Retrofire Mighty Morphin' Megazord

Review by EVA_Unit_4A

“A dozen millennia ago in a distance solar system, an ancient battle of good versus evil pit Zordon, a kind and wise sage, against Rita Repulsa, an evil sorceress seeking absolute control over the universe. Zordon managed to trap Rita in an intergalactic recycling bin… until two lunar explorers opened the unmarked dumpster and unleashed the most evil sorceress the universe has ever known. With Rita’s full-fledged assault upon the Earth, Zordon trained and armed 5 teenagers with fighting vehicles modeled after the ancient dinosaurs, towering machines known as Dinozords. The original Power Rangers thus united to protect Earth.”

--from inside the cover flap

The Mighty Morphin’ Megazord is the first megazord that we saw in the Power Rangers franchise, making its debut in the series’ premier “The Day of the Dumpster” in 1993. It was a combination of five Dinozords which could form an Attack Tank Mode, and was armed with the Power Sword & Mastodon Shield and a forehead blaster. Towering 333’-tall and weighing 570 tons, the Megazord rocked the world and gave Rita Repulsa frequent migraines as it pounded through her foolish plans and clumsy monsters. When not in use, the separate Dinozords are hidden in far-off areas like forests and deserts, and they are repaired there by Zordon and his robotic assistant Alpha-5.

The 4” Megazord figure and its weapons are composed of even amounts of PVC and ABS plastics. Other than the weapons, nothing on the figure is meant to come apart; the right shoulder & fist and head can pop off if too much pressure is applied. While paint is minimal to keep things simple (rather than by BA being careless, inconsiderate, or cheap), it is rather lacking along the back of the figure... something I would have paid $1-2 more for to balance it out. The point of having the Retrofire line is for both the alternate styling of the classic Megazord designs, and the action figure-like poseability which their larger Deluxe-sized equivalents cannot do. To allow a wider range of poses, an easy-to-assemble two-part silver ABS display stand is included in each set, the base of which is shaped like the Power Rangers’ trademark lightning bolt. Because the peg at the top of the stand is angled, the figure will never ‘stand’ upright vertically, only diagonally. (For some action poses, that is fine, but if you want more level poses, just take the figure off the stand.)

. . .

Other than the basic provided display stand, the Megazord has a PVC Power Sword and hollow Mastodon Shield. The sword can only be gripped in the right fist, and the shield can be attached to a hole only on the left forearm. For the Mighty Morphin’ Megazord, none of the joints ratchet- all free-turn with no resistance other than friction. Its head is on a ball-&-socket joint. The waist can turn all the way around. The arms, despite being nearly identical in appearance, behave in different ways. While the right shoulder can pitch outwards and the right fist can twist all the way around, the left arm is different. The upper left arm twists around but does not pitch outwards, and the left elbow is flexible while the right is not. Clearly the arms were designed to achieve a few specific, on-screen-oriented poses with the weapons rather than act as a fully-capable action figure. The hips are also very poseable- able to swing both outwards, twist vertically, and pitch forward/backwards. The only restriction on the hips is on the skirt armor, which is PVC. The skirt armor is flexible to a certain degree, but it will break or wear out if pressed too hard and for too long. And really, this is the only restriction with the figure that may be unavoidable. And finally with the legs, the knees can also pitch backwards beyond 135-degrees, and both ankles can pitch downwards a bit as well.

The Retrofire line is an answer to one of my long-held protests, and that is having a poseable representation of a Megazord without having the toy be a Ranger with attachable armored sections or a static-pose 3” figure with just one-axis shoulders & maybe an action feature if we’re lucky. I can completely understand [now] why the Deluxe-sized Megazords can’t be posed beyond just the shoulders, and that is because their size and the complexity of such a design would be prohibitively expensive on a yearly basis. While I wish the Retrofire sets were about 1-2” taller and had slightly better paint apps, I am still quite satisfied with what we have here. Additionally, these sets are a reinterpretation of classic designs without being completely new or reboots or skewed by some random and pointless copyright infringement issues. If a Megazord were to appear in a Japanese anime series, I am confident that they would look just like this (as if jumping out from the screen) rather than big and bulky like their Deluxe-sized toy counterparts. They may not be transformable, but this is just as good- a true action figure of our favorite Megazord! It is with great and welcome nostalgia that I possess this set. The anime styling lends itself well, and brings the ‘character’ to life in a way that the original Deluxe-sized set could never have achieved. It is also nice to see that some of the subtle styling of the right foot and both shoulders more closely resemble that seen on-screen in season one of “Mighty Morphin Power Rangers” rather than on the Deluxe Megazord toy from 1993. Aside from the oddly-chosen way the arms behave compared to each other, the minor limits with the skirt armor, and the rather-noticeable lack of paint on the back & arms of the figure, the Retrofire Mighty Morphin’ Megazord is definitely something you want to collect. Highly recommended!