MIGHTY MORPHIN & ZEO PINK RANGERS

POWER RANGERS: LIGHTNING COLLECTION (HASBRO)

“Originally under an evil spell that allowed her to transform into a white cat to spy on the Power Rangers, Kat Hillard becomes the second Mighty Morphin Pink Ranger and, later, Zeo Ranger Pink”

Okay, we did a week of Marvel, and two weeks of Star Wars before that, how about doing more of a mixed week this time around?  I’m still sticking to the Hasbro side of things, because, honestly, it’s a bit hard not to these days.  I’m setting my sites on one of their less frequent ones around here, Power Rangers: Lightning Collection.  My last several Lightning Collection reviews have been centered on my favorite Rangers incarnation, Power Rangers In Space, but today I’m looking at my second favorite incarnation, Power Rangers Zeo…well, partly, anyway.  For the backstory on this one, it’s important to bring up the mid-show replacements for half of the MMPR Rangers, Rocky, Adam, and Aisha, who replaced Jason, Zach, and Trini.  Initially, Amy Jo Johnson’s Kimberly remained with the team through the change over, but she was still replaced a bit later by Kar Hillard, who would serve as the Pink Ranger for the last batch of MMPR, carrying over into Zeo.  Today’s focus covers *both* of those incarnations, in one convenient set…well, for Hasbro, anyway, since it means we have to buy the MMPR Pink Ranger again.  Alas.  Such is the way for us.

THE FIGURES THEMSELVES

This pair of Pink Rangers is a GameStop-exclusive Lightning Collection two-pack, with limited quantities available through Hasbro Pulse as well.  They were part of a larger celebration of the Pink Ranger specifically, all of which were made available for order last summer.

MIGHTY MORPHIN

With the base versions of all of the Mighty Morphin Rangers released, Hasbro’s doubling back for some variants, just to get some extra mileage out of them.  All of the replacement Rangers got the metallic/translucent variants, but now they’re following up with some more straight forward releases for them as well.  This figure follows up on Aisha’s standard release getting packed in with Scorpina, giving us a standard MMPR Pink, but with Kat under the helmet instead of Kimberly.  The figure stands 6 inches tall and has 30 points of articulation.  Her sculpt is the same as the prior release of Mighty Morphin Pink (and, by extension, the Mighty Morphin Yellow figures).  Since it was the same suit (and a good chunk of the same footage), the shared sculpt makes sense.  It’s a pretty okay offering, with a decent articulation set-up, which is pretty well worked into the sculpt.  The color work is alright, though there’s some notable clashing in the molded colors of the pink plastic, which seems to be worse on this release than the prior one.  The application is at least pretty cleanly applied.  The figure is packed with her power bow, an arrow, the blade blaster, and two sets of hands.  The bow and blaster are notably sporting slightly inferior paint work, compared to the single release, which is a bit of a bummer.  Also included with this release are an unmasked Kat head, as well as Kat in her cat form from before her time as a Ranger.

ZEO

The real selling point of this set, of course, isn’t a re-pack of MMPR Pink, but is actually Zeo Pink, our fifth of the six Zeo Rangers.  She brings us just one figure away from completing the team (Tanya will be rounding things up in the next assortment of the main line), and gives our first female Zeo Ranger.  The figure stands 6 inches tall and she has 30 points of articulation.  Her articulation scheme is essentially the same as the Morphin body, with the one notable exception being a slightly more restricted range of motion on the elbow joints.  Given all the advancements we’ve been seeing with the elbow joints on Hasbro’s other lines, it’s a bit of a shame that we’re still seeing things this restricted over on the Power Rangers side.  The sculpt is largely new, though she shares the upper arms and most of the legs with the standard Morphin body.  The new parts match up with the male Zeo bodies, and she gets a unique helmet sculpt sporting her character-specific helmet, with the oval visor, the second most sensible visor shape, after Adam, of course.  The color work on this figure is a little bit better than her Mighty Morphin counterpart.  There’s still a slight mismatch on the pinks, but it’s not quite as bad here.  The paint application is pretty sharp and all of the major elements are properly detailed.  Zeo Pink is packed with her Zeonier, capsule sword, disc shield, two sets of hands, and another unmasked Kat head, this time sporting a truly ’90s-tastic pink scrunchy.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

Zeo is one of the two line-ups I’m looking to complete in this line, so I’ve been eagerly awaiting each successive release for the team.  I was less than thrilled by Zeo Pink being stuck in a two-pack with another MMPR Pink.  I was even less thrilled by this two-pack being a GameStop-exclusive, as I’d really prefer to pretty much never give that company any money ever again.  Thankfully, I was able to get in on the Pulse quantities when they went up for order.  I’m still not thrilled by the set-up here, but Zeo Pink is at least a pretty nice figure, and I look forward to getting to complete the set shortly.