Toy Hunt: Power Rangers Legacy – Red & Green Ranger

TL;DR

• Power Rangers Legacy Collection arrived a couple months back
• Obtaining the Ninja Storm Rangers was easy.
• Built the Wind Ninja Zord
• Red and Green Ranger sell out everywhere
• Obsession ensues
• Finally found the Green Ranger
• Taunted by the Green Ranger
• Finally found the Red Ranger
• Able to resume life as normal again

About 2 months ago, Bandai released the first series of the Power Rangers Legacy Collection figures. For those that who don’t know, this is essentially a build-a-figure (rather, build-a-zord) toy line where each Ranger comes with a piece of a Zord. Get all the rangers, and then you’ll be able to build the zord with a few exceptions. Naturally, as a huge Rangers fan, I needed to snag all of them.

The first series has 5 figures: The three Wind Ninja Rangers from Power Rangers Ninja storm as well as the Red and Green Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers. At $20 a piece, the line would run you about $100 to get all 5 and as I didn’t have any desire to spend all $100 up front, I opted to buy the figures over a couple of weeks. But which to start with? Well, I have a TON of Mighty Morphin’ stuff and I thought it’d be great to finally have some stuff from other series. Of course, I do have the budget $10 Rangers figures from Dino Charge, Super Megaforce, and then a couple random figures here and there from other series, but the bulk is Mighty Morphin’ and this quality of figure was better than the budget figures! With all that said, I had 0 Ninja Storm figures which I felt the need to fix. Plus, by getting the three Wind Ninja rangers, I’d have all the pieces to make the Wind Ninja Megazord! That was enticing and more or less made my decision for me: I’ll start with Ninja Storm. Specifically, I’ll start with Tori, the blue Wind Ninja Ranger. Tori was my favorite Ranger from Ninja Storm, sporting my favorite color, so there couldn’t have been a better place for me to start. Besides, Mighty Morphin’ is so popular, of course there will be a ton of those around, right?

Mistakes were made…

A rational, unbiased thought would go more like, “Mighty Morphin’ is so popular, OF COURSE they are gonna sell out everywhere”. But I didn’t have rational thought when I was standing in Target, no, I had the Blue Wind Ninja Ranger.Thefigure that I picked from behind the rows of other Rangers.

I got the figure home, unwrapped it took a few pictures for a review that I would, in theory, get to writing one day. Maybe after collecting the entire series. The figure was great and tall compared to my S.H. Figure Arts Mighty Morphin’ figures. The quality much better than the budget ones, too! I was hooked. So who was next? Well, of the three Ninja Storm Rangers on sale, Dustin, the yellow ranger, was my next favorite. Same events took place: brought it home, unwrapped it, took more pictures for this fabled review, then put it on the shelf. Rinse and repeat for Shane, the Red Ranger. I thought it odd to buy the Red Ranger last, but he was my least favorite of the three. Shane wasn’t bad, in fact, I rather liked him a lot as a Red Ranger,  but he wasn’t Tori or Dustin, so he brought up the rear.  I now had all three! I could finally build the Wind Ninja Megazord! It was…actually kind of a pain. Shannon and I had eventful time trying to get the leg to attach, but eventually did. The figure actually seemed a bit lower quality than the Rangers themselves, but I was still very happy that I now had 4 figures for the price of 3! Build-A-Zord was a great success!

A couple weeks later, it was time to go get the Green and Red ranger! I’m sitting at work looking and Power Rangers figures instead of programming, you know, like a proper adult. As I was scouting Target.com I figured, let me check if the Target by the office has the Red and Green Ranger in stock. A quick search told me that they didn’t…and neither did any other Target in the state apparently. Clearly, denial set in, obviously the site stock tracking was wrong, there is no way they were out of stock of ALL the rangers. And, as it turns out, when I got Target, I was right! They weren’t out of stock of all the Rangers…just out of stock of all the Mighty Morphin’ Rangers. It was here where rational thought finally got to me. Obviously they’re gone, they are the one most people know about! The phrase Wind Ninja Ranger has never graced the ears of many. It was all about Mighty Morphin’, the original teenagers with attitude.
Fine. Whatever. It’s just one Target. I’ll be able to find it elsewhere. I’ll look it up on Toys R Us. Well, again, Toys R Us claims to not have any of the Legacy line in stock. Walmart? Sold by a third party seller online only for about $40. A 100% increase?! Seemingly, none of the stock tracking was working anywhere for these figures. I went to Toys R Us, and of course they had the Wind Ninja Rangers in stock, but not Mighty Morphin’. Bummer. Can’t leave empty handed though. Captain America Playset from Disney Infinity 3.0 will do nicely and was on sale too since Disney decided between Avengers and making a Star Wars movie every year, they just couldn’t handle printing just THAT much money and dropped the game support. Bitter, but tangent is over.

Well, I’ll jut check Target number 2. Tori. That’s all that was left. Just Tori. Okay… Target number three, this one doesn’t get nearly as much foot traffic as the other two. Shane. Just Shane was left.  Whatever, I’ll check the Target down by my usual Pokemon Go spot. Don’t know what I was thinking. A spot sandwiched between GameStop and a Pokemon meet up spot? Of course, this Target was sold out of all of them. But like they said, fourth times a charm? After, dinner I’ll just go to Target number four! Nothing.  At this point, it’s late and I’m running out of Targets, felt it best to go home prep for the D&D game happening the next day then go to sleep.

It was the next morning. D&D was in a few hours and as per usual I had  the same 2 events that occur right before almost every session of the game: Completely forgetting I need to level my character and realizing I need to go grab snacks for the game. But where do I go to get snacks? Target of course! Clearly, I couldn’t go to just any Target, I had to go to one that I haven’t been to before in the last few days. So, I finally get out to Target, head down the toy isle and I see…The Blue Wind Ninja Ranger and I almost left the isle after a quick peak, but something caught my eye. Something behind the Blue Wind Ninja Ranger.

It was the Green Mighty Morphin’ Power Ranger. Finally.

But I still had one more to go: The Red Ranger. Arguably, the Red Ranger was far more important for me to find than fan favorite, Green. While the Green Ranger came with the most accessories and multiple hands, he didn’t have a Zord piece. The Red Ranger, though, came with the entire torso of the Dino Megazord. Can’t build the Zord without that.
I couldn’t go out the next day to go look. I mean, at some point I had to live my life rather than fuel the obsession, right? The following day though, I had some time waste after work. No plans, Shannon was busy, and I didn’t feel like sitting in the
house. The Civil War blu-ray was out and just the excuse I needed to head out, pick up some dinner and, of course, go to my SIXITH (!!!) Target. And when I get to the 6th Target, they had the Wind Ninja Rangers AND the Green Ranger. Of course, NOW, you show up. So, this wasn’t gonna work, also, Target sold out of their combo pack for Civil War. This was great! It gave me an excuse to go to my
seventh Target.

I arrive and this Target, I kid you not, ONLY had Green Rangers. Around 3 of them hanging on the shelf. Even found some littered around the store, like on a random counter top in electronics. Once impossible to find, now I can’t get away from him! Still though, no Red Ranger! Where would he be? Walmart? Another Toys R Us? Peace Conference? I gave up. It was a good run, but I came to terms with just having to buy him online for more than I wanted to spend. I left Target. Empty handed because they as well didn’t have any more of the Civil War combo pack!

On the drive home I remembered, that I told Shannon I’d pick up something from the store while I was out and the closest store when I realized this was, of course, Target. That’s some amount of irony. Regardless, I went got what I needed and then…the compulsion set in. I was already there, and I know I checked this Target first days ago, but might as well head down the toy isle. The Power Rangers display had a big empty spot. Except for one, solitary, lone item.

The Red Mighty Morphin’ Power Ranger for the Power Rangers Legacy line.

It was over. Finally. I could stop parading around every Target near my house. With the collection complete I can now eagerly anticipate series two, in which, I will purchase the Mighty Morphin’ Rangers FIRST and then proceed to get the other Rangers. Because, as it turns out (obviously), Mighty Morphin’ is still going strong.