Power Rangers Lightning Collection Recreates Your Favorite Rangers
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Power Rangers Lightning Collection
What's better than people in spandex, kicking bad guys' butts with martial arts, then jumping into giant robots that all combine into one super-gigantic robot? The answer is nothing, and that's why Power Rangers has been a continuous force in pop culture since 1993. That's right, believe it or not, this franchise has been going strong for more than a quarter of a century. Season 26 is currently airing under the title Power Rangers Beast Morphers.
Currently, Hasbro is pumping out toys, action figures, and more based around the hit series, and the latest line--dubbed the Lightning Collection--celebrates the characters from the series, both past and present. Much like Hasbro's Marvel Legends or Star Wars Black series, the Lightning Collection aims its sights on older collectors who want extra accessories, a plethora of points of articulation, and characters from all eras of the long-running series.
During San Diego Comic-Con, GameSpot spoke to Hasbro's global brand strategy and marketing of Power Rangers Beth Bamrick and product designer Sondra Weiner to learn more about the Lightning Collection and what's coming down the road. We also got a closer look at some of the new toys during the convention.
Zeo Gold Ranger
GameSpot: Power Rangers has been around a long, long time. We've seen a big resurgence from Hasbro this year, making new toys and really revitalizing the line. What were your priorities?
Beth Bamrick: You're right, we kinda have. We have kinda just taken on the brand, so you know, number one is making sure that we kind of got it right from the get-go. Knowing that we have a lot of fans to service, we wanted to make sure we did that with not only Beast Morphers, with the series, and then making toys for those kids who are bringing in, you know, into Power Rangers. But then also our adult fans with Lightning Collection. So I think for us it was just all about, you know, setting the bench mark, where we want to be, you know with the product line and content and everything that we're bringing to fans of all ages.
White Ranger
When it comes to choosing which Power Rangers to produce, there are so many incarnations for so many different eras for this show. How do you decide which ones you want to choose and put out?
Sondra Weiner: Obviously, we've got 26 years of history, we've got to skim through every season. I think the most important thing is, "What are the fans really hankering for?" And I think as fans too we want to make sure we're delivering on what those are. It's also about providing variety, not just only the Rangers, but make sure we have female characters, we have villains. All that to create a whole story scenario that you can display for life. So that's been our big issue.
White Ranger
How do you create the high-res face-sculpts?
Bamrick: It takes a lot of researching for some high-res images. We'll Google if we have to, to really find and extract [images], and what we'll do is compose it and we try to kind of airbrush what we can and to get it as close to likeness as possible. It's about likeness not 100% replica. And I think that's what we've been able to achieve, so with like Kimberly, you saw it even with Jason. I think even to us we're like really proud that it actually looks a lot like him right? So yeah we've done a lot of great, I guess you can say Hasbro magic with that.
Lord Zedd
What are you guys most proud of from the Lightning Collection thus far?
Weiner: I just think the design team honestly just did such an amazing job with the six-inch figures. I mean the points of articulation, the details on all of the figures, they're amazing.
Lord Zedd
What are you guys most proud of from the Lightning Collection thus far?
Weiner: Lord Zedd is pretty awesome. But I think they all just have such attention to detail. It's just really cool.
Green Ranger
When you're creating the action figure, how do you decide what kind of accessories you want to include?
Bamrick: When we think about Power Rangers and the show, it's about the explosions, these kinds of theatrical kind of things that are happening, and we're like, "How do we make sure that we bring that in?" So it's accessories, weapons of course, rangers that you can pose out. We give them different hands so they can pose in their ninja pose or they can pose it out with their weapons and also put it in the lightning effects that we think it's kind of matches up with the lightning collection. So we think that kind of really makes it shine.
Check out more images below of new and upcoming Power Rangers figures from the Hasbro Breakfast and the Comic-Con show floor.