ZEO GREEN RANGER

POWER RANGERS: LIGHTNING COLLECTION (HASBRO)

The color thematics of the core Power Rangers teams for the show’s early run (and, in turn the runs of the Sentai shows that Power Rangers was adapting) generally followed a pretty established pattern.  The starting team of five always included red, blue, yellow, and pink, but the fifth color would typically bounce back and forth between either black or green (and early on, the sixth ranger would frequently sport a costume predominately made up of whichever of those two wasn’t already in play).  When the show was still attempting to keep a running narrative and share some of the same rangers between seasons, this meant that we wound up with situations like Adam Park, the second MMPR Black Ranger, becoming the Zeo Green when the footage switched over.  Pretty nifty!

THE FIGURE ITSELF

Zeo Green is part of the 8th main line assortment of Hasbro’s Power Rangers: Lightning Collection.  He marks our fourth of the Zeo Rangers, following Red, Blue, and Gold.  Just waiting on the girls now.  This figure also marks our first non-Tommy Green Ranger, as well as our first non-sixth ranger Green Ranger.  The figure stands 6 1/4 inches tall and he has 34 points of articulation.  Surprising no one, Zeo Green is predominately made up of the same parts as both Zeo Red and Zeo Blue.  I did note that this time around, the arms seem to have an easier time sitting flush with his sides, as opposed to their slight tendency to stick out on prior versions.  He gets a new helmeted head sculpt, which follows the same general set-up as the prior ones, but swaps out their respective visor shapes for Adam’s rectangular visor.  Truly his was by far the most sensible of all the Zeo visors.  Zeo Green’s paint work follows the trend set by Zeo Red, being rather clean, even given some of the more lax paint on a few other Hasbro figures recently.  The colors are nice and bright, and that green really pops.  Zeo Green is packed with two sets of hands (one gripping, one in fists), his pod sword, laser pistol, an unmasked Adam Park head, a blast effect for the pistol, and his Zeo IV Power Axes.  At this point, I’ve accepted that we’re not going to be getting the collapsed version of the pod sword, at least with the standard releases of these figures, so I’m deciding to not let that bug me.  Beyond that, the Adam Park head is probably the best of the Zeo-era likenesses we’ve gotten so far, so that’s nice.  It’s also nice that he included his Power Axes, though it does make it more glaringly obvious that Rocky didn’t get his own power weapon, now that both Tommy and Adam have gotten theirs.  Perhaps Rocky’s weapon can get packed in with someone else?

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

Adam, specifically as the Zeo Green Ranger, is a rather important piece of Power Rangers for me, less because of anything to do with the show directly, and more because Zeo Green was my very first Power Rangers toy, back in the day.  The summer Zeo came out, my grandmother bought a batch of figures for the each of the grand children to have one while we were on vacation together.  My cousins had already claimed Red and Blue by the time I got there, so Green was the one waiting for me.  At the time, I wanted blue more, but I was honestly happy with anything.  Over the years, I’ve come to have an appreciation for Adam as a character, and I was definitely looking forward to this guy.  He’s probably my favorite of the basic Zeo Rangers so far.

Thanks to my sponsors over at All Time Toys for setting me up with this figure to review.  If you’re looking for Lightning Collection, or other toys both old and new, please check out their website and their eBay storefront.