[Den-O]

"The Rangers, are back in action!"

Rocky Desantos was a Power Ranger. And not just any ranger, but the Mighty Morphin Red Ranger! When he inherited his legacy of power from Jason Lee Scott, Rocky carried on defending Angel Grove and the world from the likes of Lord Zedd & Rita Repulsa with his team. But as the Machine Empire descended toward Earth, the Command Center lay in ruins. And the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, were destroyed. But unknown to our heroes, Alpha 5 & Zordon have spent years preparing for this time. A day when the Power Rangers as we know them, are gone forever, and a new fighting force must take their place. The Power Rangers Zeo! Imbued with the energy of the Blue Zeo Crystal, Rocky once again heeds the call to defend Earth, but this time as Zeo Ranger III, BLUE!

Packaging
As we are all pretty familiar with the line by now, I'm sure I probably don't need to go through my usual list of reasons why it's awesome. Hasbro was keen to make sure these appealed to collectors and fans of the franchise from throughout it's various eras. And they also really pop thanks in no small part to some wonderful box art, lovingly crafted by artist Tom Whalen aka @strongstufftom on twitter. His artwork is breathtaking, and makes these figure's feel like just a bit more of a passion project from the folks at Hasbro.

Main Figure
If you haven't realized it by now, you've actually handled this figure before. That is if you picked up last year's SDCC Jason 2-pack featuring the Zeo Gold Ranger. The mold is identical aside from cosmetic armor differences around the shins and arms, as well as the gold chest shield, etc. But functionally it's identical. Full rotating rocker ankles with solid ratchet back & forth joints provide the tried and true base of support. We get the 360 shin swivel again as well, though Zeo Blue has much more simplistic boot cuffs and no protruding knee pads. Much as with Zeo Gold, just seeing actual gold paint used this go around is a huge change from the old Bandai cheese colored Zeo Rangers. This applies to the whole body, though I do think some detail is lost among the various gold bands because of undefined sculpting or thick paint application. The double jointed knee is back as well and we also have the same 360 thigh swivel and that signature sculpted butt plate. As always these articulation cuts give the figure all the range it needs to be an excellent display piece and functional toy.

As I said, this is literally the same base mold as the Zeo Gold Ranger, and that applies to the torso as well. Whether you noticed it or not, underneath the Gold Ranger's chest shield, are the same joints, and in fact sculpted techy details that are present on Zeo Blue's chest and even the inner area of the shoulder joints. Now that they're on full display with this release, they do appear a bit softly sculpted, but that could also be the thick paint applications I mentioned. Now I know it could have been expecting a little too much but I was really hoping these parts would have the same black paint wash as Gold's shield. As is, on the parts have a bit deeper sculpt, they really look fine. But the more shallow bits near the shoulders really needed that wash for some definition. And as for articulation the upper body still functions marvelously with ratcheting abs and a nice free moving ball jointed chest section.

Minor details aside, the upper body is still exceptionally well designed and I really appreciate how the gold and white of the upper chest carries over both in sculpt and paint, onto the butterfly shoulder joints. Another standard cut, these always get the job done. The arms still feature the trusty bicep swivel joint, double joint elbow, and free moving peg style wrists. While the peg system means we miss out on some side to side movement with the hands, it still works very well. The Blue Ranger's helmet rounds out the figure with it's striking silver trim and wonderful blue glossy finish. This is a pretty solid figure with more than a satisfactory set of articulation cuts, as per usual with this line.

Accessories
We get quite a bit, but it comes with some major caveats:

2 - Alternate hands. Standard, the Blue Ranger comes with open weapon holding hands attached. A left hand for his sword, and a right for his pistol. The extra included hands are closed fists. Not a bad mix of hands honestly, though I do find it odd that the wrist joint turn on different axes depending on the pair you're using. I'd prefer either they all work one way or the other.

1 - Zeo Laser Pistol. The right hip holstered sidearm of the core 5 Zeo Rangers, the Laser Pistol isn't seen to be used terribly often in Power Rangers Zeo, but it's a must have accessory for a figure like this. While the ability to combine it with the other included weapon wasn't replicated with these toys (for reasons that are clear below), it's still a well detailed and produced weapon to accessorize your Zeo Blue Ranger, and assumable the other 4 Zeo Rangers as they come out. It is a bit of a snug fit in the holster, but I must say I prefer that to the Bandai Legacy days of things falling out left and right.

1 - Zeo Power Pod Sword. The Pod Sword or as it's occasionally known as the "Zeo Laser Blade" is a standard weapon of the 5 core Zeo Rangers which compliments their Zeo Laser Pistols and in series can combine with them. Sadly, that's not the case here. This is one of the few cases in this toyline where I'm pretty disappointed with Hasbro. Even Bandai America got this one right and that's saying a lot. The Pod Sword should have a collapsible or at least removable blade, primarily because it's supposed to be stored on the left hip holster, blade end up. The blue grip portion goes down into the holster, and the blade extends when needed for battle. Instead Hasbro has given us one solid weapon which can neither separate nor collapse, and has to be inserted upside down in order to make functional sense in the holster, making it wholly inaccurate. I don't give Bandai America much credit for their failures with the Legacy 6.5" line of figures, but even they got the collapsed Pod Sword right.Even if we didn't get the full sword I'd have preferred a permanently collapsed version of the weapon to this inaccuracy. You'll find that a lot of avid collector designers have set about 3D printing the correct accessories for this figure, like forum regular Designincase. I'd like to think Hasbro would set about correcting errors like this in the future, time will tell.

1 - Sword Effect Part. This piece, you may recognize, is a repack of the one included with the Beast Morphers Gold Ranger. It's really not designed to be used with the Pod Sword though, so it's not quite a perfect match. A rectangular hole runs through the center so that you can push a blade through it, which worked great with BM Gold's Striker Saber. But Rocky's Pod Sword is round and has cone shaped point that fits way too snugly in there. You run the risk of stressing or even breaking the sword but fully pushing it through the effect part.

1 - Unmasked Rocky head. As with nearly any Lightning Collection figure, we get an additional civilian/unmasked head for Rocky based on his actor Steve Cardenas. While many of the head sculpts in the line do a fantastic job of capturing actor likenesses, this one's a bit of a miss. While it generally looks like Rocky (from a distance) even going so far as to get his left ear piercing, on closer inspection his facial features are a bit puffy and exaggerated. It's not my favorites civillian head in the line but I don't use them all that much anyway. If you want, the head works pretty well on the body of the MMPR Red Ranger as well, letting you recreate a more or less accurate Season 2/3 Red Ranger, though hopefully we'll get another release down the road with a Rocky head more in line with those appearances.

And of course the gargantuan omission of this release is the lack of the Zeo III Power Tonfas, Rocky's signature weapons as the Blue Ranger. Originally these weapons looked to be included with the figure at it's initial reveal, but at some point in the process were dropped likely for cost related reasons. But it's an incredible shame they weren't included, particularly after the blunder with the Pod Sword not being functional.

Final Thoughts
Overall, the Blue Zeo Ranger is a bit of a flawed release. Between the softer/ill defined details of the sculpt, the dubious unmasked headsculpt, and the poor handing of the Laser Pistol & Pod Sword, this figure has some issues. While it's certainly not the worst figure in the line, it could have used another pass in the design process is all. I'd like to think Hasbro would maybe improve things with successive Zeo releases if nothing else. So hopefully the issues with this figure will be just more of a misstep, rather than setting a standard. As is I'm still satisfied to have him in my collection.