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Action Toys – Voltron Vehicle Force

Everyone knows the classic Voltron version with its 5 lions. There have been a few versions from the Stealth Voltron and Netflix Voltron and the newer Modern Voltron. There was also an additional team though that was made up of 15 vehicles, divided into three teams, colloquially called, “Vehicle Voltron.”

Like the Lions, it was based on a Japanese series, in this case, Dairugger XV. I have always really loved the Vehicle Voltron design, even though the Lions always got all the love.

Ok, more specifically, I like the combined mode design more, the separated designs are, kind of lame in the majority of cases. There are three teams based around land, sea, and air, each consisting of 5 vehicles each. Some of the vehicles are neat. The helicopters and the little trucks are cool. The battleship looking ones are alright. The head is cool.

A lot of the others are essentially just, “A box on wheels.”. Some have little flip out towers or whatnot to give them a bit more variety, but they are still just, weird boxes.

Each of the three teams can form a combined vehicle. They also all combine into one larger robot.

The real fun of this is definitely the combined robot. It’s surprisingly articulated and hides the joints in the blocky vehicles that make up most of its torso and pelvis very well.

Some of the articulation is tricky to use though. Mostly because some of the actual connection joints feel a bit fragile. This is not a model kit, but it very much has the FEEL of a model kit. It’s light weight, pretty stiff plastic 5+3 joint tolerances for the connections feel a bit too type.

I still really dig it though. And it helps fill out the little collection of similarly sized robots and Kaiju I have been working on building up very nicely. It’s a little smaller than my Die Cast modern Voltron, but not so much that it’s super out of place. I am really hoping it scales well with the Moderoid Lion Voltron I have on the way (which IS a model).

Power Rangers Lightning Collection Eye Guy

Of all of these Lightning Collection monsters, Eye Guy is one that differes quite a bit from the show design. For one, he’s a lot more bulked out. The original costume has a weird design and you can tell the person inside is a lot smaller than the suit by the weird arms. It’s not inaccurate, it’s just a bit more stylized.

The eyes are also a lot less detailed than the actual suit, which is likely a cost cutting measure. That said, there are a lot of eyes and it’s kind of creepy.

I also think the accessories are neat. I have no memory of this monster on the show but there is essentially a separate dismembered eye, I’m not sure if this is intended to be the same eye that makes up the main head or a second large eye since most creatures have two eyes. Both are compatible with a beam effect that can be attached over the iris itself. The beam effect is a bit short but I’m not sure a long beam would have been much better, so it’s probably just fine in the end.

The big monster’s eye also has a closing eye lit that let’s it “blink”. The power Rangers Wiki suggests that this eye is the weak spot for this particular monster. He’s a creepy huge beast though. I like it quite a bit.

Power Rangers Lightning Collection Pudgy Pig

For some reason I always think of Pudgy Pig as the first monster that the Power Rangers fought, but that is not accurate. It’s like the 5th or 6th, and heck, even King Sphinx was earlier than that that. There were two releases for Pudgy Pig, one early on for SDCC which included a Lunch Box case. And that’s essentially the only difference I think,. which is why I was kind of glad I skipped it. There was a bit of a controversy because the promo shots kind of implied that the Lunch Box version included a bunch of extra accessories, to recreate the food fight picnic area from the show, but in reality it just came with a couple of pieces of food.

I ended up with the regular version, which is just the pig with it’s weapons. Which is fine because that’s all I really care about. Something notable, despite the shape, the figure works pretty well to keep itself upright. It’s a big heavy ball with legs, it should be a balancing nightmare.

The fun part of this thing is the huge opening jaw that lets it eat all sorts of things, which is goofy and fun.

The articulation design is pretty neat as well given the shape and style of this figure, the arms and shoulders are particularly clever and overall it’s a much more poseable figure that one would expect.

Power Rangers Lightning Collection King Sphinx

I have a weird relationship with Power Rangers. I never was a huge fan of the series, though it actually does check a lot of boxes in my array of interests. Most of what I remember is watching the OG Mighty Morphin. I think I watched the Ninja stuff, and then I want to say Turbo was the “third iteration” and my interest kind of fell off around that time.

These monsters though in the Lightning Collection Line. Everything about them really hits for what I am liking now. And I admit, I’ve been a bit of a sucker over it, because I’ve picked up most of them and inevitably, they go on super clearance because apparently no one is buying them. I think the only one I didn’t go for was Pumpkin Rapper, which sometimes I kind of regret.

King Sphinx was the other release along side Pumpkin Rapper in wave 1 of these monsters. I like him, he’s big and bulky and tough looking. I think part of what helps my enjoyment of these figures, versus the more hardcore Power Rangers fans, is that I am not a hardcore fan. It seems like these monsters are, mostly accurate to the source material, but they are a bit more, we’ll say, stylized, to fit the aesthetic of the line. For example, King Sphinx’s face is kind of off quite a bit.

It’s kind of an odd choice. These are almost all unique molds, by the nature of their designs. So why not make it super accurate? Also, Power Rangers is a live action show. These monsters all exist as giant human sized costumes. There isn’t the problem from adapting a 2D comic to cartoon design to a 3D figure media where you need to figure out how to make things work in the real world and not make the faces look weird at head on angles or something. These are all based on real world actual physical things.

That said, I think I prefer the stylized look. They look much more menacing and much less goofy. It’s also possible they are based on some comic designs as well or something, though I have never seen a Power rangers comic.

Disney Mirrorverse Genie

Here is another from the Big Box of Disappoint. Though I kind of expected it in this case. I am not entirely sure what Mirrorverse is, I think it’s some sort of battling mobile game, which is why all the figures in this line look a little different from their standard incarnations. This Genie is sort of a combo of Genie and Jafar I think. He is kind of cool looking and there aren’t really any articulated Geniue figures that I know of.

Except there still aren’t really any Genie figures. Because this guy is so incredibly limited. It’s basically arms only, and the elbows don’t so much. There is a neck and wist but they both seem to only have a few degrees of motion.

And here I was thinking MacFarlane had gotten over making statues with useless articulation. He’s nice looking at least, but these pictures are basically it for what he does.