It Was Almost PURPLE? Dino Charge, Dino Thunder, Wild Force, & Pie! (Part 2) 

I've since been somewhat spoiled with Rita figures... but I still want that 5 inch action hero that was supposed to be released that fall in the two pack. Sure it wasn't as good as Hasbro's updated Rita, or the one we got from Super7, but by Bandai's best Rita! (not saying much...) but perfect for that line! I was happy with it.

@@MMPRtoys I had always wished that Bandai had done other full teams in that line. It was a nice fantasy during that time

@@100PercentEarl In one of our meetings at Bandai, I brought that up, asking if they could do team packs of past rangers for the action hero line, they were surprisingly not receptive to that. They generally seemed interested in what I had to say, and a few things did end up getting made as a result of our visits... but I really felt like they nicely said "well that's a dumb idea we won't be doing." That surprised me. They did every red. They did a bunch of 6ths. We got MMPR, Super Megaforce through Ninja Steel. Would it have really been that difficult to fill in those teams? They already had bodies! I don't know... I thought it was a fun line. I was always hoping for more of them. I probably care about full teams more than how fancy they actually are, but I don't know how many fans I really speak for now.

@@MMPRtoys that really surprises me that Bandai wasn’t interested in the idea. Especially when they did MMPR in the retro packaging. Like i get that MMPR is an exception, but that specific retro inspired line felt very collector/long time fan focused vs SMF, DC NS being more general/kid focus. I originally thought that older teams in 5 inch action style was gonna be their Legacy collection before Legacy. Maybe they knew from not S1 MMPR legacy collection sales. Or 2017 movie being a huge focus for a bit? Idk. You definitely know more than me and idk the timeline.

Time needs to chill! Going by way too fast now!

I feel like everyone's out of space these days. But some of those legacy items most certainly have gone crazy in price!

@@MMPRtoys Yeah, no kidding! I'm so glad I bought them when I did.

It wouldn't have been due to the color. Jungle Fury had a male purple ranger, that was back in 2008. Dino Charge we had purple again, male and female, and Dino Fury/Cosmic Fury had some firsts as well. There have been movie exclusive rangers and Zords that were not able to come over for one reason or another, but they wouldn't just omit a main purple ranger today.

@@MMPRtoys Yea true

It's nice to hear someone else notice! And even worse, really. It's JUST MMPR. People don't even care about Tommy as much as the white ranger. White Ranger legacy toys didn't sell as well. Super7 cancelled their Tigerzord Ultimate figure too. 30 years of Power Rangers and (as a whole) people buy red ranger, green ranger, MMPR Megazord, and sales decline from there. Maybe the morpher is included in that. Or part of the runner ups, which would be Dragonzord, Dragon Dagger, black ranger, blue ranger. By the time you're in season 2 people are gone. Shogun Megazord was absolutely planned but they were really having trouble moving literally everything that wasn't MMPR Megazord.

That was a cool thing. In that case I'm putting my money more on "bad guys don't sell" vs purple, but yeah, that would have been bad guy + purple. Japan also got a sword/shield role-play for him which we did not, as well as a purple phone, which we also did not. And that used to drive me nuts when I was younger, but I can't deny now that fans simply don't buy girls or bad guys. But, everything was available in Japan, so, I had no trouble importing those too.

You certainly can't make it back in 02 if you didn't have it then... but you can do it now! You've got the DX Bandai Japan, DX Bandai America, and the SMP line to choose from! If you're going to PMC this summer you might find some good things at the con. They're all on eBay. CSTOYS gets used stuff pretty often...

We can do all sorts of cool things, but there needs to be a demand for Mia to spend the time modeling and offering the files/prints. So far she's done a good number of fan-requested things that took some time and it's been a lot of "that's cool, wish I could" replies. So, we've kinda slowed down with adding new things for now, while Mia works on other things. Have you seen these though? tokullectibles.com/products/dx-kyoryuzin-western-kung-fu-combo-full-action-ver-set?_pos=22&_sid=1a30c87e0&_ss=r & tokullectibles.com/products/dx-tobaspino-full-action-ver?_pos=23&_sid=1a30c87e0&_ss=r

To be fair, Cosmic Fury under Bandai of America probably wouldn't have made Amelia the Red Ranger, since Bandai would have had some sway with what gets done and brought over, mainly in terms of toys but still... If anything, Kyuranger would have likely been it's own thing unconnected to Dino Fury, and that's if Dino Fury was still to happen in the timeline where Saban & Bandai are still in charge.

It makes so much sense to me. Cosmic Fury is not only the most hated designs in the history of the show, Hasbro had also decided they were done at that time. It takes time for toys to be designed and to go into production. Cosmic Fury was a short last minute mini-series. Hasbro already knew things weren't selling and they were kinda done. There are enough reasons there before we get into all the specifics of why fans don't buy this or that. We know girls sell poorly. People DO buy red ranger, but this team has a female skirted red! Three girls on this team. W/o getting too much into... that... there are fans that would not buy green and orange. So, many people would not buy half of that team just due to the characters being female before getting into their hatred of the costumes and, other things. And no matter what I show these days, the comments are "That's cool, wish I had money." "That's cool, wish I had space." So, even things people do like, they still aren't buying. This was true in 2013. In 2024 the fanbase is much smaller (and angrier). I can speak more to Bandai things in the later years when we were going over there, but, sometimes they just felt like something wasn't going to sell and companies aren't looking to loose money. They do their market research and have years of previous things to look at to say people liked this, but not that. And there could be cases where someone just messed up. But, I certainly learned things I didn't know after we were move involved. In 2002 I had no idea that Toys R Us or Walmart could say "we don't want to sell that item, change it." Speaking of which, we never got yellow/black movie morphers b/c people weren't buying them. TRU wouldn't order more. I remember Greg trying to find some work around but I don't think he did and then he ended up leaving Bandai. It mostly comes back to, are fans supporting this? (And we also run two RU-vid channels for the same fandom, and we experience all the same stuff the companies do making stuff for this community. It's a real thing.)

There was something crunchy in mine that I have yet to identify... but so far I haven't mutated or un-mutated. So, that's good.

I wish I could have gone inside. I've still never even been to Hawaii. But they were my go-to place for Sentai for a while.

Looks like they're comin' up in the SHODO SUPER line! All 10!

@@MMPRtoys wow this is morphinominal

Hasbro's distribution was very odd. As long as they've been making the toys, it always felt like the shelves were empty (more often than not). Hasbro also started releasing the toys in a world w/o TRU. But still, Bandai generally had more stuff on the shelves at Target and Walmart. But, I also accepted stores just aren't where it's at anymore and bought online. There's never been a figure I couldn't get. Hasbro Pulse, Amazon, BBTS, EE, GameStop, etc. This whole time we've had our KIT and curation to hopefully make it easier for people: www.amazon.com/shop/mmprtoys/list/27PRVSR7BJFPL?ref_=aip_sf_list_spv_ofs_mixed_d Cosmic Fury was disappointing, but by then they knew they were shutting down. Everything takes time. Time to design the toys, time to produce them. I think Cosmic Fury was kinda last minute and by then they already knew they were not making more toys, at least for a while. That wasn't an overnight kinda thing. Maybe Playmates will make Cosmic Fury?

@@MMPRtoys I sure hope so? Playmates should also do the following: 1. good QC, 2. good pricing, and 3. make the toys easier to find.

That was kinda the point of all of this. Fans were boycotting girls SO hard they didn't want them included in any final releases. Bandai didn't want things sitting there b/c they had yellow or pink in them. There were people who really wouldn't buy a full MMPR set b/c it had a pink key. That's what all this was about, fans not buying girls, which is a problem for for-profit companies that need to sell things to stay in business. They'll make whatever fans want, but then fans have to actually buy the products. And if things aren't selling, retailers won't even order them even if the company wanted to make them anyway. We didn't get yellow/black movie morphers from Bandai b/c nobody bought red/white/blue/pink, so Toys R Us said "we don't want more of these, they sit here taking up space and we can't move them."

I can't speak much to Transformers, or if that's the actual reason or something the company just said. Power Rangers had its own shelf and there was no purple, at all. There was 2004 toy hunting footage in the previous video. Dino Thunder had blue packaging. TMNT was next door with yellow. That's honestly something I've never heard before. Power Rangers never changed toy colors b/c of other toy colors, with that one exception, removing a pastel purple and replacing it with bold colors that say "boy." Then in 2014 they tried to change the pink color in Dino Charge and fans made them change it back to pink. With 30 years of history pointing to a very specific reason, I'm fairly confident that's what it is. On top of observation, I was inside the various companies who were all complaining the fans only liked MMPR, didn't buy monsters, didn't buy girls. So, I'm leaning heavily towards "girl color." Also note they removed skirts from the girl figures for many years, that one included. (In Wild Force they painted the pink part of white ranger's weapon silver for roleplay items, and In Space pink was painted red, both proper colors in Japan).

I just double checked what I said and it turns out that Tidal Wave’s color change was because there were too many purple DECEPTICONS on the store shelves around 2003, not purple toys in general. So I will admit that not only was I wrong, but that it was information that was misremembered. I’m sorry. You were right about that not being the case for no purple zords and no girl rangers.

🥧

Decade: "Pinku Ja Nai, Magenta da."

Japan's a bit different. (Though even in Japan they don't make a lot of monsters, and I can point to a number of teams where no girl figures were made, which is a shame. Those ToQger figures were nice, but they only did red, blue, and green.)

@@MMPRtoys I was really hoping that with Hasbro, they'd be more open to including more heroines and female monsters (as there's a few I want like Queen Bansheera, Elsa, Necrolai, etc), and its like we won't pay good money for it. Alas, I think the only way they may do it nowadays is via bundles, if that.

I'm not counting that as a Zord. But I own all of those things, so of course I've got it. It's packed somewhere in the basement, so, absent from the video this time. It's a space filler.

Oh did you actually buy that?

@@MMPRtoys yes i did. You need to be creative to place the elephant as sword and shield due to lack of connectors. Kinda -1 about it. But the fun part is that the elephant can be use as a whole arm 😂

I can't really comment on that, I think it was an easy thing to cut from the line, and things did get cancelled due to Hasbro buying the brand. We got next to nothing for 2018. I saw a good number of things that had prototypes and they just didn't happen, including my 5 inch Rita! 😭

It was a "that" pie which contained "all good things!" I don't think even Jerry knows. There was vanilla pudding. I think both peanuts and peanut butter. Graham cracker crust, I think. Oh, sprinkles! I asked him if he had to make it again, could he? He said maybe if he did it soon or he'd forget. I don't think he had an actual recipe, he just made it up. Maybe a little odd, but I liked it.

I'm not sure what you mean here. What was too expensive for less plastic..?

Which...?

Cephalazord.

@@satellizard346 Oh, yeah, and they did recolor the Blizzar Force, entirely (and the Ptera that always came with that...) I just don't know what the conversation at Bandai was with that specific Zord.

I'm not sure I'm that far off from sprinkles on my pizza. Two of my favorite foods! If sprinkles on a pizza is good enough for a ninja turtle, it's good enough for me!

I have a 5 inch Pegasus Megazord which does have the elephant. I want to say there was a non-transforming Wild Force Megazord with the sword/shield Elephant that was exclusive to the UK. I'm trying to find an image of it and it's like the thing never existed! The only image I found says it was 5 inch, but I thought it was bigger... but, either way, there were a few ways to get some type of elephant, just not a DX transforming one, unfortunately. Not sure what the elephant's deal was, even in Japan it was difficult to get. It took me nearly a year to find a seller that had one and wasn't a fortune even back then (and I think I still paid over $100 for it).

@@MMPRtoys that will be the megazord your describing I defo have it I can't remember how big it was but elephant was decent sized just, didn't realise it was UK exclusive but makes sense I think it was a UK toys r us exclusive. Sadly I don't think I've looked after it but I still have it in a bucket of wild force stuff somewhere when I find it IL send photos. But yeah around those seasons UK did miss the last wave some times we never got the jungle sword. We did get all megazords surpassingly cos some times we missed out on a zord like no omega megazord for lightspeed, no titanium morpher, rescue blaster, titanium laser, rescue bird, quantum defender. I remember the Luna cue was toys r us exclusive here.

One of Jerry's favorite colors too. He loves his purple and orange.

What, I just needed a fork... for my mystery pie! 😇

@@MMPRtoys hmmmmm😂😂😂

Knowing how Bandai generally thinks, I would say they wouldn't have wanted to do that b/c it was not compatible with that set. If a kid only bought Predazord, the elephant would be kinda useless to them. Another thing I didn't know then that I learned when we started meeting with Bandai was price points and how retailers can kinda dictate what they want to sell. Bandai originally wanted to make a much larger Titano Charge Megazord, but I believe Walmart (if not also Toys R Us?) said they wanted something the same size and price point as the other Megazords, they were happy with those. So, Titano Charge was small b/c of the stores it was being sold in. Toys R Us was also not a fan of Legacy Titanus. It was a large heavy expensive box that was just sitting there. So back to Predazord, it would have been an incompatible Zord that would have also raised the price of the set. If Wild Force was the 2015 season, I know I would have begged them to put the elephant in with the DX Red Lion. Maybe they would have done that if enough people said they wanted it. That sorta goes against what I said above, but in that case you're likely buying the lion to make the Pegasus Megazord, and for that you'd want the elephant too. Another idea is a more expensive Toys R Us exclusive Wild Force Megazord set that included the elephant. Well, or doing something closer to Gao Knight. Same problem in Dino Thunder. Another Zord raises the price. I actually did buy a Japanese set though where they did exactly that.

@@MMPRtoys I only picked Predazord out of how it was just the three, granted, one of those three is also most of the bulk of it, so compatibility with the Elephant Zord was only half on the mind, or in truth, I simply forgot Elephant is moulded for regular Shark & Tiger, so Hammerhead & Wolf can't use it. But I do kind of look at seasons of Sentai that have yet to be adaptaed and that I've fan-adapted, and wonder which would be that one megazord that wouldn't maybe make it over. For my Kiramager for example, I can easily see it being Smog Jouki, since it's a villain Zord, more with my fan-adaptation giving it to a Ranger who fills the role and spot of Yodonna, I imagine it'd at least be made an exclusive somewhere to at least meet the demand for it.