to take the time to get to know this new one.

The sculpt work is mostly there, it just needs a little love from a paint brush.

It’s a little smaller than the original, but also trimmer and less statue-esque.

If you’re a Lightning Collection fan that wants a Megazord, this is certainly an affordable option. It’s not a collector grade release though and that shows. Even with light play, some of the decals are already starting to peel on this one and that’s disappointing. It’s possible the same will happen for those who just set it on a shelf and forget it. The biggest thing this release has going for it is obviously the price and availability. A Bandai one from 93 will probably set you back a couple hundred dollars, while the Legacy Collection release is a bit cheaper, but also not as nice as the original and it suffers from a lot of the same shortcomings as this one. And then there’s the Soul of Chogokin Megazord which I think retailed for something like $350 and is no longer in production so it’s likely to cost even more than that now. This set is for kids and casual fans that need a Megazord, but don’t want to break the bank. I’ve seen this one getting dumped on a bit by collectors, but at $45, I think it’s pretty good. I definitely wouldn’t recommend displaying it in dino mode as the individual zords aren’t terrific looking, but who would do that anyway? As long as your expectations are reasonable, I think this will please most who buy it.

If you are a collector looking to add a Megazord to your collection, you will soon have some more options. If you just want a posable Megazord, Super7 recently announced that it has gained the Power Rangers license. The company has already shown some vinyl, minimally, articulated Megazords, but it will be doing zords in its Ultimates! line and I can only assume a proper Megazord will arrive at some point. They’re doing the tyrannosaurs first though, and I don’t think they can do a combining Megazord so it figures to be a stand-alone zord. I could be wrong, but time will tell. Grabbing this Hasbro one at $45 doesn’t feel like a tremendous risk to me, but if you can wait, maybe hold out to see what’s coming.

Whether it’s a permanent part of your display or just a placeholder until something better comes along, the Hasbro Megazord is certainly an affordable option.

Leave a comment | tags: bandai, hasbro, lightning collection, megazord, mighty morphin power rangers | posted in Television, toys

February 1, 2021

Hasbro Lightning Collection Mighty Morphin Yellow and Pink Rangers

By Joe

Last week we took a look at the male members of the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers from Hasbro’s Lightning Collection. Back when the show was red hot in the early 90s, all of the action figures of the Rangers were the same figure with a different head and decal on the chest. That isn’t going to work for a figure line aimed at both collectors and adolescents and Hasbro obviously knows that. That’s why they did a male body and a female body for the line and that’s why the women are getting their own write-up as today I’m looking at the Pink and Yellow Rangers from Hasbro’s Lightning Collection.

I am still a fan of the window box Hasbro uses for this line, but what’s with that awful posing on Kimberly?

The Yellow and Pink Rangers sharing a body sculpt makes sense, though it also kind of doesn’t. The Yellow Ranger was sort of infamous from this era because Saban chose to cast the late Thuy Trang as Trini Kwan to portray the teenager under the mask. Of course, she was never really under the mask as none of the American actors were since that was footage taken from Japan where the Yellow Ranger was portrayed by a male actor. There are some pretty humorous images online too that really drive that fact home. Technically speaking, the action figure of the Yellow Ranger should probably utilize the male body type, but since American audiences associate Trang with the role it would be kind of weird to have a very masculine Yellow Ranger on our shelf. This figure is already not screen accurate because of this choice, and yet, I think it’s the right move and it’s not something I’m bothered by and I can’t imagine anyone is.

I wish I could get my Pink Ranger into that straight a stance.

Trini and Kimberly use entirely new parts when compared with their male counterparts. Despite that though, they’re still engineered the same way so the figures feel pretty familiar. They’re just more slight than the men with thinner limbs and smaller hands and feet. They obviously have unique headsculpts and Kimberly differs from her teammate in that she has an extra piece of plastic for her skirt piece as she was the only female Ranger in the Japanese version. They stand at about five and three quarters inches, which is roughly half an inch shorter than the males. They look pretty good in relation to the male figures, though I think you could argue Hasbro went a little too far in slimming these two down. Their limbs probably don’t need to be quite this slight as these are pretty athletic women, and the thinness of the limbs apparently necessitated a compromise when it comes to the articulation. Their proportions also look less appropriate than the men. I can’t decide if it’s the torso that is too long, or the legs. Something just doesn’t look quite right to me and I notice it more with Kimberly than Trini.

These women are packing heat, albeit in an unconventional fashion.

Like the men, these figures mix colored plastic with painted plastic. And like the men, it’s a problem. With Trini, she mostly looks okay. The yellow is quite bright with her torso being ever so slightly darker than the limbs. I have to be looking for it. Kimberly is another story. Her torso is quite a bit darker than her limbs to the point of being near purple. The pink on her helmet appears to be a completely different shade of pink, as does the skirt. She’s a mess, and to make things worse my figure was quite bow-legged out of the box as she comes packaged in a rather awkward position. I had to heat her legs up to try and straighten them out and they’re definitely better now, but not good enough. Trini is a lot more interesting to position and move. Her paint is fine and she might be the cleanest one I’ve received. It also helps that yellow paint slop just isn’t going to be as obvious as a darker color, but it’s good.

The articulation here is not as good as it is with the male figures, but you can still have some fun.

The articulation with these figures is nearly the same as the male ones, but it also works a little differently due to the sculpt. We’ve got a ball-peg at the head, hinged shoulders, elbow swivel, single-jointed elbows, and swivel and hinged hands. Shockingly, Kimberly has a vertical hinge on her right hand for her bow. I don’t know what it is about a bow that made Hasbro decide she needed this hinge, and the others didn’t, but at least they got one hand right out of 14 in this line. Trini, sadly, still has horizontal hinges to deal with. The women having single-jointed elbows instead of double-jointed ones is something I can only assume was brought on by the thinness of the arms. Hasbro used a hinged, ball, peg system so that’s why they have a swivel at the elbow instead of a biceps swivel. It’s a bit more awkward looking, but the figures can still curl their arms past 90 degrees so it’s not a huge downgrade. The diaphragm cut is where things get a little worse. It’s still a ball-joint, but it’s far less effective. There’s a lot of gapping when the figure arches back and the range of motion in general is poor. I attribute this to the lower portion of the torso not sitting further inside the upper piece. The ab crunch is also still here, but even more useless than with the men. The belt floats and can be adjusted and for Kimberly it’s attached to the skirt. The hips flare out, since these are women, and reduces the range of motion there. The men couldn’t really do a split, and the women are even worse which is a shame as I feel Kimberly’s signature move was the jump-split-kick. There’s a thigh swivel and double-jointed knees to go along with a boot cut and ankle hinges with rockers. The ankles are still the star of the show. Overall, the articulation is okay, but definitely worse than the men. Kimberly’s skirt also further reduces her range down there and her bow legs make just standing straight like the phony product shot on her packaging impossible and far less elegant than it could be.

Kimberly does have a regular arrow, if you prefer it to the pink, zappy, one.

Trini comes packed with a pair of gripping hands for wielding her Power Daggers. The little sai-like knives look fine and she has no trouble holding them, she just misses the proper hinges for her hands. Kimberly has her Power Bow with a gripping left hand to hold it and the specialized right hand for knocking an arrow. She also has a silver arrow she can hold, but it doesn’t work particularly well or look all that good. She also has an energy arrow which is far more accurate to the show and easier to wield. And it also looks a hell of a lot better than the silver arrow. It’s a translucent pink with the form of an arrow at the front and looks quite good. Trini has two, yellow, translucent, sparks for her daggers that make me think of pom-poms. They’re fine and it adds a little flair to her posing.

Like the men, both women come with a second set of hands and a Blade Blaster. For Trini, she has another gripping right hand that is meant to be used in tandem with the Blade Blaster. She also has a style pose left hand that’s similar to a karate chop. Kimberly comes with a left fist and a style pose right hand in the same shape as Trini’s chop hand. This is pretty smart on Hasbro’s part as it gives the women a set of stylized hands to share, should you want to. And I seem to recall at least the Pink Ranger using such poses in the show. Neither woman comes with the collapsed Blade Blaster or the knife version, which is a bummer because the blaster version doesn’t fit Kimberly’s holster as well as it does the other Rangers. Curiously, Kimberly’s blaster is painted differently from all of the other ones opting for a metallic silver instead of white. I think this actually looks better, but it drives me a bit crazy that hers is different for no apparent reason. She also doesn’t have a proper trigger hand and neither default hand works particularly well with the gun.

Of course, both have a second, unmasked, head. Thuy Trang’s likeness is okay. I at least know it’s her, but it’s not as good as Jason or either Tommy head that came with his figures. Kimberly looks awful though. It does not look anything like Amy Jo Johnson to me. The hair looks fine, so I guess she’s not as bad as Zach since both his hair and his face looked terrible, but it doesn’t really matter if she’s as bad as Zach since she’s still bad. It’s a good thing I don’t value these optional heads because I’d be livid if I did. Their long hair also makes articulation much trickier than before. Trini is okay, but Kimberly kind of locks in place once seated so she basically can’t move her head in this form, but you’re not going to use it so who cares?

The various power weapons join forces to vanquish evil! Yes, I had to look at a reference image to remember where everything goes.

In case you prefer something akin to a side view. The bow gets a little cockeyed doing this.

Since these are the last of the Mighty Morphin figures I will review, it feels like a good time to talk about how the weapons work. Just like in the show, the weapons can combine to form a clunky looking mega blaster of sorts. The axe is the base and the bow clips into the front of it while the sliding action on the axe serves to hold it in place. The daggers and Billy’s twin, mini, tridents peg into the underside of the bow while the sword slots on top of the axe and bow. It’s easy to assemble, though a little tricky to get one of the figures to actually hold it properly. I was able to finagle the pose from the show with Billy and Zach grabbing one end of the bow apiece and the women basically just placing their hands on Jason, so it’s doable. There’s no screen accurate blast effect packaged with anyone though, but that probably would have made it far more difficult to pose with added weight on the front. This gun has always looked kind of silly, but I love crap like this. I love that the weapons combined on the show and I would have been irritated if the toys could not do the same.

Megazord? We don’t need no stinkin’ Megazord!

The female portion of the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers brought with it a mixed bag. Generally speaking, this sculpt does not function as well as the male figure and that’s disappointing because there’s no reason why it shouldn’t work just as well. Despite that though, I’ve actually enjoyed posing the Yellow Ranger. Her weapons are simple, but not restrictive, so she has a lot of freedom. I’m also happy with her paint as she turned out about as well as the White and Green Rangers. The Pink Ranger though is another story. Her articulation is slightly worse, but what bugs me more are her warped legs and mismatched colors. She’s definitely the worst of the bunch and what’s working against her is I never liked her helmet in the show very much. She looks like an alien or something. She’s not a good figure which sucks because she’s been the hardest to get. I had to pay over retail for her because Hasbro stopped shipping her, possibly because there’s a new version out done in a metallic paint with a different actress likeness. I’m curious if that one is any better, though the metallic paint made it a non-starter for me as she wouldn’t fit in with the rest of my display. And if I didn’t need her to complete that display, I wouldn’t have her. She’s the worst figure I’ve purchased in a long while.

Group shot! Yeah, I know, the presence of the White and Green Ranger makes little sense, but I don’t care!

But you need the whole team! And that’s where Hasbro gets you. They know they don’t have to hit a home run with each figure in this line because collectors are going to buy them no matter what since they want a full team of Power Rangers. And now that I have a full team plus the Green and White Rangers, how do I feel? Pretty good. This is a case where the end result is better than the sum of its parts. I have issues with these figures, some more than others, but I’d rather have a full team than just a lone Green Ranger. And even though the scale is obviously way off, I do like having these guys with my vintage Bandai Megazord which displays better with this set than it did the vintage sets. I suppose that would mean it’s “Mission Accomplished” on Hasbro’s end, and that’s how it is with mass market action figures. At least now, after almost 30 years, I finally have a set of Power Rangers toys!

1 Comment | tags: action figures, amy jo johnson, hasbro, kimberly hart, lightning collection, mighty morphin power rangers, pink power ranger, thuy trang, trini kwan, yellow power ranger | posted in Television, toys

January 29, 2021

Hasbro Lightning Collection Mighty Morphin Red, Black, and Blue Rangers

By Joe

If it wasn’t obvious after my White Ranger review, I have decided I need to assemble a team of Power Rangers on my shelf. Specifically, the Mighty Morphin era. I’ve already posted my thoughts on both the Green and White Rangers, devoting a write-up to each figure, but for today I’m going to do some combining. And that’s because I am basically going to just talk about three different versions of the same figure. The base Power Ranger male figure is the same for each one, at least for the Mighty Morphin figures. I assume the other teams are similar, but I don’t know that for sure because I don’t have any of them, nor do I intend to get any of them. These three though are the same, and they’re basically the same as the Green and White Rangers too, though those two had a few unique pieces due to the slight differences in costumes. Now I don’t intend for that revelation to be a knock on this line, toy companies reuse parts all of the time and when the characters are pretty similar there’s no need to re-sculpt everything just for the sake of doing so. The actors in the show who portrayed the “teenagers” who become Power Rangers were fairly distinct in terms of body shape, but the costumed Rangers really were not.

I like what Hasbro has been doing with their packaging. Simple, but elegant, window boxes.

The good news is, I generally liked what Hasbro did for the other Rangers I reviewed. If I didn’t then I probably wouldn’t have bought more. The molds aren’t cartoonishly bulky like the old Bandai ones and was more reflective of how these characters actually look on screen. You can still nitpick them here and there, but for the most part they look like what I recall seeing on television back in 93. The articulation is solid, the paint has been okay for a mass market retail figure, and each figure has come mostly with enough stuff. This time though we’re going into original five territory. These characters were even more uniform with really the only difference being the head and unique weapon. All of them, in the show, were also armed with what was called a Blade Blaster which was a little laser pistol that could turn into a bulky knife. These three should be pretty similar with some room for there to be a clear “best” and “worst,” but my expectation is if one is good then all three should be pretty good. And, of course, if one is bad then they will all probably be bad.

Though I wish they used actual product shots on the rear as opposed to renders. Good luck getting the Black Ranger into that exact pose.

All three Rangers come in the same attractive window box with some unique artwork on the front and side and product shot on the back. The box is also color themed to that specific Ranger and these would probably look just fine to a mint-in-box collector, and for you openers the packaging is fairly durable and can be resealed with minimal effort. Each figure stands a tick over 6″; we’ll call it six and a quarter. And each one is some combination of colored plastic and painted plastic. Since these figures are essentially just two-toned, Hasbro tries to get away with using as little paint as possible and it creates problems. The Black Ranger is the best of the three as black is pretty opaque and plastic painted black and molded black are going to look the same. The molded white and the painted white which shows up at the butterfly joint is a little off, but for the most part he looks good. There’s paint inconsistencies here and there, and one glove has an ugly smudge of black on it, but it’s something you kind of have to deal with as far as this line is concerned. Strangely, he doesn’t have a red ring on his morpher, something all four have, so this is clearly an error on Hasbro’s part. The helmet is at least clean and looks pretty sharp. It was always one of my favorite helmets in the show with the mastodon tusks curling under the visor and it’s recreated here pretty well.

I’m going to be humming the theme song as I drop images into this thing.

Unfortunately, the Red and Blue Rangers are not as good. On these two, the colored plastic and painted plastic is noticeably different. The torso on the Red Ranger in particular is way darker than his limbs to a distracting level. It’s readily apparent in box, and still when removed. When he’s posed on a shelf with his limbs in a more dynamic pose the effect is minimized a bit, but not removed. The same is true of Billy, our Blue Ranger, but it’s not as severe. Instead, he gets to introduce a separate issue and it’s with the white paint on his torso. It’s not nearly opaque enough and the blue plastic shows through it. It’s bizarre for this figure to have this problem when the black figure is fine. These figures were not all released at the same time so it would appear the factory just had a bad run when it came time to manufacture the Blue Ranger because he feels like the clear dud of this trio. He also has the worst helmet of the three too as there’s a paint chip on the center horn and the shape just looks a little off to me. It’s very round. There are some sculpted lines on it, but the plastic is so dark and glossy that they don’t show well. I wish Hasbro had added some paint to bring them out more like they did with the Black Ranger who has some added silver paint. He’s not awful, but this figure is definitely helped by the fact that I’ve always enjoyed the aesthetics of the Blue Ranger, but someone who doesn’t like blue as much as I do would probably have a harsher take here. The Red Ranger also would benefit from some more paint on his helmet to bring out the design.

Hopefully you can tell how dark Jason’s torso is vs his limbs and how thin the white paint on Billy’s diamonds are.

The paint on these guys is definitely a mixed bag, but at least they’re all the same when it comes to articulation. To run it down again, these guys have a ball peg at the head that gives them an acceptable range of motion. Up and down articulation is limited, but it’s fine. We’ve got a ball hinge at the shoulder with a butterfly joint behind it. The combination of molded white and painted white plastic with this joint is a little unsightly, but the range created by the joint is, for the most part, worth it. I have a bit of a love-hate relationship with butterfly joints. There’s a biceps swivel, double-jointed elbow, and the hands rotate and have horizontal hinges, which are bad for these figures. There’s a ball-joint in the diaphragm that provides some tilt forward and back as well as side-to-side. There is an ab crunch that’s mostly useless, and no waist swivel. I wish Hasbro would ditch the ab crunch and just go with a waist swivel. The legs are ball pegs and can kick forward, but not back. They also can’t do a true split, which kind of sucks for acrobatic characters. There’s a thigh swivel, double-jointed knees, a boot cut, and ankle hinges with rockers. The ankles are terrific and will be your best friend when it comes to posing these boys. It’s fine articulation on the whole with obvious room for improvement. Unfortunately, any improvement to it though will be a benefit to other iterations of the Power Rangers as I suspect Hasbro is not going to re-sculpt the Mighty Morphin figures anytime soon. Maybe when they do guys like Rocky and Adam they’ll retool some things, but it’s not something I’d count on. It also should be noted some are more stiff than others, though I can say no joints are loose. My Red Ranger’s elbows were also curved slightly which made working them a bit difficult. I ran them under hot water to try to bend the bow out and was mostly successful. His shoulder hinges are real tight though and he’s a bit more awkward to work with as a result.

The weapons turned out pretty well, at least.

This is the only blast effect among the five Rangers so if you want the combined blaster to fire this is your only option.

The accessories present the most obvious opportunity for these figures to separate themselves from each other as each Ranger had their own unique weapon. For Jason the Red Ranger, it’s the Power Sword. Zach the Black Ranger has the Power Axe, and Billy has the Power Lance. Very creative names, I know. Jason’s sword is just that, a sword. It’s fine, but the lack of vertical hinged hands makes wielding it properly more difficult than it needs to be. Hasbro also painted the handle black, so now I have black smudges on the inside of the hands. Definitely just heat those hands to make them soft when inserting this thing unless you want your figure to have dirty hands too. Zach’s axe suffers from the same hinge fate when wielded as an axe, but it also functions as a gun which the wrist hinges don’t impact much. And it’s pretty cool! It even has a sliding action on it so he can pump it like a shotgun. It’s probably my favorite weapon so far. Billy’s lance is fine, though it’s a bit flimsy so it will often have a slight curve to it. It’s blue plastic, so there’s less fear of rub with this one as the only paint is reserved for the silver trident tips and some minor details. Hasbro packed in separate handheld daggers for Billy as his lance could break in half. This was mostly for when they combine their weapons (which is something the figures can do if you buy all five Rangers), but he can wield these like sais if you wanted. It’s probably the smarter play than just having the lance separate as they would have had to have a separate middle piece that did nothing in order for the lance to be long enough. These weapons are good though, so no real complaints there. Each one also comes with an effects piece for their respective weapon. Jason and Billy have a lighting effect that is blue for both of them. Zach has a blasting effect for when his weapon is used in gun form. It’s a translucent red with sparkles and works pretty well, though it kind of looks like a pumpkin. It does add a lot of weight to the front of the axe so posing him can get challenging when it’s inserted, but not impossible.

Zach is the only one who got the memo it was actually a knife fight they were supposed to show up for.

For the blasters, Hasbro continues to confuse. Each Ranger comes with a Blade Blaster in blaster form. It would have been pretty awesome if they could have made a transforming blaster (since the transformation was very simple), but that might have resulted in too fragile a piece so instead there are just regular blasters. The paint on them isn’t great, but the sculpt work at least looks nice. Zach also comes with a Blade Blaster in blade form. This is cool since it was something each Ranger had, though as a weapon it looked really stupid even to an eight year old, but it was in the show so I want the toy to have it. The blade though is permanently extended so it has basically one function. This sucks because in the show the Rangers would holster these weapons in blade form, but with the blade retracted (it was essentially an ugly switchblade). That means each Ranger can’t holster this weapon in a screen-accurate manner. I’m tempted to just snip off the blade, but that won’t solve the issue of the Red and Blue Rangers only having the pistol version. The pistol fits in the holster, but again, it’s not screen accurate and it bothers me. You can brush this aside by saying “Well, this is a line meant to appeal to kids too,” but kids care about that stuff! I was arguably more obsessed with things being screen accurate as a kid than I am now. At the very least, each figure should have come with this bladed version in addition to the gun, but Hasbro got cheap on us. It’s like they put it in with the Black Ranger just to wave it in our face that they could have done this the whole time, but chose not to.

Spare heads, if you want them. Though I can’t imagine anyone wants that Zach.

Lastly, each figure comes with some optional parts. All have two sets of hands: gripping and fists. I appreciate the extras, but fists aren’t very exciting as optional hands. I’d have preferred maybe some chop hands or more style pose hands since these characters did a lot of that in the show. The other optional part is the unmasked head that comes with each. This is a good thing if that’s something that interests you, though I personally won’t ever use them. The likeness for each is based on their original actor so we have Austin St. John as Jason, Walter Jones as Zach, and David Yost as Billy. Of the three, Jason looks the best. It more or less looks like St. John. Billy’s head is okay. It’s a bit goofy and glasses are always hard to get right, but it’s okay. Zach though looks terrible. I don’t know what Hasbro was trying to do with this one. He had dreadlocks in Season Two and I guess that’s what they were going for with this one, but his hair just looks terrible and the face looks nothing like Jones to me. It’s bad. It’s probably a bummer for diehard collectors of Power Rangers who want to assemble a team of every actor who played these characters, at least for a casual fan like me it’s just an ugly lump of plastic that will stay in the box.

“Don’t worry, Tommy! I’ll save you by smashing in your face with my Power Sword!”

This collection of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers is okay. I definitely do not like these figures as much as I did the White and Green Rangers, but I’m not feeling any buyer’s remorse or anything. They get the job done when put on a shelf, it’s when placed under greater scrutiny that some things start to fall apart. I think the Black Ranger is fine, ignoring his ugly unmasked head, and I’m mostly happy with how he turned out. The paint issues on the Red and Blue Rangers are my biggest complaints. I can handwave the inaccurate Blade Blaster and lack of vertical hinges for the hands, but the paint is a bummer because that affects the aesthetics of the figure just as much as the sculpt. The Red Ranger’s elbows, in particular, are ugly because they’re basically a candy apple red and the Blue Ranger has those poorly painted white diamonds on his chest. The thing I keep coming back to is that these are mass market retail figures priced at 20 bucks or less, in most cases. I shouldn’t even expect NECA quality with these things, let alone high end collectibles. Even with that caveat, I still think they’re a little disappointing because this is Hasbro and we know what Hasbro is capable of. Whether it’s Ghostbusters, GI Joe, or Marvel we’ve seen them do much better with paint and certainly matching colored plastic to painted plastic. I can’t recall ever having that be as big an issue with another line as it is here.

Hasbro is able to get a lot of important stuff right with these guys like the overall sculpt and articulation. They also realize that Billy should have a separate set of weapons for when his lance is separated. Then they go and mess up the paint and fail to include holstered Blade Blasters and just do some weird stuff that keeps these from being great. It’s frustrating.

Ultimately, you are free to like or dislike these figures. I suspect most will have mixed feelings, as I do, but I also bet there are some extreme reactions too. For me, I like the aesthetics of these sculpts more than I have any other Power Rangers products, so they work well enough. I always hated the over-muscled look of some of the Bandai figures because these guys aren’t Jim Lee drawings, they were just actors who were probably gymnasts first. If I thought Hasbro was going to do better I might have held off, but I don’t think that will happen unless they do some running changes when they get to the other actors, assuming they do. And if they do, I hope they just cast everything in colored plastic save for the hands and I suppose the boots. And they can also keep the white butterfly joint, I guess, though I think they can do better in color-matching that too. And if that happens, maybe I’ll sell these and upgrade (the Red and Blue, anyways), but maybe I won’t? These get the job done for me, I just think Hasbro can do better and I don’t blame Power Rangers fans if they want to hold Hasbro to a higher standard by ignoring these.

2 Comments | tags: action figures, austin st. john, blue ranger, david yost, hasbro, lightning collection, mighty morphin power rangers, red ranger, walter jones | posted in Television, toys

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