Got our first real stock photo of the first figures after having just a silhouette for some time!

Remember that classic subline from the '90s that Hasbro brought back despite the fact that nobody was really asking for it?

https://www.grnrngr.com/toys/power-rangers/reignition

Oh man, these look awful. What are those proportions?

For the record, those are not the Re-Ignition line. They're separate callback toys.

Do you have objective evidence that the Re-Ignition Line is NOT producing Auto-Morphin' Callback Figures? Is it possible that anything released by Playmates will automatically be included in Re-Ignition for marketing consistency, Callback or not?

You're the one making the claim that they are the Re-Ignition toys, the burden of proof lies on you.

But hey, something to note: The figures they've been building up to with sihouettes that are set to be revealed at toy fair are very much different from the Auto-Morphin' ones.

Granted, they might just lump these callback figs under the same logo, but the silhouettes they've been using as the primary advertising for the Re-Ignition line itself are very much different from these, and are going to be the primary toys people think of when said line is mentioned. Especially since they were the first look we got into the new line of collector's toys.

I'm only the messenger. At the time, there was no reason to believe that the Auto-Morphin' Callbacks and the silhouettes weren't one and the same. The only real giveaway to even suggest that there are differences is in the head shapes of the silhouettes compared to their torsos, which are proportional different from the head-and-torso relationship on the Callbacks. It should also be noted that the official blurb ONLY mentions the Auto-Morphin' Callbacks and no other Ranger figures! If there is a true difference, then it's on Playmates themselves to come clean. Any speculation on our part is just that.

I don't make "This-Is-100%-Absolutely-True" type of claims. I don't possess that type of a certainty principle. I only share and theorize. The toy guide said they were Re-Ignition and I ran with it cause the Callbacks were in color and that photo technically PRECEDED the Dinozord Reveal.

The inherent dangers of leaked images and rampant speculation without any official specificity.

The images say "Re-Ignition" in the top corner, so I think it's an easy assumption to make that they're part of the line.

https://i.imgur.com/R5quSB9.jpeg

I can't help but wonder who these are for?
- If they're marketing these to adults, they don't work from a nostalgia angle as we just got a bunch of auto-morphers that were more accurate to the originals, and they don't work as a collector line because they look cheap and have weird sculpts.
- If they're marketing these to kids, I don't really see what kind of connection a kid would have to these. I can't imagine many kids these days are watching the original Power Rangers.

My guess is that the higher-ups simply wanted toys and didn't care about the nuances of the situation, so they just came up with something. I guess they might work for people who missed the previous auto-morphers, want an updated style of auto-morphers, or are such completionists that they'll buy anything, but how big of a market segment is that? But to be fair, it IS something that doesn't exist yet.

I'd say it's a pass from me, but I don't collect MMPR figures anyways, so it's not like my opinion really matters lol.

Huh. I guess the way the sculpt looks is inevitable because of the gimmick, maybe?

This is my question exactly. They are unfathomably ugly.

Pink is almost so ugly it's worth getting for the kitsch factor. Maybe that's the market they're after? :lol

We view the Auto-Morphin' figures as "childish", "ugly", "disproportionate", and "Who asked for this?", but it may simply be marketing and retail economics if this link is to be believed.

https://toy-wizards.com/2025/02/26/p...res-zords/?amp

It may not just be about a company that can produce new toys on the cheap, but also about a retailer that wants to stock new toys made by a company that can produce them on the cheap!

That makes sense, but I'm still wondering about how many kids actually watch the OG MMPR series and care about these? Or do they just see the toys at Wal-Mart and say "oooh I want that!" without knowing what Power Rangers is? I don't really know much about buying habits for children...but if that's the case, do they have a reason for choosing MMPR?

Sorry I'm being so over-analytical, this is all the kind of stuff I have to think about at work these days so I tend to apply it in real life too :lol

I my opinion, I believe these toy companies have lost touch with their core consumer base. A decade ago Bandai America tried to appeal to nostalgia as many OG Power Rangers fans had entered their 20s and were reflecting on their childhood. It was lukewarm and heavily based on MMPR nostalgia and combined with a line that was already disliked by many fans (aka zordbuilder). Bandai would eventually lose the license to Hasbro who again pivoted to MMPR instead of taking advantage of the 20th anniversaries of the latter seasons.

These companies never understood the niche fandom of Power Rangers, expecting fans to spend more for less. Even the toys directly marketed at children felt cheap compared to more contemporary properties. Ultimately both companies failed to deliver what the fans wanted and could not move merchandise. Had Power Rangers stayed with Bandai things may be a little different as Power Rangers was their flagship, and now Bandai is rare to come by in stores these days. They barely take advantage of their Digimon IP, and most are licensed IPs that Bandai does not own and are typically imported from Japan. Hasbro on the other hand has seen a devaluing of Star Wars and Marvel toys, which are of much more value to Hasbro despite Hasbro only having the license to make those toys for Disney. While outright owning the Power Rangers IP (though I am sure there is some weird licensing from Toei and Bandai Japan for adapting Super Sentai merchandise they clearly dislike dealing with).

Hasbro expected Power Rangers to compete with their larger brands without a good quality show or movie to accompany their merchandise. They never released megazords for anniversary releases. Their lightning figures released randomly and the quality declined over time while costs continued to rise. It got to the point where stores like Target and Walmart refused to stock the last megazord Hasbro produced for the series.

Fast forward to now, and we are more than a decade removed from Bandai's Legacy Line, something that was mildly successful. Most of us are in our 30s now but likely are still childless due to the cost of living and difficulty finding full time work with benefits and being exploited by robber barons that lobby the U.S. government to prevent healthcare reform and healthy work-life balance and paid vacation*. Millennials and Gen Z have significantly less buying power than previous generations which handicaps our ability to be parents and consumers.

*full discloser this is not a political rant, just the reality of the situation.

Naturally, niche fandoms like Power Rangers is going to suffer in this environment. Changing the toy licensing yet again to another company and reducing the cost and value of the merchandise of a 32 year old TV series (based on a Japanese show celebrating its 50th anniversary this year) and marketing it to the very few children of Millennials and Gen Z is not a winning strategy. Companies managed to survive the Great Depression, and as we move forward into uncertain times, the best they can do is pander to thriving markets like China, or manage to find that balance between quality and cost and reduce the quantity of production, aka focus on anniversary releases with just the figures and a re-release of the megazord of the featured anniversary season.

That said, the constant pivot to MMPR is another losing strategy. Most people that wanted MMPR that had spending power already picked up the original Daizyujin, the 1993 Dino Megazord, the 2010 release, the Legacy edition, the Soul of Chokogin release, and the Hasbro ZAP release. MMPR is so oversaturated that anyone could get these second hand at conventions or go to eBay or other auction sites. Yet I rarely see re-releases for the series that had successful toy lines, TV show aside, like Wild Force and Ninja Storm. Power Rangers SPD is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year. The season was set in this year! It was one of the biggest seasons for Gen Z Power Ranger fans. Why is there no anniversary merchandise for it?

The Power Rangers brand is in serious need of proper direction from someone that respects and loves the franchise and can work with the reality of the situation and can get a toy company to actually release quality toys at a fair price, and celebrate Power Rangers as a whole instead of causing over saturation to the MMPR brand. Consumers vote with our wallets, and with little spending power we have left, we aren't going to invest in low quality for us or our children (for those of us who do have children) on a brand most of us already have something from it.

Playmates has revealed the basic figures from the Re-Ignition line on social media.

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DGp5V...U0NGRobXRjYWd6

Also, a first look at the Power Morpher is on the latest issue of The Toy Book, page 144.

They look like anybody who doesn't already have MMPR figures in the year or our lord 2025 will have better options.

After seeing everything so far, I'm excited.

Rita and Company look stellar to me. The Blade Blaster isn't exactly proper, but I think it's a capitulation to maximize playability and keep it from being orange-capped.

Classic Figures that look like the old-school "Talls" are interesting in their own right.

A non-transforming Megazord with electronics is very '90s-ish.

I like the Minis too cause, again, duplicating Bandai from the '90s.

I wasn't asking for Plushies, but after seeing Futurama Plushies in Walmart the other day, I can't say I'm that surprised.

I hate the fact that a lot of this may not come out till next year, but I'm hoping we'll see something before the end of this year.

It appears as though the silhouettes from the original teaser are articulated figures rather than the Auto-Morphin' Callbacks, but I haven't seen full-color images of them yet. Kinda backwards for Playmates to tease the good ones while showcasing the questionable ones.

Someone please buy all six and give us the Powerful Rangers custom. Please, do it. :lolol
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGnAtDKOcx8

The nicest thing I could say is that all this stuff is not made for me, it's meant for kids. But my follow up would be is how many kids are getting into MMPR in 2025? I don't think AI enhanced versions of a 1993 TV show is gonna get a bunch of kids to watch. This isn't Harry Potter where they can get into the books or movies where there is already a certain quality that makes it have an evergreen quality constantly picking up new fans. MMPR looks and feels like a cheap 90s kids TV show.

What in the hell is "enhanced" supposed to mean with this ai shit? Like those "HD upscales" that always just look blurry and blobby in anything but a select few still shots?

The rest of the figures look nice to me. Clearly meant for kids, and I'm not entirely sure how many kids are interested in the original MMPR these days, but if they existed while I was a kid I certainly would have enjoyed them. I also love the minis.

Here's hoping we get some high quality collector's figures as well. Well, what I would truly hope for is for Bandai to revisit the SH Figuarts line. But an extension of the Lightning Collection would be welcome. Sometimes I regret not buying any, especially the villain monsters.

The AI enhancement announcement only confirms my earlier statement of concern. They are way out of touch. Even more so than I anticipated earlier. Hasbro and Playmates are doing all they can to keep Power Rangers production costs so low they are now turning to AI thinking that will make kids in 2025 enjoy a kids show from 1993! It reeks of corporate greed and disconnect from their target audience. If this is how they plan on handling Power Rangers going forward I want no part of it!

I have no real opinions on the toys.

That said, the AI Upscales? Someone, anyone, needs to start grabbing the episodes that are already on Youtube and at least store them somewhere. There's no telling what will happen to those once the "enhanced" versions start popping up.

Because if we're not careful then we'll lose the original versions forever and be stuck with stupid corporate versions.

The Saban-Disney Era is also streaming on Pluto TV's "Forever Kids" channel (as well as on-demand). Tubi now appears to have nearly everything from Mighty Morphin' - Beast Morphers (I'm betting Netflix has an exclusive toehold on Dino Fury and Cosmic Fury). Those who said that Power Rangers wouldn't be in same place as Sentai have lost the argument. In addition, Mighty Morphin' Seasons 1-3 Boxsets are still clogging Walmart shelves.

As for the fear that newer upscales will be as bad as Disney's controversial 2010 Mighty Morphin' reimagining, I'm on the fence. You can't know if it'll be truly abysmal until you see a sampling of it. If we are being objectively honest for a moment, the old Mighty Morphin' show isn't great in terms of picture quality. There are times when streaming reveals how dated things actually look. Even Netflix's copies have some pretty blurry and grainy quality. Saban was a notorious cheapskate, so it wouldn't surprise me if he opted for cheap-even-by-'90s-TV-standards equipment (and "Yes!", I already know that Mighty Morphin' was filmed on tape while Zyuranger was recorded on film).

And as we've seen many times in this age of digital only media, companies can easily take shows and series down suddenly without warning. Not to mention, not all Wal-Marts are equal, it could be a case of luck as I haven't really seen any kind of PR video merchandise in years (best I got was a couple years back seeing the Shout DVDs for other seasons at Big Lots). Not to mention a lot of stores have scaled down their video selections entirely.

My main concern is media preservation and it's kind of eyebrow raising that you'd simply brush it off like that.

Well media preservation and also trying to make sure cheap uses of AI should be pushed back entirely. I've seen AI Upscaling done on a whim before, and it can be done very, very badly. And I do not believe Hasbro as a company, has the time and care to actually make sure it's used efficiently.

My Walmart's must have radically different levels of distribution and stock control, cause I've also seen the random sets for Lightspeed Rescue, Ninja Storm, and Dino Thunder sets.

I'm less concerned about Power Rangers being buried and more concerned about Ultraman. SHOUT doesn't stream it anymore on their resource anymore, so I'm wondering if Mill Creek sets will be the best option in the future. It's also obvious that companies don't care about consumer opinions. They'll do what they want when they want. Old DVD sets may simply become the most ideal, and some analysts have already speculated that streaming without a physical contingency is inherently flawed for those aforementioned media preservation reasons.

There's a rumor that Hasbro wants to be an IP Holding company rather than a toy manufacturer. Again, just a rumor, but it MIGHT be an indication that the Hasbro of the future will put more care into such things than the Hasbro of the past would have. In all likelihood, they'll farm it out to someone who can do some appropriate editing (hopefully). I doubt it'll be as bad as some of the Buffy edits where you saw too much due to cheap and forced widescreen "upscales".

Idk, I know the corporate strategy is that these are for a "new generation of kids to learn about the IP", but I think one of PR's biggest failings is how hard they hammer the Zyuranger/first PR designs like it's the ONLY generation/source of material to mine from. Even with Transformers, when they make a new series of kids toys, they tend to tweak the designs a bit, kind of modernize them etc.

I just think they need to start trying new things if they don't want the brand to just flat out die. And on the off chance that they're hoping these will trigger a nostalgia buy for the around 40-somethings out there (like myself)... uhh... pass.
Not quite good enough on any metric for me to be interested. Plus these are like the 4th or 5th bout of "first PR" toys in about what, 10-15 years? Any serious collector out there likely already has a complete set of whatever they might've wanted from the original series.

Playmates is revealing the full line-up of toys on June 1, which is probably the day Walmart will start the pre-orders.

https://playmatestoys.com/mmpr-coming/

The release window will be Walmart.com from June to September, it'll be in stores after that, and Amazon & Target near the end of the year.

Just saw the AI announcement.

Hopefully this will accompany the original versions and not flat-out replace them.

But also, AI doesn't exclusively mean generative AI like we've seen the past 2-3 years. If you use something like Shutter Encoder to make a 4k version of a 1080p file, that's AI. So hopefully it turns out alright.

Still, the fact that they're saying it's AI-powered definitely raises eyebrows. If they truly cared about the product, they could go through and do a proper remaster. But maybe, as TokuKnight said, the source is just too low-budget?

I guess we'll see...

Pre-orders are open in France for Power Morpher, Combinable Dinozords, Ultimate Megazord and the Tyrannosaurus Battle Bike, through webstore Toys Legacy Collection.

https://www.toyslegacycollection.com...-power-rangers

Australian pre-orders for Re-Ignition wave one are now open in some retailers.

1. https://www.angelgrovecollectables.c...rs-re-ignition
2. https://www.cultureshockcollectables...action-figures

https://toynewsi.com/216-57846

These look worse than the old Legacy toys.

Ain't no Lightning Collection, that's for sure. That said, these seem to be budget action figures, and I'm cool with that. The doughy body sculpt feels very Fox Kids-era toybiz X-Men action figures. Do they seem worse than Legacy? Yes. But hey, they got Tommy's neck right this time and the gold parts aren't the same hue and texture as Timberland boots, so that's a positive for me. :lolol

you know what i do not tolerate this type of nasty opinions like that to the new toys.

US pre-order announcement has been postponed to July 1st.
https://scontent.fccs3-1.fna.fbcdn.n...lg&oe=684663A7
http://powerrangers.com

what happened this?

They said it had to been postponed "while retail stores continue to work on their final set up and purchasing".

oh you mean redesigning the toys.

can i have a question now why some of people don't like the new power rangers playmates toys?

It's because they look bad to collectors. Also the fact that they are attempting to market a 30 year old show to kids and expect them to care about it enough to buy toys.

They do. I understand that they're Basic figures, but the fact that they couldn't even be bothered to paint the eyes on the helmets really bothers me. It also doesn't help that we've had other Basic figs both in the past and current that look way better. Case in point, the Action Hero Tyranno Ranger:

https://tokullectibles.com/cdn/shop/...g?v=1737341509

oh i understand that.