Its far too easy to break off the antennas on the generally much nicer (albeit smaller) S.H. Figuarts Masked Rider toys.I was, however, generally familiar with Masked Rider (or Kamen Rider if you want to be pedantic) as a concept because the wonderful world of Japanese trash TV culture was opening up to me thanks to VHS tapes of raw untranslated, off the air Japanese broadcasts my stepmom used to give me, and trips to Japantown in San Jose.
When I was in college and DVD had all but destroyed video cassettes as a medium, I spent so much time scooping up used tapes from every video store I could find. Instead of cyborg grasshopper man Kotaro Minami fighting the forces of the Crisis Empire, Sabans version starred alien superhero Dex fighting his crooked uncle in a gold helmet first for control of their home planet of Edenoi, and then the earth. Oh, did I mention its a sitcom I know Power Rangers and VR Troopers have comic relief, but this show is more like Superhuman Samurai Syber-Squad, a full-on sitcom with Japanese fight scenes tossed in here and there. But unlike that show, its not really a sitcom in the Saved by the Bell mold. Instead its My Favorite Martian or Out of this World meets ALF meets a sub-par 1990s Nickelodeon sitcom like My Brother and Me or Welcome Freshmen. The fast-paced and far-more-violent-than-Power-Rangers fight scenes really, really stand out tonally from the rest of the show. In fact, the fights keep getting cut short because they are so violent. A number of the toys, like the 5.5 inch Masked Rider, Masked Rider Super Gold, Combat Chopper, and Magno The Talking Car are recycled from the then 7 year old Bandai Masked Rider Black RX figures. Some toys were completely original, like the majority of the villain figures and Ferbus. A few were even retooled from contemporary Power Rangers molds, like the Ecto Accelerating Masked Rider toys (based on the Auto Morphin Power Rangers) and the subject of this review, the 8 inch Deluxe Masked Rider (based on the 8 inch Rangers). Masked Rider Toys Series Early InIt will also allow you to live out your fantasies of recreating the Power RangersMasked Rider crossover from A Friend in Need, a brief miniseries early in the third season of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. Okay, but what if you have never touched one of these toys Will you like it That depends. It make be hard to get a sense of scale from some of these pictures, but it is taller than most of the soft vinyl Deluxe Evil Space Aliens from the first couple of years of Power Rangers or most standard size sofubi you would care to name. The feet are poseable (though you just get an up and down hinge, no ankle tilt). The hands open and close though the fingers are one solid piece. The hips, knees, arms, elbows, and shoulders are all quite respectable. Theres even an unrestricted waist joint It is too bad, though, that the big collar prevents the head from moving that much, but its an artifact of the original design so hard to deal with that it took Bandai two attempts in the S.H. Figuarts line to come up with a good solution. The toy has everything from the Ecto-Accelerator Belt (Sunriser in Japan) to the bizarre bug mouth sculpted in. While the build is more muscular than the source material, its not the gross steroid muscles of later Power Rangers and works pretty well. It also has no way to recreate the glowing lightsaber action that they had on the show. Would it have been that expensive to provide an alternate Electro Saber in clear plastic Its also a bummer that the plastic is kind of soft so the sword can droop a little, but its nowhere near as bad as the Gundam beam sabers that come with the Mobile Suit in Action toys. Its far too easy to break off the antennas on the generally much nicer (albeit smaller) S.H. Figuarts Masked Rider toys.
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