Toku Toy Box: Power Rangers Lightning Collection Beast Morphers Blue Ranger Gallery

"Let's try my gorilla strength!"

Ravi Shaw was meant to be a Power Ranger. Selected by Grid Battleforce, Ravi trained tirelessly to earn his place & his power with his teammates. But before they could become Rangers, Blaze & Roxy became something else entirely. Avatars, loyal only to the villain Evox! And Ravi's former comrades would have done the same to him if not for the intervention of Devon Daniels & Zoey Reeves. Joining his new friends, Ravi's body is infused with Morph-X energy as well as gorilla DNA, turning him into the mighty Beast Morphers Blue Ranger! Heading into battle with his less experienced friends, Ravi's training will help him build a united front against the enemies who threaten Grid Battleforce and Coral Harbor.

Packaging
In creating this line, Hasbro was keen to make sure they appealed to collectors and fans of the franchise from throughout it's various eras. Given the aim to make this appeal to an older crowd, the packaging seems to have taken a page out of the Star Wars Black Series book. In similar collector style boxes, the Lightning collection figure's look a bit brighter thanks to a primarily white color scheme. But 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
The Power Rangers Lighting Collection continues to truck right along with the recent releases of Wave 3 as well as official images of the upcoming Wave 4. Recently I had a chance to sit down and give the Beast Morphers Red Ranger a proper gallery & review, so I'm more than ready to tackle the Blue Ranger now as well. These two figures share an identical mold aside from their headsculpts, so my review will be mostly the same. Feel free to skip it if you read the previous one and just check out the pics attached below!

This is the second outing for the main Beast Morphers male body. The Gold Ranger set an excellent standard for this team in the line, so I was really pleased with how the core member mold turned out. For years I'd wanted to have a better set of Go-Busters in my collection. I've had all the Go-Busters Figuarts for years, but they definitely have their flaws. This LC mold really does fulfill my desires. Like many LC figures, the Blue Ranger carries through much of the same standard articulation cuts we've come to know. Full rotating rocker ankles and a clicking swivel joint for them to go back and forth. A shin swivel at the boot cuff, allowing you to rotate that portion of the leg 360 degrees below the knee if you wish. A really solid double jointed knee which allows you to fully bend the leg back in on itself. In addition is a 360 thigh swivel as well as full hips with back/forth and outward motion. This standard articulation is wonderful and obvious, but it's the subtle sculpt on these parts that will sneak up on you. The boots themselves are uniformly painted red, which can hide the expertly sculpted design. But it's really the black thighs and knees that hide the most detail. The entire leg has this subtle sort of folded or creased look to it. It looks exactly like the kind of creasing you'd see on real leather, like what the show suits are made of. It's a brilliant and easily over looked detail on this figure.

The upper body features the more or less standard design of the ratchet ab joint and the ball jointed upper body. The design pairing just makes so much sense and works so well, and always makes up for the lack of a proper rotating waste joint. You just can't beat it. Obviously with the way the Beast Morphers design features a zipper down the middle of the torso, the design will be broken up by using the upper body joint, but hey it's a toy, not a real person. Around the shoulders is a black harness with a molded in Transporter, just like what the Gold Ranger had. Both figures can quite easily slide these off their arms and swap them if you so choose. The arms are solidly designed, anchored by the butterfly joint in the torso, they provide a full range of movement. The double jointed elbow and peg in hands with wrist swivels really give the Blue Ranger all the flexibility he needs, honestly even more so than an actor in the actual suit has available to them. The two-tone silver/red coloring of the arms means that the bicep swivel can break things up a bit, but it's not the kind of eyesore you'd expect it to be. The left wrist of course features a pretty decently detailed Beast-X Morpher as well.

That brings us to the head. The Lightning Collection really has featured so many good headsculpts, ranger & civilian wise. Some do miss the mark ever so slightly, and I think that the Beast Morphers Blue Ranger helmet looks a bit softer than many of the others. Much like the MMPR Pink Ranger. It's a decently sculpted helmet with mostly solid paint apps, the finer details just look a bit soft to my eyes. As an overall package though this is still an excellent figure. It's take nearly 8 years for the Go-Busters designs, now as Beast Morphers, to finally get their due. Hasbro is doing fans like myself a real solid with releases like this. The gallery below also features some side by side comparisons with the S.H. Figuarts Blue Buster to illustrate the big differences between the two. And we've got the perfect buddy to compliment the Blue Ranger with S.H. Figuarts Gorisaki Banana! To terrorize our heroes this go around you can also see how compatible the 6" Basic Tronic, Blaze, & Roxy figures are below.

Accessories
As always, you should expect a Lightning Collection figure to come with all the right accessories:


1 - Beast-X Saber. Beast Morpher's version of the Sougan Blade from Go-Busters. This version is a bit nicer than the 6" Basic one with slightly better paint apps, though the scale is more or less the same. Obviously something like the Figuarts one is more accurate, but smaller. I wish this one transformed, but then again no version of it that comes with a figure has at this point.

1 - Saber Effect Part. This is definitely one of my favorite effects in the line. It's so so unique and detailed and just the perfect shade of green to replicate the digitized effects in the show. It slides over the Beast-X Saber just snugly enough for a perfect fit, and will work just fine with the 6" Basic Saber or even the Figuarts Sougan Blade. It's a brilliant effect and I want a bunch more Beast Morphers effects like it.

1 - Punch Effect Part. This is actually a first for the LC line. So far, Beast Morphers Blue is the first and only ranger to include a second effect part. This clear blue energy part is sculpted like a sweeping punch and has a cut out inside to fit snugly over either of the figure's fists.

1 - Ravi Shaw Civilian head. Lightning Collection figures really are killing it with these civilian heads. I know people tend to voice negative thoughts on the sculpts from time to time, but I often think they do a very good job of capturing the likeness of the actors. In this case, Ravi's head features a really fantastic likeness of actor Jasmeet (Jazz) Baduwalia. It's a snug fit when swapping it out, but it looks great on the Beast Morphers mold.

2 - alternate hands. As with all LC's this one include two extra hands. The extras are both closed fists though, since in package the Blue Ranger has his weapon holding hands attached.

That's a bunch of stuff, but as with the Red Ranger I can't help but note a few things I would have preferred. The Beast-X Blaster is something I would have really liked but even a Morph-X Key would have been a nice tough. I know it would have been tiny and easily lost though so that's not as a big deal. I think making a few changes for accessories would have really made this release perfect. As is, I'm still quite happy. And if you'd like toss in a few extra things, this figure is totally compatible with 6" Basic weapons and accessories like the role-play Morph-X Key and works very well with Figuarts weapons like the Ichigan Buster.

Final Thoughts
Ravi will be a must have figure for many collectors. Of course, with Beast Morphers still running into 2020 there are plenty of fans of the show. There of course are also a number of fans lurking about from the Tokumei Sentai Go-Busters days who will absolutely need this figure in my opinion. I've reviewed the S.H. Figuarts Go-Busters a couple of times, and I've always been happy to defend the figure despite their flaws. But I think this Lightning Collection release will easily take the top spot for many a collector, myself included. A solid release, with a wealth of great accessories, the Lightning Collection Beast Morphers Blue Ranger really is another must own in an entire line of must owns.

Part 2

Something about the way this figure looks feels a lot more solid than Red. I can't put my figure on it; maybe the blue offsets the silhouette better, maybe it's the helmet, maybe it's because his motif is a gorilla so the 'stronger' scult works... I dunno. Whatever the case is he looks great!

Yeah it's weird as they are built exactly the same. The only difference is the color and helmet. I think it's mainly the helmet. Red kinda comes off as a smaller head(funny considering the human head) to this bigger torso. On blue the helmet seems bigger so it's making the torso seem about the right size.

Really not much else to say. In a way it's good that only red and blue are basically the same figure. Silver/Yellow should a tad unique.

They probably could have gotten away with Gold's torso for all the men honestly. Not to say he's a lady but that size always wouldn't be bad for the ladies. Like no need to make them super petite(with these weird flat undersides).

Two effect parts, eh? That's kinda neat... but including the blaster over one of those would've been so much better. Especially confusing for a piece that could get a decent amount of reuse out of it.

Actually saw this one in the store today as the only figure left on the shelf at a WalMart. Took a close look and really had me appreciate again how well they're treating most of these figures though. Just never watched more than few episodes of Beast Morphers nor Gobusters for that matter to have enough attachment.

That second effect part makes sense considering his power is strength, make me wonder if Yellow will some sort of kick/jump effect. I am surprised this didn't come with a Beast-X blaster though, again maybe yellow. Other than that the figure looks good and having a current actor does wonders for these head sculpts.

As much as I love the Lightning Collection, there's something about BM Red and Blue that I just don't like. I think it's how buff they look, It's not entirely terrible, but it's just enough to turn me off. Beyond that this is an awesome figure!

The lightning collection has been the best of this year. Who would have even thought we'd get GoBusters? Awesome gallery too.

After staring at them for a bit, I think I figured it out. For me, atleast.

The straps over the shoulders accentuate the chest and make them look puffed out. As such Red and Blue look way buffer than than they should be whereas Gold doesn't have this problem; Partly thanks to him having shoulder-pads instead.

This nails it for me. Blue is just about perfect proportionally, but Red's head really is just a bit too small to work. It's a shame because it's such a minute difference, but as always with figures; the head's the most important part. Just ask Figuarts Para-DX.