Non-Bot Reviews: Power Rangers: Lighting Collection Remastered Mighty Morphin’ Blue Ranger

Look, I was a kid in the 90’s, which means, by default, I watched Power Rangers in the heyday of the original series. I liked it, too! Though I’ll say that, having revisited an old episode or two in the years since, it doesn’t hold up nearly as well as the Transformers productions of my youth, between Rangers’ poor acting (to be fair, they cast extremely new, non-union actors), incredibly obvious switchovers between American footage and dubbed-over Japanese action scenes, and generally choppy plotting and editing that gave it a very cynical air of “who cares, the kids won’t notice.” Still, there’s a charm and camp to the whole thing (and if you want a dose of what it was like, I recommend the ‘95 movie, it mitigated some of the show’s issues via a slightly higher budget). You know what actually was really good, though? The recently-released Netflix special, Power Rangers: Once and Always, which re-unites a bunch of the original actors (plus a new face or two), as they face the return of an old villain.

It’s less than an hour long, feels like it was made with love for the franchise, features actors who seem to be having fun (and have improved with time), and strikes the perfect tone between raising the stakes a little bit (death can now be directly mentioned, and also actually happen) while keeping the kind of high-camp tone of the original. If you even vaguely remember the original series, I recommend giving it a watch, it’s short and sweet.

More importantly for this blog, it finally got me to get something from the Lightning Collection, Hasbro’s 6-inch Power Rangers toyline, which they started up in 2018, almost immediately after acquiring the rights to the franchise. It’s the same basic ecosystem as Marvel Legends, Star Wars Black Series, GI Joe Classified, and the myriad other 6-inch Hasbro lines that have come and gone. Naturally, as the defacto most well-known part of the Rangers franchise, the original Mighty Morphin’ team’s already been covered by the line in a few formats. But, as I discovered when I reviewed the most recent Marvel Legends Spider-Man tooling (first here, and its repaint, here) 6-inch technology has advanced, and it also pays to keep the popular characters on the market, and so we now have “Lighting Collection Remastered,” a series of re-releases of the original Rangers, with more accessories, paint, and according to a comparison I watched, almost entirely new toolings, to boot. And one of the first releases in this little subline is Billy Cranston, the original Blue Ranger, who was almost certainly chosen to start it off because he’s one of the leads in Once and Always (and his actor, David Yost, finally returning to the franchise, was a selling point). Me, I always liked the character. Between him and Data from Star Trek, it’s pretty clear I immediately gravitated towards “smart guy who uses a lot of big words, and doesn’t know how to relate to people in a normal way” as a favorite type, and Billy was a sterling example of one of those. So, character I like, recent media I like, and a new fancy figure? Yeah, I’ll bite. Though, after taxes (and a discount thanks to having a Gamestop card), he hit $50 Canadian, so he’s got a fair bit to prove, at that price.

The Sculpt

Billy comes out of the box in his Ranger outfit of spandex, but with his helmet off, a look he’d often sport on the show when battle had either just ended, or was imminent. In terms of scale, he stands only a hair taller and broader than my Hasbro Spider-Guys. Also, to get this out of the way, I am going to mention those two figures a lot, as they’re my big point of comparison.

Anywho, years of Power Rangers figures by former toymakers Bandai have earned this franchise’s toys a reputation for depicting Rangers as beefy, muscle-bound, and bodybuilder-like, when the actors (and stuntpeople) portraying them were actually more realistically athletic in build. Fortunately, the Lightning Collection in general, and Billy specifically, eschews ludicrous muscles in favor of something more screen-accurate. Sure, you can see pecs poking out of his chest, but the rest of him is more normally built, and instead of skintightness, there’s a lot of really nice fabric creases molded into his uniform, when it’s not being interrupted by the inevitable joint cuts.

He’s got a belt sculpted on his waist as a separate piece, and a Power Morpher (the transformation device of the Rangers) on the front of it, though it feels a bit flat, and seems to kind of sink into his waist at the bottom. I’m not sure if this is a my-copy-thing, or a general thing.

Uptop, Billy’s got a really nicely-sculpted face, with that screen-printing tech they’ve got over there clearly having been put to good use. He’s sporting a determined expression, but one with just a hint of a smile. He looks like he’s got Ranger Business to do, but it’s going to be a bit fun. I particularly like his immaculately styled hair.

This is definitely meant to be 90’s Billy, not the aged one from Once and Always, but on the other hand, between David Yost aging pretty well, and the softness of this sculpt, I can kinda-sorta squint test him into the Guy From The Thing I Just Saw. On the other hand, if you really want to make him look like 90’s Billy, you can slap a pair of glasses on him (yes, I’m hitting some accessories and features early, it’s inevitable.)

The glasses are translucent, with painted silver, and are made out of soft, flexible plastic to prevent breakage. They slip right over his face, into grooves carved into his hair. To their credit, I didn’t even notice the grooves at first, and the glasses, despite being soft plastic, manage to stay on really well.

And, of course, to complete his transformation, you can yank his head off the ball joint, and pop on his helmet. It’s a very tight connection, but feels like it’s not in danger of breaking.

As for the helmet, it’s the expected sculpt, with the black visor, odd-when-you-think-about-it sculpted-on-mouth, and triceratops stylings molded in. I got hit with a QC issue, a bit of mold flash under his visor, and it’s left a little light blue spackling, but otherwise, it looks good.

Colors

He’s….blue. Well, okay. His main color is a dark blue all across his suit in matte, with white highlights on his boots, gloves, chest and belt, often in the form of diamonds, for some reason (scales to go with the dinosaur theme, maybe?) A selling point of this remastered version is all the extra paint on his belt, namely the black stripes around the edges, and the ton of paint on his Morpher (silver, black, red, and gold), including a tiny Triceratops logo, and to be clear, it’s pretty swanky-looking.

Uptop, that screen-printed face of his has a ton of nice color on it, including sandy brown hair, and a bunch of printed coloration for his facial features. His eyes seem to do the opposite of that trick some paintings do, where in his case, it feels like he’s never looking at me. Meanwhile, his helmet is glossy blue, with a black visor, and bits of silver and yellow, in all the expected amounts.

Here’s the stressful thing: He’s got a ton of paint apps on him, yes, but all of this paint leaves a lot of room for quality control errors, and I got hit with a few tiny ones. On the left side of his chest, on one of his white diamonds, he’s got a couple of raised bumps from what feels like too much paint (maybe I can sand them down and Gundam Marker them over), and on his helmet, there’s a very tiny bit of white outline spilling onto his black visor (you can see it in some of the above photos). Granted, this is all pretty minor, but it really does highlight the risks of doing a figure with so much paint slathered all over it (and releasing it in a closed box, where you can’t check for this stuff). It’s all minor stuff, fixable if you’ve got the markers, even, but still, buyer beware.

Build Quality

Here’s a category where this is a bit of a mixed bag. One of the reasons that I started giving Hasbro 6-inchers a shot again was because of how solid and tight their new Spider-Man tooling felt, and this isn’t quite on that level. The plastic’s largely the same, but does feel a bit softer in places, though it’s slight enough that it might just be me. Probably his biggest issue though, is simply that his joints are looser than I’d like, much looser than the Spiders. Not all of them, but just enough to give it a weaker handfeel than I’d like. Specifically, the pectoral joints that let his arms move in and out are pretty loose and free-swinging (though not enough that he can’t hold a pose,) and his sideways ankle-tilts, frustratingly, are just a bit wobbly.

I’m not sure what’s up with his hip joints, either. They seem loose enough to sag when I lift his legs, but I’ve also found I can push them upwards towards his body, to kind of make them tighter.

I’m really not sure if this is a bug, or intended feature. All of this does make him slightly challenging to stand. Not impossible, but it’s just loose and janky enough compared to Marvel Legends to bring it down a bit. And I don’t think it’s mold degradation, I’ve heard, again, this is an almost entirely new tooling, rather than a simple 2018-era repaint. A midair kick on one foot is still entirely possible, though.

There’s good use of materials on his accessories, though, which I’ll get into below. They were good about making the thin, breakable ones out of soft-but-not-too-soft materials, and the more solid ones out of more rigid materials. Still, the whole package together does cause another feeling in me: This feels less like a sturdy, knockaround figure than the Spider-Men. Maybe it’s the big bag of accessories, or all the paint, or his materials, or just the increased price tag, but I’m more inclined to handle this figure with kid gloves, so take that as you will.

Articulation

Here’s the real test, compared to the high, bendy standards of my ultra-poseable Spider-Guys. How’s his articulation compare? To my surprise, it’s literally the same, he’s got, beat for beat, all the same joints as Amazing Fantasy and Retro Animated Series spider-man, including multiple leg swivels, double knees and elbows, an ab crunch and mid-torso substitute waist swivel (an odd choice in Billy’s case, because he has a belt, so it wouldn’t break the sculpt up to give him a normal waist), crazy ankle tilts, all the bells and whistles.

The big difference, though, is the range of motion on those joints. A lot of them, like the neck, shoulders and hips don’t actually have as far of a range as on Spider-Man. Combine that with the sculpt, and the aforementioned looseness of certain joints, and he doesn’t feel as madly manipulatable as the Spiders. On the other hand, outside of Kung Fu Poses, there’s less of a need to make Rangers bend and contort themselves into odd shapes. Then again, I did like how the poseability felt like a feature over at Marvel, so it being a bit lessened here doesn’t feel great.

Accessories

This is definitely a selling point, because Billy comes with a metric tonne of stuff in a little paper bag in his box, way more accessories than his earlier releases. So, let’s see what’s in the pile.

I’ve already talked about the glasses, and how well they work. Beyond that, Billy’s got six sets of hands, which can be pretty easily popped out and into his wrists. Hasbro’s really got interchangeable hands down pat with their 6-inchers. He’s got old-fashioned punchy fists, accessory-holding hands, and a third pair that mime his transformation pose, when he holds up the Power Morpher. As a bonus, one of those Transformation Pose hands is basically a karate chop.

I do have a bit of a problem with the accessory-holding hands, though, in that they’re often a poor fit for his accessories, especially the various red weapons, which kind of dangle there loosely.

Next up, he’s got an incredibly tiny Power Morpher, the Power Rangers transformation device, which can be dangled off the fingers of his right hand, as his left hand hovers above it, for the classic “It’s Morphin Time” pose. Like the one on his belt, it’s incredibly well-painted, and has all the details of the actual prop on it, including the Triceratops-logo coin in the middle.

I’m gonna be extremely pedantic here and point out the conceptual weirdness of this, though. He’s already wearing his suit, and the Power Morpher is already present on his belt, so him having one to hold out and do the pose doesn’t really jive with the figure itself. If he was in civilian clothes, maybe. Or maybe if they’d engineered his morpher to be removable. I almost feel like I need to give this to other figures.

Next up, we have three accessories that initially confused me: Three entire variants of the Blade Blaster, the handheld, transforming weapon used by the Rangers. It’s named because it can either be a blade, or a blaster. All three are made of red plastic, and painted in white, and a bit of silver. The first, compressed one confused me, until I realized that it’s meant to specifically stay in the holder on his belt. I didn’t realize these things had a specific storage configuration, but it makes sense, I guess.

Then, there’s a blade-configuration one, where it basically turns into a shortsword, though the blade’s a bit too bendy thanks to the materials used, and like I mentioned earlier, it doesn’t fit into his hand very well.

Finally, there’s the blaster configuration, a small handheld laser pistol, that he can actually hold decently, for whenever he decides on the Indiana Jones Solution to his kung-fu fights.

While I guess it’s screen-accurate, having three of these feels a bit superfluous, especially the compressed storage mode.

Next up is his melee weapon, the Power Staff.

It’s made out of soft enough plastic to not feel scary when you cram this thin rod into his hands, which I appreciate. I also appreciate that his hands actually have specific grooves in the palms it can snap into, for extra stability as you twirl it around into battle poses.

There’s a ton of paint on it, too, gold and silver over the blue plastic. This is a good one.

After that, there’s a separate, split configuration of two parts of the power staff, looking like a pair of sai.

I don’t know if he used this ever in actual combat, outside of chucking them to form the combined weapon the full ranger team would wield, but I like them here, and they’re just as well-painted, and fit in his hands just as well as the full staff.

And then, finally, we have the oddest set of accessories here: A pair of gummy blue effect parts.

They don’t attach to anything, they’re just crackling energy meant to rest on the floor. You can form a circle around him, or display them behind him.

It’s not based on anything specific that he did on the show, it’s basically just to include with displays. I already passed them on to my Transformers.

Overall

I will say one thing off of the top: I don’t know that Billy actually needed all the stuff that’s in this box. The extra blade blaster, the superfluous Morpher, the effect parts, even the separated power staff all feel a bit like an excuse to raise the price. Really, the vibe I get is that the designers were aiming to take this retail release, and elevate it into the realm of higher-end Japanese stuff, like Figmas, or SH Figuarts, and the like. I don’t know that it quite gets there, though. I wouldn’t say he’s overpriced, though, you can see where the budget went, it’s just questionable if it was worth it.

A big thing with me is, between the pile of stuff, the extra paint apps, and the general feel of this guy, he feels less like a plaything than my Marvel Legends Spider-guys, and more like a high-end display piece that gets posed, and left on the shelf, and that’s not my preference. Still, outside of his loose joints, there’s not much really wrong with him, and he’s solid enough, he just doesn’t hold the same immediate appeal as those previous figures.

Still, this is the best Billy out there, and if you’re like me, and liked him in Once and Always, this is your guy. I don’t know that I’m going to pick up any more of this line, though, especially considering it’s doing some shady stuff with the Red and Green Rangers to make you pick up both of them (basically the Green Ranger is incomplete without accessories from the Red one). Maybe I’ll pick up Zack the Black Ranger when they release him, he was the other star of Once and Always. And if they do any of the characters specific to the special, I’d be drawn to them, too.

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