BLUE RANGER

MIGHTY MORPHIN POWER RANGERS ULTIMATES (SUPER 7)

Fun FiQ Fact #0038:  David Yost’s Billy Cranston, aka Mighty Morphin Blue, had the longest run of the original five Power Rangers, making it halfway through the fourth season before departing.  He was the only of the core Mighty Morphin cast not to gain a replacement during the original run.

I keep *sort of* being done with Power Rangers, but in that sort of fashion where I know I’m not *actually* quite done.  What can I say, I’m a sucker for Blue Rangers, especially when they’re Mighty Morphin Blue.  If there’s a new line of Rangers, I’m pretty much a lock on picking up a Blue, as is the case with today’s offering, which is a Blue Ranger from Super 7’s Ultimates imprint.

THE FIGURE ITSELF

Blue Ranger is part of the third wave of Super 7’s Mighty Morphin Power Rangers Ultimates line.  Each assortment gets two of the Rangers, and in this case, it’s Blue and Black.  The figure stands about 7 inches tall and he has 32 points of articulation.  Movement can always be a bit touchy on an Ultimates figure, and that’s somewhat maintained here.  His arm movement, especially on the elbows, is restricted.  He does get okay movement on the neck, as well as the mid-torso and waist.  He’s a little stiffer than other Ranger lines, but he’s not terrible.  You can get some decent poses out of him with a little bit of work.  But, by usual standards for Super 7, not bad.  The sculpt on this guy is largely shared with the other male Rangers in the line.  It’s a pretty good one.  We’ve gotten all different manner of builds on the Rangers in differing lines from differing manufacturers.  This one goes for the lighter build, which is pretty accurate to what we see on screen.  Detailing is generally pretty basic, but generally lifelike.  He gets a unique head with his signature triceratops helmet.  It goes for his cleaned up “toy style” helmet, and it does that pretty well.  Like his Lightning Collection counterpart, he’s also got a slightly tweaked belt, featuring his proper emblem on the buckle.  Blue’s paint work is basic, but quite clean, and pretty much exactly what it needs to be.  Blue gets a quite impressive selection of accessories, which includes two unmasked heads, five pairs of hands, three different configurations of his Power Lance, four different styles of the Blade Blaster, his power blastert-thingy, his morpher, and power coin.  While most of the other Rangers use the two heads to cover both people who use the identity, Billy instead gets early and late run head sculpts.  The early sculpt is goony and a little silly (but the paint is pretty good), while the later run sculpt sports what is probably the best David Yost likeness I’ve seen on a Billy head.  For the Power Lance, there are extended and compacted versions of the show-accurate look, plus a toy style version.  The Blade Blaster gets folded up, blaster, blade, and toy style versions, and the hands are designed to work pretty well with all of those differing configurations.  The gripping hands are all a little loose when holding the accessories, which makes for some tricky posing.

THE ME REMAINDER OF THE EQUATION

You know, way back in 2014, when I got my Figuarts Blue Ranger, I really thought that was going to be it, but here I am with yet another version.  Honestly, I knew I was grabbing this one as soon as he was shown off.  Of course, he was beaten to market by the Remastered edition of the Lightning Collection release, which hits some of the same marks as this one, albeit in its own unique way.  I like them both for different reasons.  Based on what I’ve seen, Blue looks to be the nicest of the Super 7 Rangers, which I appreciate as someone who only collects Blue Rangers.  On his own, he’s not perfect, but there’s quite a bit about him that I really, really like.

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