Power Rangers Legacy Toys Part 1: Weapons & Morphers

Welcome back to CCLemon99.com in 2017. I thought I would kick off the new year with something that I get requests for pretty regularly. You see...I might not advertise it much, but I do actually buy pretty much every Power Rangers Legacy Series toy that comes to market...so why not review all the ones I own (and explain why I skipped over some)?

What exactly are Power Rangers Legacy toys? To celebrate the 20th anniversary of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers in 2013, Bandai America created a new line of collector grade toys that would also be priced within reason. In the years since it's launch, the series has featured several Zords, several variations of the Power Morphers, some weapons, figures, and some odds and ends. I can tell you right now that I have zero interest in Bandai America's figures (yeah, I know...you might dig them, but I don't). I'll be covering all the rest, though, starting with the roleplay gadgets in this part.

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Legacy Power Morpher

I feel like I've covered this one many, many times...

The original Power Morpher was released as a pack-in with the Power Gun/Sword (Blade Blaster). The entire release was rather tragic. The Gun/Sword was the wrong color, the Holster for the Morpher was missing, the Coins/Medals were a very weak shade of gold and possibly worst of all...the Morpher itself was upside-down. Not only was it upside-down, the "POWER RANGERS" text on the face was replaced with a generic "MIGHTY MORPHIN POWER RANGERS". So everything was wrong, right? This is all there was in America until the Legacy Power Morpher came along 20 years later.

The Legacy Power Morpher is something I have never been able to come to like. It has kinda set the tone for entire Legacy toy line. It's a toy meant for the adult collector, but produced to be sold at a budget price. The Coins are very nice, but the holster is inaccurate and awful. The Morpher itself is pretty bad. Die Cast does not equal quality. It's heavy for the sake of being heavy and has exposed screw heads everywhere--including the face of the damn thing.

For all of it's faults, it's hard to argue with the price point. It seems like whenever they reprint these the price dips down to like $35 before they vanish again. I own a bunch of these in various packaging thanks to those price dips. Just because I think this thing is half-assed as a collector's piece doesn't make it a bad buy. Remember...the only alternative is to shell out whatever Dino Bucklers are going for these days or to get the awful original 1993 set.

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Legacy Dragon Dagger

Good looking from afar, but far from good looking.

I bought this in hopes that it would remedy the lack of truly accurate Dragon Dagger/Zyusouken replicas out there. This one definitely falls short by a lot. The sounds are nasty. The over-abundance of chromed gold pieces spoils this more than anything. It just has the look of a toy. I was genuinely looking forward to this one only to be pretty disappointed when I finally opened it up.

Again, I can't really argue with the price point these sold for. The accuracy just isn't up to scratch for me, though.

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Legacy Green & White Ranger Power Morpher

This one makes total sense. Bandai America never did a Gold Power Morpher in the original line-up. Not only did they not bother with the Morpher, they didn't bother making the appropriate Coins to use with the existing Power Morpher. The closest thing to come out was the odd Power Coin included with the DX Tigerzord. So this set, despite having all of the same issues as the normal one, managed to remedy years of torture for Power Rangers fans. Good on Bandai for finally making this happen. Maybe they could have also included the alternate design Coins for fun...some fans actually seems to want them included.

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Legacy Blade Blaster

I ended up giving this one away to a friend.

It's an improvement, that's for sure. I wouldn't say it's brilliant, though. Like the Dragon Dagger, I just didn't find this one to be all that well made. It's alright, I guess. I really like the switch-blade action and it's nice to see they got the colors right this time around (I would argue that the original Power Rangers version looks more like a real gun than the white and red Zyuranger Ranger Stick).

This one was just OK. I think it's OKness stems mostly from it just being an OK thing to make a toy out of. Wasn't there something more interesting they could've done? I remember seeing tons of these lining Toys R Us shelves awhile back.

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Legacy Saba

This one is the shining gem of the Legacy line for me. I really like this one. Of all of the toys I'm talking about here today, this is the only one I would actively recommend. OK, it isn't perfect, but consider everything else that's come out it might as well be. It's heavy, but for the first time it doesn't feel off-balance. It's incredibly accurate and well-detailed. I couldn't care less about the voices, but I understand they're new recordings of original lines from the series--something that apparently they took note of in Japan for the upcoming Super Sentai Artisan Aura Changer/Kiba Changer Set. Check this one out if you haven't already. It's a winner. Very nicely done.

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Legacy Communicators

This is the only thing on this list today that I haven't owned. I don't have a whole lot to say about these watches, but I left them in for one reason. Wasn't the communicator based on a real watch? Just how accurate is this thing without infringing on the original design? I'm way over my head with this one, so I don't have the answers. The whole thing has left me kinda puzzled and I'm not willing to pay the frankly too-high price tag to investigate any further on these.

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Legacy Red Ranger Helmet

Heh. OK, this one is a trip. Imagine seeing a Lamborghini on the street. The owner hops in, turns the key, and the sound that comes out is the weakest sounding engine you ever heard. The car then sputters into gear and takes off down the road briefly before breaking down. Turns out there is only a tiny Nissan engine where a massive V12 should be.

This helmet is just as ridiculous. On the inside there is a plastic frame not unlike what you would find inside a hard hat. The outside of the helmet might look alright, but the one I ended up with was riddled with faults (enough that I returned the damn thing). For one, the paint on the front half didn't match the back. The finish was also kinda funny with some big flaws in it. I wasn't expecting it to be Hero-prop worthy, but for the amount of money they got out of me (briefly) I was thoroughly disappointed in this--more than any of the mild annoyance any of the other toys gave me in this line. At least the sculpt is accurate...

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There it is! Check back soon for Part 2--I'll be talking about all of the Legacy Zords released so far. Do I like them? Do I hate them? We'll find out next time...!

Thanks again for stopping back in today. See ya!

-CC

PART TWO: Legacy Zords