Toybox REVIEW: Power Rangers Lightning Collection Mighty Morphin 'Metallic' Yellow Ranger

Release Date: December 2021

RRP: $27.99/£24.99

Mighty Morphin Power Rangers' (rather predictable) domination of Hasbro's Lightning Collection continues as the line goes glitter with the metallic armour! As divisive as this power up from the show's third season may be, it's impressive that Hasbro not only remembered it existed in the first place but also got the majority of the team out at a reasonable pace. The Lightning Collection Mighty Morphin 'Metallic' Yellow Ranger joins the red, black and blue Rangers as part of a Hasbro Pulse exclusive wave – leaving only the White Ranger outstanding as the Pink Ranger was released much earlier.

The Mighty Morphin Metallic Yellow Ranger's packaging is another explosion of excess, with glitter covering the character artwork in a way that arguably captures the onscreen look of the metallic armour better than the figures do themselves. Most importantly though it's a good way to differentiate these versions from the original releases, so if you're displaying the boxes spine-facing you'll immediately be able to recognise which version is which. On the back of the box you'll find a single CGI rendering of the figure inside, which does a surprisingly great job of representing the final product as it even manages to convey the translucency of the figure. As with the other three metallic armour rangers released as part of this assortment, the Yellow Ranger is packaged with the helmet head attached to the body whereas the Pink Ranger (released over a year before the rest of them) has the Kat head attached.

Of all the metallic armour rangers, getting the correct shade of yellow on the Yellow Ranger was perhaps the most important of all. All six of them slightly shift in colour tone thanks to their glittery new armour, but in the case of the Ranger the change is practically to gold. From a distance the glitter-injected translucent yellow plastic used for the figure does a pretty good job of conveying it (especially on the helmet), but close up it's clear that translucent plastic might not have been the most ideal choice for these figures. For the other four released so far it's not as apparent, but there are areas on the yellow ranger where the inner frame of the figure is partially visible – giving it a weird almost x-ray look if you stare to closely. That said, the fact Hasbro even bothered to make glitter a key part of these figures make them the best (and as far as I'm aware, the only directly intentional) attempt at the metallic armour so far. The figure itself is a recolouring of the standard MMPR Yellow Ranger figure, which uses the same female body as the Pink Ranger (sans skirt). Overall the detailing on the figure is very good, with both a correctly sculpted helmet and visible moulding on the Morpher belt buckle. Some might argue that a distinctly female body isn't technically screen accurate for the Yellow Ranger, but by this point in Mighty Morphin Power Rangers they had long stopped using Zyuranger footage so there's much less of a discrepancy if you do consider that an issue.

The figure uses the standard female body used across the Lightning Collection, which in terms of articulation consists of; 

- Ball jointed head, torso and hips

- Single hinge neck

- Swivel hinge shoulders, elbows, wrists and ankles

- Butterfly joint shoulders

- Double hinge knees

- Thigh and boot swivels 

While the lack of a skirt on the Yellow Ranger does give her one up over the Pink Ranger when it comes to hip articulation, there's no denying that Hasbro need to step it up when it comes to their female figures. Downgrades compared to the male body like swivel hinge elbows and the lack of an ab crunch were disappointing before, but now that Hasbro have unveiled a new pinless body (set to debut with the Boom! Studios Yellow and Red Ranger 'Swap' two-pack) that fixes some of these issues it begs the question on why they couldn't have just done them that way the first time around. You could perhaps argue that there's a level of fragility to consider with translucent figures like this, but that's no excuse for why the buck is like this across the whole line. As it stands you can get plenty of decent poses out of this figure, but it's the knowledge that it could be so much better that's the real kicker.

The metallic version's accessories are largely identical to that of the standard Yellow Ranger, with the exception of a brand-new Aisha head in place of Trini's and a piece of the Zeo Crystal. The accessories carried over from the standard release are her signature twin Power Daggers, Blade Blaster in gun mode, weapon-holding left hand (with moulded trigger finger) and knife-strike pose right hand. Like the other metallic rangers, the Power Daggers have been moulded in the same translucent plastic as the figure itself (the Blade Blaster remains in opaque red plastic). The Daggers can also be combined with the other Rangers' weapons to form the Power Blaster. The main divergence when it comes to carried over pieces though is the effect parts, which is not only now in red (as opposed to the original's yellow) but has been reduced to a single piece whereas the standard version came with two. It's a little disappointing since the new pieces don't really justify the loss of a much larger piece and it takes away the balance of having two identical effects for both weapons, but on the other hand it isn't exactly one of the Lightning Collection's best pieces either. It's that same blast effect that's been seen across countless figures already, but despite that it fits to the daggers rather well for some pretty good action poses.

The alternate Aisha head is accurately based on her appearance in season three of Mighty Morphin, complete with an impressive length of hair that runs the whole way down her back. While it doesn't do much for the articulation, you do have to marvel at the dedication to accuracy (maybe the plastic content there is why one of the effect parts had to be removed). Overall it's a pretty good likeness to Karen Ashley too, partly thanks to them opting for a more generic expression rather than the weird grins they've gone for on some of these heads. With another version being released roughly at the same time in a Versus two-pack with Scorpina fans aren't short of choice, but it's great to have both season two and three heads on the market already.

Rounding off the accessories is of course Aisha's segment of the Zeo Crystal, which of course she immediately passed on to Tanya after choosing to stay in Africa. Like the others it's a small piece of milky white translucent plastic, recognisable as the "yellow" segment of the crystal through its shape and the Zeo Ranger II visor shape on the top. The piece can be comfortably held in any of the figure's gripping hands, but unfortunately isn't designed in a way that the individual segments can be combined into the full crystal. With the metallic armour White Ranger still yet to be announced by Hasbro, fingers crossed that release includes the combined version.

While it's amazing to see the often-maligned metallic armour getting some proper representation in the line, the Lightning Collection Mighty Morphin 'Metallic' Yellow Ranger suggests the concept could have been workshopped a bit more to get them more accurate to the onscreen version. As wonderful as the glitter injection is, the use of translucent plastic really falls short on this particular release. And as fantastic as the Aisha head may be, the unnecessary shortcomings of Hasbro's female body continues to hold these figures back. The metallic armour has its fans out there (and I count myself among them) so this figure definitely has its audience, but there's no doubt it’s a niche one.