[Den-O]

Dinosaur Might, Ready to Fight!

TokuNation is ready to ring in the new year with yet another gallery from Power Rangers Dino Charge! And today we're taking a look at the 5" Dino Charge Red Ranger!

Packaging
It seems that for this years rangers Bandai of America has stepped their game up from the rather bland semi-circular packaging of the Super Megaforce 5" line to what we have here. For Dino Charge we've been treated to some detailed packaging with pretty rad and elaborate graphics & images. Taking it's cues from the Super Megaforce line though this new 5" line also features a nice stock shot of the ranger in question on the back as well as a multi-lingual bio and a short list of stats.

The packaging mistakenly labels the Red Ranger with the name Lucas, which was the original name for the character. The name was changed to Tyler when it was realized that Lucas had been used previously for the Blue Time Force Ranger. In any case it appears the change was made too late into the toy lines production cycle to change the name. A cross-sell along the bottom also advertises the other 4 Dino Charge Rangers as well as the initial villain figures for the line, Fury & the Viviks.

Main Figure
At this point there aren't many surprises left for figures in this scale. The Super Megaforce 5" was liked by many but was not without it's faults. While the figure were of decent quality most of the time they suffered from all too generic sculpting and parts reuse. While I'm sure that will happen here as well, for now Dino Charge Red Ranger is a fairly solid figure. It's standard fair as far as BOA figures go, but it's a pretty decent representation of the character. Definitely much more so than the barely articulated 5" Red that came with the Dino Cycle.

While most of the basic tooling is similar if not identical to the Super Megaforce line, the Dino Charge suits feature much more detail, as do their figures. You'll see the standard hip peg hole and basic joints on theis figure. But the scaled look on the upper arms, the newly molded gauntlets, a decent head sculpt, and a hinged shoulder pad can go a long way to making a cheap figure like this look a little nicer. That being said I've seen reports from numerous collectors about sloppy paint applications on their 5" Dino Charge Rangers. While the paint apps are hardly accurate in the first place (inaccurate back of the suit and Dino Com) the overspray of silver on the Dino Com itself is pretty bad. Things like this are all too common in mass market toy lines like this but it's still a knock against an otherwise fine figure.

Accessories
As is the case with the other 4 simultaneously released Dino Charge Rangers, the 5" Red Ranger includes only two accessories:

1 - Dino Saber. Molded entirely in a lime green plastic this is the one part of the figure that does not exceed the predecessor line. No paint apps on the accessories makes look rather cheap. At least if you're going to cast it in a single color get that color right. While the blade should be this color the entire weapon shouldn't be. Though no one color would have really gotten the job done for this one. The sculpt is otherwise fairly intricate and detailed, a nice paint wash could actually bring quite a bit of that out.

1 - Dino Charge Morpher. Suffering from the same gang molded color issue as the Saber, the Morpher likewise has a great amount of detail that just can't be seen that well. If anything this accessory should have been cast in solid yellow rather than green to at least try to simulate what it should look like. Obviously these weapons don't combine into the Dino Cannon at this scale but that would have been a nice touch.

Though it's only two accessories it's about the best we could have expected for a figure of this size at this price point. While they certainly aren't perfect, they do get the job done.

Final Thoughts
While I've never personally been the biggest fan of the 5" Power Rangers line, it's apparent that the Dino Charge 5" Rangers are nicer than what we got with Super Megaforce. Are they perfect? No, far from it. But for a collector on a budget who wants to own their favorite ranger this is a pretty good stand in. Paint & color issues aside the 5" Dino Charge Red Ranger will look great with most any other 5" ranger figures.