Review by SentaiSeiya

With the 20th anniversary for Power Rangers around the bend, Saban is introducing the American adaptation of Tensou Sentai Goseiger. The new Power Rangers series, known as Power Rangers Megaforce, has not yet aired. The show not being on, however, did not stop Bandai from stocking the toys from this series at Toy R Us around the United States before the Holiday 2012 season.

The first Megazord for Megaforce is known as the Gosei Great Megazord. The name of the Megazord is most likely connected to two original characters, by the names of Tensou and Gosei, who will be appearing in Megaforce. This is a obviosly a nod from Saban to the source material for Megaforce.

The Gosei Great Megazord comes packaged in a pretty decent looking window box.

The back of the box shows the Megazord, some of the upgrades for it, and also some Bandai of America only combinations that use the vehicles in the line. I never quite understood the appeal of the vehicle/Zord combinations. Since they never appear in the show, it begs to ask what is driving the sales of these toy-exclusive combinations (which often look pretty rediculous).

The Gosei Great Megazord comes in a nice plastic tray with the headders packaged seperately from the bodies of the Zords. This is to show off the fifteen connection points for the headders. The only two that cannot be seen from the front are the ones on the shoulders of Gosei Great. Here is the team of Zords out of the package and ready for action! The black Zord is a snake that comes to life when the headder connects to a train. The segments of the body do bend thanks to the joints connecting them. Unlike the Japanese version of this toy, this Zord's segments can only move in one direction. to the left of the body. The snake has some wheels, albeit cheapy ones, to allow the toy to roll. The biggest Zord is the red one, a dragon that comes to life when the headder combines with a jet liner. This mecha has never looked like a dragon to me. If anything the design is closer to a parrot or some other bird than a dragon. Once again, some wheels on the bottom. The wings on this Zord can fold up and back, which is the best articulation that any of the Zords have. The yellow Zord is a tiger that comes to life when the headder combines with a bulldozer. The yellow Zord also has wheels. The white and pink Zord for the pink Ranger is a phoenix, that comes to life when a headder attaches to a jet fighter. This is another one where the design does not look anything like the creature that inspired it. It fails to capture the majesty of the mythical immortal phoenix. The blue Zord is a shark that comes to life when the headder attaches to a submarine. Overall, the paint apps for the Zords are competent. You get enough colors to make the paint scheme an approximation of the one in the series, which I think most kids are going to dig. When you look at it through the eyes a collector, however, a lot of the finer details of the Bandai of Japan version are missing- such as the green on cockpits of the mecha and the windows on the train, the black lines on the headder crest on the waist of the Megazord, and the claws on the dragon . Meanwhile other paint jobs are done halfway: none of the headders have their faces fully painted, only the top half of the dragon’s wings are painted in gold, and the face of the Megazord is missing part of its black outline. Another major color difference is that the connection points on the Zords are the color of the mecha, rather than all of them being black like the BOJ version. Also, upon even closer inspection, I noticed several flaws with the paint apps that did exist. Some of the silver paint for the beak of the dragon ended up on its chin. The silver on the neck of the phonix is uneven on each side of the seam. Not only does the gold on the jets of the shark go past the lines, but there are also some speck of gold on the arms of the jets. The transformation for the Gosei Great is so easy a kid could do it! Which, I think is the whole point. The segments on the snake fold to the left to form the right leg, waist, and the upper part of the left leg. The lion forms the rest of the leg. The heads on both the snake and lion pop up to form the feet. These are not locked into place by a locking mechanism, as was the case with the Japanese release of this toy. The head of the Dragon pops into the body and the tail is removed to form the sword and head (which is embedded in the tail). Then the tail panels for the shark fold out to form the right hand. The wings on the phoenix fold down to form the other hand. Then all that is left to do is attach the head to the connection point on the top of the Dragon and pop the sword into one of the hands. That is it; a very basic transformation. It differs from the transformation of the Japanese version in a couple of ways. The landing gear on the phoenix and shark are molded into place on this version, so there is no need to fold them away for the transformation. The other major difference in the transformation process is the fact that the neck for the dragon does not detach like it does for the Japanese version. This segment of the neck becomes the bottom piece of the sword, which is completely absent in the American release. For what it is, the Gosei Great looks pretty good standing on a shelf fully combined; when viewed from the front and sides at least. The back, however, is another story as this is composed of many of the sides of the Zords which have the visible screws. I personally think it looks pretty tacky having so many screws visible from the back, but then again I bet most kids won’t even give thought to the aesthetics of the back The articulation of the legs and arms is limited to only the arms being able to move up and down. That is pretty much par for the course with this type of toy. The wings can also be rotated and folded in Megazord mode. Although this may be inaccurate to the show, folding up the wings can help this toy take up less shelf space. One of the gimmicks for Gosei Great is the headder system, which allows the heads of the Zord to connect on any of the connection points of the mecha. This presents the possibility of cusomizing the look of the Megazord, in a limited way, that can grow with the addition of other Zords from the line. Placing all of the headders on the wings of the Gosei Great Megazord looks neat. It leaves the mecha foot-less, however, and will require some fiddling in order to get a good footing to keep the Megazord upright. Nevertheless, there is still some fun to be had with the customization aspect of being able to jumble the headders on the Megzord. Another big aspect of the Goseiger series, which was transferred to Megaforce, is the use of trading cards to summon Zords, weapons, and use attacks. Included with the Gosei Great Megazord are two trading cards: the Gosei Great Megazord and Gosei Ground Megazord cards. These cards are the localized versions of their Dice-O card game counterparts. The Dice-O card game is a game that was designed for Goseiger. In Japan, the Dice-O cards could be used at Dice-O machine in arcades . Here in the States, however, we are not so lucky, as the once prosperous arcade industry has all but vanished. Instead, Bandai developed an app for IOS and Android devices to interact with the cards. The app on the smarthphone uses the camera to scan the cards. I just wanted to note that you do not have to use the physical copy of the card to scan it. As I found out, you can just find a picture of it online and scan it off your screen. I had to resort to using the photos that I shot of the cards because I misplaced the cards while shooting this review. When you scan the card, or a picture of the card, it will give you a short low-budget animation sequence representing the attack of the card. This is followed by a number, from one to six, which is used to figure out how much damage the attack of the card has done. This is a neat, yet overcomplicated version of rolling a six-sided dice to figure out how the effect of the card will play out. For a while now, I have wanted to find out what the Dice-O game was all about , but was too lazy to look for translated rules or bother importing the cards from Japan. Now that the Dice-O cards are getting an English version, I may just collect some of the cards and spend a few hours learning the intricacies of the game. That is pretty much it for the Gosei Great Megazord. Overall, for the retail price of this toy, I think it is a pretty good value. Will it satisfy the adult collector who has to have the definitive version of the Gosei Great? No. However, However, the target audience is the less discerning crowd, comprised of kids and Power Ranger fans who actually like buying the Bandai of America releases. As for me, I liked it enough that perhaps one day I will pick up the Bandai of Japan version to replace this guy. Until then, the Gosei Great Megazord is a great placeholder for a mecha design that has grown one me. Were it not for the complete lack of love I have for the Goseiger, I would have already gotten the Bandai of Japan version.



