Henshin Grid: 10/11/09

Friday, October 16, 2009

Chests in Female Power Ranger figures

Now that the pictures of the new 2010 MMPR figures are out, many are saying the male figures are 'under steroids' for their super muscle physique and the female figures having a large chest. I have already covered the male figures last week. The 2010 female figures are not the first to have ahem.. 'large chest.' I want to keep this blog family friendly. But this has happened in the past but it has been a slow process.

In 1993, the male and female figures were the same. They had no difference, they all had 'male' chests and no skirts. The Pink Turbo Ranger in 1997 did have a female chest but it wasn't too big. Pink and Yellow had no skirts. The Yellow Turbo Ranger looked strange but the re-issued Heroes figure had a more 'female' physique.

In 1998, the Pink and Yellow Rangers for Space and Lost Galaxy had round half-spheres for chests, they were rather big. I don't have a picture of the Yellow Galaxy Ranger.

The female figures remained with big chests well into SPD. Dino Thunder Yellow Ranger was a bit more normal and the Blue Wind Ranger's arm looked strange. None of them had skirts. The first female figures to have skirts was the Mystic Force Rangers and they were from Japan and had skirts attached to the legs and were molded. They had average chests.

The Operation Overdrive female Rangers had molded on skirts like the Mystic Force ones but were not from Japan. The Overdrive girls' busts were slightly bigger than the Mystic Force ones, I own them. Cheetah Ranger of Jungle Fury had a real skirt, for the first time, and she had a avergae chest. Camille 'Melle' of Jungle Fury's chest was just fine, but I do have to note that her Japanese counterpart on the show had eyeballs on her bust, to imitate the Chameleon's eyes but they were censored and removed for Jungle Fury and thus, also for the toy. Anyway, RPM Ranger Yellow and Ranger Silver both have skirts and modest breasts.

So, to wrap up, there have been around eight series to have female rangers to have large busts. And there has been two series with flat chests and five series with modest chests. But it can be debatable that the Pink and Yellow MMPR Rangers of 2010 have bigger busts, maybe they are more sloped than the others.

Thursday, October 15, 2009

New MMPR and RPM stuff from Linear Ranger

My good pal Linear Ranger of Linearranger.com has supplied as with video from a new free promo DVD available at participating Disney Stores. The disc itself has an episode of "In Or Out," 'Ranger moves' (which I don't know what that is), 'Ranger lessons' (which I don't know either), and the MMPR toy sneak peak. The video Linear Ranger posted on YouTube shows the six Rangers, Putties, Goldar, the cycles, Morphin, and zord vehicle figures. (It seems the Green Ranger comes with the Yellow Zord Vehicle and apparently we will be getting a black version of Tommy's morpher... that morphs into the Green Ranger?). The booklet has the new logo with live-action MMPR picture and saying 'Coming Soon to Saturday Mornings on ABC.' Next to it, on the right, has volumes 3 and 4 DVDs of RPM, which they say are available exclusively at Amazon.com.

Volume 4's title is "Revved up Rescue" and Volume 3 starts with the words 'Mastering the...'
and just to let people know, Power Rangers Jungle Fury only had two volumes, six episodes each and they didn't complete the series. Each RPM DVD has five episode each.

The MMPR 2010 toy video:

UPDATED 10/15/2009 11:45 PM EST
Reader Casey put this comment and I had to share it (make it visible to people who don't check out comments):
I am troubled by how the transforming vehicles and figures have absolutely nothing to do with the series proper. I had believed that the loss of toy-series synergy was justified by dwindling viewership amongst the main toy line demographics. I thought part of the decision to revive MMPR was to run a series proven to attract child viewership, so they would not need to rely upon the tactic of original toy concepts (which evidently wasn't working so well for them). To Bandai, Super Sentai is literally paid advertising. I don't know if Bandai America just wants this method to work or if they're running with different data, but I can't see why they don't want to synergize with the Power Rangers TV show as much as possible.

I have been vocal about how much I dislike repaints of the same toy or toys from previous serious and these non-show toys (items that don't actually appeared on the show) from Bandai America .Less is more. I totally agree with Casey. I highly believe the reason Bandai and Disney decided to do this MMPR line was to revive the franchise that has had low toy sales. And I think the main cause of the low toy sales are due to these non-show toys, the transforming vehicles and different kinds of armored male Rangers and repaints of the same simplified toy. I did expect this though, that they would do this with the MMPR 2010 toy line, the same old motif.

If fans consider this cheapening the MMPR name, it's too early to tell but a good estimate. I do think the sales of 2010 will be higher than those of Operation Overdrive but it might not be what Disney and Bandai America are expecting. Disney would have to up the ante and have more merchandising and promotion than they had for Dino Thunder or Mystic Force (RPM by comparison has gotten the lowest amount of promotion) and have it in more stores than just Wal-Mart, Toys R Us, Walgreens and the Disney Store.