Review: Power Rangers Serpentera

There's a big problem with Power Rangers toys, specifically the megazords. Be it Mighty Morphin or Samurai it's always the good guys whom you can buy a giant robot for. But the whole point of the zords is to fight bad guys and there are never any large-scale bad guys released, so the question is who are the zords supposed to fight?

We usually settle for dinosaurs. There are a couple of T-Rexs in our house which are around the same size as the zords so they have to suffice. But it'd be nice, just for once, to have a proper large villain for the Power Rangers to fight.

Once.

This turns out to be the amount of times a large villain has actually been released by Bandai. The toy was Lord Zedd's Serpentera and my eldest just received him for Christmas.

First appearing in the Mighty Morphin series, Serpentera was HUGE, dwarfing the 'good guy' zords. While not quite in the same scale as this, the toy version is a good deal taller than the various other zords we own. On this it is pure Win.

In many other (arguably all) ways, however, it is a little lacking. Usually the Megazords are made up from a number of smaller zords, giving them a Transformers-like play mode. Not Serpentera. It does transform, in a way, but it is more akin to 'standing up' and lacks a little in the excitement department. I mean, yes, you get to pull out his shoulder pads, but that's not really the height of entertainment.

I found it strange, given it's large size and thus ample chest cavity, that it's completely devoid of electronics. No lights, no sounds, no walking motion - any of which would have livened up the toy no end.

No, the best you get is an articulated jaw and some shoulder pads. Considering this is the only baddy zord from 18+ years of Power Rangers it's a little disappointing. But it is BIG, has some pretty vac-metal bits and finally gives our Power Rangers something to fight against. So it's not all bad.