Tag Archives: White Ranger

#2089: White Ranger

Posted by Ethan Wilson in Reviews and tagged with , , , ,

WHITE RANGER

POWER RANGERS: THE LIGHTNING COLLECTION (HASBRO)

Since it’s arrival on US shores in the mid-90s, Power Rangers merch has been produced by Bandai, who are generally the go-to for Japanese media that gets imported.  They’ve been doing that thing for like two decades, but admittedly started to falter as Power Rangers‘ reach grew outside of its original, younger demographic.  Bandai, or their American component at least, has never been one for the more collector’s oriented side of the toy world.  You know who’s actually pretty good at that, though?  Hasbro.  And Hasbro really wanted to make Power Rangers toys, apparently, and decided that the easiest way to facilitate that was to buy Power Rangers.  Not the license, the brand.  They officially took over at the beginning of the year, with their first products being for the latest incarnation of the show.  The big exciting thing, though, is their go at a collector’s line, dubbed The Lightning Collection.  I’ll be looking at my first figure from the line, the White Ranger, or, if you’re my drunk best friend, the White Ragnar.

THE FIGURE ITSELF

The White Ranger is the first of four figures in Series 1 of The Lightning Collection.  He’s clearly designed as the natural pairing to the Lord Zedd figure also featured in this same assortment.  The figure stands a little over 6 inches tall and he has 34 points of articulation.  The Lightning Collection is designed as a counterpart to Hasbro’s Star Wars: The Black Series and Marvel Legends lines, so it’s scaled pretty similarly, kind of bridging the gap between the two of them.  But more importantly than that, let’s discuss the scaling relative to other Power Rangers lines.  The Figuarts and Legacy offerings were on opposite sides of the rather nebulous 6-inch scale, and kind of both off on their own.  This line definitely scales a lot closer to Figuarts.  They’re a little taller, but it’s close enough scaling that it’ll work more or less.  At the very least, this version of Tommy will fit in alright with the Figuarts releases of the main five Mighty Morphin’ guys.  Like the scaling, the styling of this figure’s sculpt falls somewhat between the two prior collectors lines.  While he’s definitely got a little more bulk to him than the Figuarts stuff, he’s nowhere near as crazy buff as the Legacy stuff was.  It’s actually a rather nice happy medium, and I think my favorite styling so far.  The sculpt on this figure is all-new, of course, and a pretty strong recreation of his design from the show, in a pretty realistic fashion.  The details aren’t quite as crisp as the Figuarts stuff, but that’s largely due to the slightly more rubbery plastic, which ultimately makes the figure feel a lot sturdier than those guys did.  I do miss the ability to remove the holster on the belt, like you could on the Figuarts, but beyond that, I like it a lot.  The White Ranger’s paintwork is decent overall, but I did encounter a number of issues from figure to figure when I was looking through them.  I picked the best of the bunch, and he still has a few issues, so there’s definitely some flaws to be had.  Overall, though, the issues I encountered were all pretty minor; I was just being picky.  The White Ranger was packed with two sets of hands, one in fists, the other in a karate chop/gripping combo, as well as his Saba Sword, an effect piece for the sword, and an un-helmeted Tommy head.  That’s quite an impressive accessory compliment, and I hope Hasbro can keep this up for future offerings.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

I passed on the Figuarts White Ranger when he was released, so there was this White Ranger-shaped whole in my Power Rangers line-up.  I sort of filled in that spot with the 20th Anniversary Movie White Ranger, but it wasn’t quite the same.  When this guy was on the list for the first line-up, I was actually pretty excited and I’ve been waiting for this line to hit.  After being kind of let-down by the Legacy Collection, I wasn’t quite sure what to expect from these, but I gotta say, I’m really happy with the end result.  He’s a little sturdier than a Figurarts, which makes him a lot more playable, but at the same time, he scales pretty well with them, meaning there’s less of a need to rebuy everything again.

I grabbed the White Ranger from All Time Toys, where he’s still available here.  If your looking for other Legends or other toys both old and new, please check out their website and their eBay storefront.

#0710: White Ranger

Posted by Ethan Wilson in Reviews and tagged with , ,

WHITE RANGER

MIGHTY MORPHIN’ POWER RANGERS: THE MOVIE

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In the mid-1990s, Power Rangers was pretty big, big enough to warrant getting a full-length movie, anyway. Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers: The Movie presented a slightly different continuity from the show, and offered some slight redesigns of the Rangers costume, one assumes to make them more visually interesting on the big screen. The designs were wholly original to the American-ized version of the Rangers. There were no pre-existing toys of them in Japan, meaning that no toys of those designs were released at the time of the movie. However, with the 20th Anniversary of the Mighty Morphin’ Rangers, Bandai has decided to finally offer film-accurate versions of the characters. Today we’ll be looking at the White Ranger.

THE FIGURE ITSELF

WhiteRanger2The White Ranger was released as part of Bandai’s Mighty Morpin’ Power Rangers: The Movie line, which was released exclusively at Toys R Us, at least initially. He is, as noted, based on the design of the White Ranger from the movie, which, in contrast to the other Rangers in the movie, was actually more streamlined than the TV version. The figure stands a little over 5 inches tall (which is just a smidge shorter than the SH Figuarts Rangers) and has 19 points of articulation. While he certainly has a fair amount of articulation, the lack of lateral movement at the biceps and hips, as well as the complete lack of any sort of torso articulation does make anything much more exciting than a slightly askew “ready for action” sort of pose pretty much impossible. Power Rangers figures have typically had a tendency to be a lot more bulked up than their real life counterparts. While he’s certainly not as proportionally balanced as the Figuarts stuff, the White Ranger actually manages to have fairly modest proportions. The more armored look also helps to mask any sort of extra bulkiness, so it’s really not noticeable. The details of the sculpt are pretty decent, but some areas are a little softer than others, especially the torso. Also, most of the articulation is worked it pretty smoothly, but the hip joints stick out like sore thumbs. The paintwork on this figure is pretty decently handled; there’s not really any slop or bleed over. However, the colors are kind of flat, and he feels much too shiny overall. The White Ranger is packed with his talking sword, Saba, which can be held (loosely) in his hand or plugged into the side of his belt.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

I ended up passing on the SH Figuarts White Ranger when he was released, since I’m more of a Green Ranger fan. When I did finally look into getting one, the prices had jumped beyond what I was willing to pay. So, when I saw this guy at a local TRU while accompanying Tim on a quest for Nerf guns, I figured he was worth the investment. Unfortunately, I didn’t actually have the money on me to buy him, but Super Awesome Girlfriend was there, and, as we’ve established, she won’t let me put a figure back. He’s not a bad figure, but I will admit to being a tad disappointed by the movement once I got him out of the box. Still, you could do a lot worse.

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