Tommy’s Best Ranger Powers

Two Tommy’s and a badass Zord. Hell of lot more badass than Three Men and a Baby

White Ranger. Fitting because the first full episode I saw was White Light where he makes his first appearance.

Mega-Tigerzord, the Megazord that started my love for PR Mecha

And of course you can’t celebrate 15 years of PR toys without showing Ultrazord.

I remember that day well, it was a Saturday and it was a week and a day before Christmas. I, as I’ve said many times before, was past the age where it was socially acceptable to be into Power Rangers (twelve going on thirteen) so I was a closet fan. I had seen the two-parter “White Light” earlier in the week and I got hooked. Those were the first two full episodes that I saw and it was love at first sight for me as PR really filled the void that I had after the G2 line was cancelled and there weren’t any other transforming robots to get into. I loved how the Tigerzord and the Red Dragon Thunderzord’s faces looked like G1 Autobots when they were in their robot modes and I thought Tommy’s White Ranger costume looked pretty awesome and I also liked how he got the super hot girlfriend Kimberly. Kimberly+cool zords + cool role model type guy with long hair and awesome costume = total win for me. So that weekend I decided I would start collecting the figures. Little did I know that one Auto ‘Morphin figure would turn into a 500 plus collection of PR figures 15 years later. So after Saturday bowling we went to the local variety store and I spent my allowance ($5) on Auto Morphin Tommy and that, as I said above, was the beginning of the PR era for me. As a collector it was one of the best times of my life but as a kid in junior high it could be tough at times being a closet fan and having to go along with the whole “Power Rangers are for pussies” thing. It got even tougher in high-school when I was REALLY past the point that kind of thing was socially exceptable. Now though I don’t care, I’ll admit to being a fan of the original series and a collector of the mecha and all that. I guess you either get iron balls as you get older or you just develop an “I don’t give a damn attitude overall. I don’t know. What’s funny though is the same people who probably would have given me shit when I was younger and called me a Power Rangers fag or something are like “that’s cool, I remember that show” now.

But anyway, let’s just take a look at the Green Ranger and celebrate the good old days of MMPR, the Golden Era of Power Rangers before it was ruined by the shitty spinoffs and off-shoots like all of the series following In Space.

And I couldn’t think of a more fitting end to this article than this video of Tommy’s glory days of being the Green and White Ranger. There’s some good shots of Kimberly in hot outfits too so that’s a plus.

Thanks for all the memories PR. You are loved (old school MMPR anyway)

My question is this: Why couldn’t Megatron have been upgraded into this instead of a Tank? It seems to me that something like this would have made more sense for G2 than a tank or the weird Nerf gun he was turned into in the Classics line. This makes me feel old as I can vaguely remember when you could buy a toy uzi or other gun in the 80s and they would actually be black and look just like real guns. The urban legend is that toy companies changed the colors to colors that would make the toy guns look more like toy guns because people were using toy guns to hold up banks and stuff like that. As I said, sounds like an Urban Legend in my book but there’s probably validity in there somewhere.

Turnitin.com is some kind of site where teachers and students can see if academic work is plagarized. Since I’m obviously not plagarizing anyone by doing short toy reviews and obviously my toy pictures are too crappy to be anyone else’s work, I’m guessing some kid tried to plagarize something from one of my reviews and his or her teacher caught him through the site.

First off, why would a kid’s academic work involve reviewing toy robots and second, why in the hell would he want to rip me off when Nala and Crazy Steve got this “reviewing toy robots” stuff down way better than I ever could? Seriously. Weird world we live in. Weird, strange world.

“Spotlight On…” will be articles that will focus on a specific sort of toyline or toy company. My first “Spotlight On…” article here will be…

Hell Yeah! The Toybiz Lord of The Rings figures!!!

The Lord of The Rings toyline by Toybiz is honestly what I’d consider one of the best toylines of all-time for the great detail and articulation of the figures. All other “Movie Toys” that are out now just look like a step-backwards in comparison. The toys were so detailed and they looked so much like the actors it was scary…

Just look at Saruman here. This looks just like Christopher Lee and it looks as good as Sideshow Bust or Medicom figure but…nope. It was an $8 Toybiz 7” figure.

Another great thing about the figures was the paint applications. Toybiz could have cheaped out and just given us solid colors for the figures armor and clothes but they chose multiple color tones and more beaten up and realistic color tones for the figures so things like the weathering in Gimli’s cape would look really believable:

And check out Aragorn’s boots as well:

And let’s not even talk about how beautiful and detailed the Sauron figure was…

Again, this was just an inexpensive Toybiz figure but it looks as awesome as the Sideshow Sauron bust or any Medicom figure out there.

And I love how they put in the little details here and there like how Sauron has his ring:

Hell, even Aragorn has his serpent ring:

And look at how amazingly detailed his costume is and how his hand is “dirty.” I love it!!!

So…yeah. Expect this “Spotlight Review” of the LOTR figures sometime in the near future. It’ll hopefully be followed by a “Spotlight On…” review of…MARVEL LEGENDS!!!!

By the way, you can see larger versions of these images if you click on them.

Photo credit goes to my friend Sharma, by the way.

A) I hated the movie

and…

B) If you bought the figures from the first movie there’s no need to buy them again because you’re more or less just buying the same molds from the first movie but with uglier and more innacurate paint schemes.

That being said, if you’re avoiding the new Leader Prime thinking he’s the same mold from the first movie just with swords and a new head you’d be wrong. This is actually a completely different mold with more points of articulation and detail and actually looks a lot more like Bay Prime than the first leader figure did. If you’re like me and you’re one of the rare people who actually liked the Bay Prime design I really recommend picking this guy up.

As I said, completely different mold and is more screen accurate.

Overall he’s a really great upgrade from the first Leader Prime and that’s coming from someone who actually really liked the first Leader Prime and thought it was one of the best Prime figures Hasbro ever made.

He’s not without his flaws here and there though. First off, unlike “Movie 1 Prime” the finger articulation is gone:

This means you can’t have him hold MP Prime’s gun or the Matrix.

So in this regard, the first Leader Prime actually beats the new version:

That's what I'm talkin' about

Also, it’s harder for “Prime 2″ to do a stoic “Superman Pose” without the damn swords popping out. They’re pretty hard to keep in place.

Other than the thing with the finger/hand articulation though, I think “Prime 2″ has the advantage as he seems to have more POA and can do more stances. I generally think a good judge of articulation comes down to whether or not a figure can do my favorite Power Rangersish karate pose I like to put most of my figures in at one point or another and you can do that with this Prime:

And that’s cool because Prime actually did a similar pose in the first movie.

Now as far as the “Alt Modes” are concerned, I couldn’t tell you which figure has the edge truckwise as I haven’t transformed him into the truck nor do I really plan to seeing as how I can just put Prime 1 in Truck mode and Prime 2 in robot mode.

Another cool thing about the new Prime is that his “backpack” is also more accurate. Movie Prime 1′s backpack was one of the only things I really disliked about the figure and now Hasbro has improved it and made it more “screen accurate.” Here are the comparison shots:

Movie Prime 1

Movie Prime 2

The new head is pretty awesome as well though I don’t think it’s necessarily new, as I think it was also used for the first Premium Optimus Prime (could be wrong though):

Compare that to Leader Prime 1 and you’ll see that the new Leader Prime is, as I said, more screen accurate:

That’s not to say that the first Leader Prime head wasn’t cool though. It is pretty awesome in a Powermaster Prime/original G1 Prime figure kind of way but it just wasn’t accurate compared to what Prime looked like on screen.

So all in all the new Prime is pretty awesome and is an upgrade from the first Leader figure in every way. He’s one of the only ROTF figures I really recommend picking up and getting. He’s also on my list of figures I’d love to give a longer and more detailed review of someday.

Yes, they're the Supermen of the Autobots

And yes, you’re reading that right. Hobie. From Baywatch. The obnoxious, fruity kid you wished the ‘Hoff would drown. Sure he was annoying and swishy back in the day but the the thing is, meth and ‘roids fucked up his face enough to the point where he could pull off that look.

Also, he’s gotten really fucking huge. I mean…seriously…

If that’s not your Marcus Fenix than I don’t know Marcus Fenix and after three years of playing GoW…trust me…I know Marcus. I mean, I would prefer to see a good actor with some chops playing Fenix but after all the fan rumors of that idiot Batista from the WWE playing the part I think I’d rather see Jackson in the role. He just needs to learn how to do the badass Marcus Fenix voice and get some acting lessons and I think he’d be good to go.

Judge for yourself:

Jeremy Jackson post-Meth and (I’m assuming anyway) ‘Roids

Marcus Fenix:

I’m telling you, it could work and I think it would be cool. And I honestly mean it (that it could be cool). I, as much as I hated Hobie as a kid, would support that as a GoW fan.

I have an epic review I’ve been hinting at here and here that I want to work on. It might take me a little while to get it done but I’ll get it done.

In the meantime I’ve got a couple of other things I want to work on. I’d really love to do a quick spotlight on a couple of Toy Companies that I think deserve props and recommendations, I’m working on my first video review and I have a big LOTR spotlight review I want to work on as well. Stay tuned for all this stuff.