Extra Ranger Roundup - Round One!

Height: Elephant: 16cm / Shark: 16.5cm / Bat: 17cm

Articulation: 19 total points: Swivel neck; 4 points each arm - universal shoulders, hinge elbows, forearm swivel; 5 points each leg - universal hips, thigh swivel, hinge knee, hinge ankle.

Colors: Elephant: Molded green, black, grey (accessory only); Painted green, black, white, silver, orange. / Shark: Molded blue, black, grey (accessory only); Painted blue, black, white, orange. / Bat: Molded black, grey (accessories only); Painted black, silver, white, orange.

Accessories: Elephant: Shield/Skateboard. / Shark: Sword. / Bat: Large blade x2.

Release Data: Released in November 2007 in the United States, at a suggested retail price of US$6.99 each.

Gallery: 23 images.

Additional Media: Elephant Ranger; Bat Ranger; Shark Ranger

Author: ExVee






To finish out the first assortment of basic Jungle Fury figures, I decided instead of struggling to find new ways to describe three more redos of the same body type, all purposes might best be served to take a variation of RAC's Round-Up style and just do the highlights.

There are two schools of thought over what these three new Rangers might represent for Jungle Fury. First is that Bandai has taken a very different approach towards issuing non-show-character toys, and that's all they are - extra figures to pad out the initial assortment. There's some merit behind this, of course. Without these guys, the first assortment would either be limited to four figures, or we'd have figures of Wolf and Rhino Rangers probably close to six months before either first appear in the show, or we'd have to get extra villain figures. Not exactly Bandai's normal operation either.

The other thought is that these three are to somehow replace or possibly supplement the dudes-in-animal-suits Fist Sages from Gekiranger who train the Rangers to use new special weapons and summon the auxiliary Zords relatively early in the series. If true, this is a significant step, as their show appearances will be the most numerous and elaborate Power Rangers originated Rangers to date. SPD strictly speaking had more originals, but not with the level of suit build complexity these will call for. We're talking Titanium Ranger effort here times three. Given most of the Fist Sage footage available from Gekiranger involves actor faces, one could suppose that it would be equally expensive for Disney to have to get hold of the animal-man suits and reshoot the sequences as it would to simply build new Ranger costumes. Though I have to admit if we do go the way of these guys being Beast Masters and lose the animal suits, I'll kinda miss the concept of animal-men walking around and the general population not caring.


The Figures


Each Ranger has a unique helmet sculpt to evoke their namesake animal. Shark Ranger's ends up having the least specific appearance of a shark, but brings forth the concept well enough. Meanwhile, Bat Ranger is extremely Batman, though the parts of the helmet that look like the "ears" are in fact the wings, as the whole front of the helmet is made to look like a stylized bat. And Elephant Ranger looks like he has an elephant head wrapped around his helmet. The little tusks are a nice touch though, I must admit. There's really a greater variety in appearances between Rangers with these three compared to the relatively samey cat-inspired helmets of the Primary Color Trio. Sadly there is no variety of articulation, and each figure has but a swivel jointed neck. I found in each case the neck joints were pretty strongly paint fused.

I had an awful time trying to find a full set of these three figures with working electronics. And even when I finally did, the trigger strength varied wildly. I had mentioned in Tiger Ranger's review that you need to act as though you're going to smash the figure into something to trigger the sound. Shark Ranger more often than not actually does require impact against a surface to produce a sufficient shock. Bat takes what I'd say is the most reasonable amount of shaking to activate the sounds, while Elephant is just on the near side of "hair trigger". I think, though, this is a situation where individual variation is going to occur. When the sounds actually work at all.

There's very little difference physically between any of these figures and Tiger and Jaguar. Each one has a unique sculpt for their Battle Claws; Elephant Rangers very loosely resemble a stylized elephant head with the trunk running along the length of the Claws. Bat has the most simple looking, and by color the closest resemblance to the Tiger Battle Claws. Shark's have a small fin on the forearm pieces. The articulation in the arms is a little less smooth with these guys because they have considerably more paint than Tiger and Jaguar - more details about that in a little bit. There's a greater stiffness and resistence to subtle movements at the shoulders and elbows. It can interfere with fine tuning some poses. In contrast, I'm finding the leg joints to be looser. The universal joints at the hips are particular examples of this. It doesn't make a huge difference in the end, but while trying to pose the overly stiff arms, you may end up throwing the legs out of position. There's not really any significant variance between the three figures in this area. I find they all suffer about equally from these plastic tolerance issues.


Sculpt and Deco

We've established previously the sculpting is just fine, so let's talk about Deco. First a little background information. These figures are broken down into two mold groups. The arms, lower legs, and feet are all from one tooling, while the torso, and upper legs are from another. This is true of all the male Ranger figures. Of course all the heads are their own mold, but generally the heads are cast in the same plastic as used on the torso and upper legs. So, Elephant has a torso cast in green, Shark's torso is blue, and Bat's torso is cast from black plastic. Now, Elephant's torso is then painted heavily in black to make it appear as though the torso is black with green highlights, Shark is painted to appear black with blue highlights, and Bat is painted to look silver with black detailing. Further, not only are each figure's arms painted over in their contrast shade, but *then* are additionally painted over in paint matching their original base plastic color. Parts of the torso are done in matching color paint, too.

Am I the only one who is struck somewhat odd by this? Can anyone tell me how it is apparently easier to use one color and practically cover every millimeter of that plastic with paint than it is to mold it black or grey in the first place and paint the detailing on? The only side effect would be the upper legs and head, which is a considerably smaller area to coat in paint. Bat has an extra special problem, too. Since the arms are fully covered in paint, and Bat's "gloves" are silver, not only does the paint on the inside of the hands rub off, but it's real obvious since the plastic underneath is black. I am just completely baffled at how this was done. While the paint job itself looks great, especially considering how complex it is, I cannot help but feel that this was a terribly wasteful approach. You can check this out for yourself too, if you have a blacklight. The painted areas will not glow like the bare plastic does. This doesn't work very well with Bat Ranger, but the color layout on that figure makes it easier to tell under normal light.



Accessories


-Elephant Ranger

--Shield

Or, skateboard. Yep. While it has a little mounting point that slides over the forearm piece of the Battle Claws, it also has wheels and pegs to fit the holes in the feet of the male Ranger figures. Beats me why somebody thought this thing should double as a skateboard. It hangs onto the arms pretty securely, though. Too bad the lack of a bicep swivel makes it really limited in posing. And it resembles an elephant head. With wheels. It's cooler looking than the original Megazord's Mastodon Shield, anyway.


-Shark Ranger

--Sword

Really complicated shark-themed sword. The first 2/5 or so of the sword looks like a stylized shark with a sword handle sticking out from its tail, and a big blade glued to its face. Sadly, the handle is too small to hold securely in any figure's hand except for Shark Ranger's specially sculpted hands with a narrower space between palm and curled fingers. At least it didn't come pre-bent. Much.


-Bat Ranger

--Blades

Bat Ranger's weapons are probably my favorite of the three figures. The animal resemblance is the least of the group, but you can stretch a line to bat wings if you want. Much like Cheetah's batons, they can be used separately, or combined into a single weapon. Sadly the connection is not quite as strong as I'd really like. Plus with the lack of the bicep swivels, posing the combined weapon is pretty limited. But I think it looks cooler separate anyway. Unfortunately, one of these *did* come pre-bent which spoils the fun a bit.


-Combination

The three weapons can be assembled into an arm mounted Stupidly Big Sword to be used by Elephant Ranger. Once again, the lack of that certain joint really hurts posability with it. Either an extra joint, or a handle to use the giant sword with instead of mounting it to the forearm would have really helped.


-Super Combination

Cheetah and either Tiger or Jaguar's special weapons can also be combined with these three weapons to make a big blaster thing. It doesn't work the way it's displayed on the back of the packaging. The instructions actually depict the correct configuration. The package version basically has the giant sword thing laid down on top of the blaster half, but the relevant pegs are not long enough to make a good connection, so if you try that way it'll all fall apart. The Bat Blades have to be moved to the pegs on the sides of Cheetah's little robot sidekick instead. The combined mode looks decent enough, but I do wish they'd have figured out some way to use all six special weapons at once. As is, Tiger or Jaguar's weapon has to be omitted.



Closing Remarks


Whether or not they appear in the TV show, these figures are very well done, if confusing in places. Whatever Bandai and Disney have planned with these, I find them to be a worthy addition to the collection. All I'd really wish is that they had come with the Elephant Hammer, Fan Blades, and Shark Sword pair as appeared in the show. I guess at this point we can only hope for representations of those weapons to come with the Super Mode Rangers later this year.

Tell you what, though, after reviewing five figures that are basically the same body over and over again, I'm about ready for a change of pace. And I'm kinda hoping Wolf Ranger and Rhino Ranger come along far enough into the line to have whatever replacement gimmick Bandai comes up with. I don't think I want any more Sound Fury clones for a while.

The six Rangers look pretty impressive posed together, and it's good to have the currently complete set. Though, I think our Evil Space Alien Dai Shi is getting a touch outnumbered. It'd be great if Bandai released a generic foot soldier figure in an upcoming assortment...

Though I'd like to hand out some Very Goods into this group, the joint issues and some questionable paint choices end up knocking them down a notch to just Good.


-ExVee, 04/02/2008