If you know Power Rangers, chancers are you're very familiar with Rita Repulsa, the main nemesis of the inaugural MMPR series. Her toys have sucked through the years but surprisingly, the Lightning Collection version seemed to be decent. I mean, it's a Hasbro figure, so I was not even going to being to wish for a competent figure, let alone a flawless one. With that in mind, I preordered it off Amazon, and it showed up.
As i bought this figure very much for it's comical nature, I'm not going to do much of an in depth, though to be honest I think you probably already know this figure is pretty mediocre.
So, typical packaging, and because it's a higher price point figure it gets the "luxury" treatment of a bigger box. In addition to the figure you get some accessories which include four extra hands, two extra faces, lighting effect and of course her staff.
Here she is, ready to play. Not gonna lie, for a Hasbro figure, this actually LOOKS pretty good. The soft goods combined with the competent sculpting of the head and surprisingly, the face, actually make this figure better aesthetically than pretty much the entire line, with the soft goods doing most of the heavy lifting.
As mentioned, the faces aren't bad at all, though to be fair I haven't bought a Lightning figure in so long, maybe these are the norm now. Decent variety of expressions, and might be the first time I've seen Hasbro do anything with swappable faces rather than the whole head. The detailing on the hair/head wrap, as well as the Collar/Chest Piece are actually quite nice.
As the underlying body for the Lightning Collection isn't terrible from am articulation perspective, it should be no surprise that Rita can pose decently. Her long dress somewhat interferes with the leg articulation, but if you really want to you can always just move it out of the way. The bigger issue with bulk is around the chest and neck, which don't really let the shoulders get their fully range of motion. That, combined with the bulky dress, Rita looks like she's got really short arms.
Paint Applications are, again, actually pretty good. I mean, it's a much smaller area that needs to be painted, so I suspect that probably helped. Furthermore, price point on this is higher than the typical figure, but it's not any bigger, so I presume that means that there was a bit more budget for prettying her up. I'm not gonna say I've memorized everything about her but to me, it doesn't seem like anything major is missing from the overall colouring department. Digital paint on the face actually worked out quite nicely.
Build Quality is kind of where things fall apart. The lack of any colouring on the actual body is understandable, as nobody would see it. But man, the quality of the plastic, the joints, the tolerances, they're all terrible. Under that nice facade, Rita is just a giant, floppy mess. Pretty much every QC issue possible with the assembly of the body, I got here, including a slightly floppy chest joint and hips. I mean, it'll do the job overall, but it's really annoying to have a figure slide out of its pose because of looseness, especially right before taking a photo.
So, overall, what does one think? I mean, it was never destined to be a flawless figure, not with its origin story. It's truly unfortunate about the underlying QC issues on the body (or at least on mine) but chances are you're not going be doing too many exotic poses with her, so if you just a good LOOKING Rita in your collection, this isn't a bad choice at all. To be honest, I don't think anyone else is ever going to make one, though I could see a Figuarts of her selling out immediately.
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