There's a lot of high-end (i.e. cost) collectible toys on the market at the moment, aimed at now-grown 80s and 90s kids who have a nostalgia-hole to fill, preferably with stuff 'as they remember it', rather than 'as it actually was'. As police will tell you, people's memories aren't very reliable and they tend to look on the past with rose-tinted glasses, not remembering, for example, how inaccurate to their TV screen counterparts a lot of old toys were.
Titanus forms the third and final part of the Super-dooper Megazord (*may not be official name) from the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. He's kind of like a big brachiosaurus, but with with an even larger body, some teeny tiny legs and, well, thinking about it, Titanus doesn't have too much in common with a brachiosaurs besides the long neck. But never mind.
There were a whole bunch of things 'wrong' with the original toy, but most kids probably didn't care too much. Adults, however, are much more critical and want the increased details that a toy costing over £100 ought to have. And Legacy Titanus has them all in spades.
Gone are the stickers, everything is now either sculpted & painted on or a factory-applied decal that definitely isn't going to peel off. It really is a beautiful-looking beast. The neck, once a solid piece, is now ball jointed all the way down, making it extremely flexible and poseable. The tail is still solid, but then it's designed to turn into some rather massive guns, so this is to be expected.
There's no battery-activated movement here and instead relies on the (probably) more play-friendly 'manual pushing' to get him from A to B. Rather nicely, his little front feet move up and down as the wheels move. Even better is that the front wheels have rubber tyres. Rubber! Most awesome indeed.
The front feet feature the only metal bits on the whole toy but do give it a nice bit of weight. Although there is a bit draw back to this that we'll get onto later on.
Generally, however, Titanus is an excellent toy with little (nothing?) to fault. It's overpriced, but then you'll be used to this if you've bought the Megazord and Dragonzord (which you almost certainly have if you're interest in this).
So why did I day this was a toy of two halves? Where comes the dreaded 'but'? Never fear, it's almost here...
The big gimmick of Titanus - if not all Power Rangers vehicles - is that it combines with other things to make a bigger (often ridiculous-looking) bigger thing. Titanus, of course, combined with the Megazord and Dragonzord to form the...(goes to look it up)...Ultrazord!
And it's here that it all falls apart.
It's not really Titanus's fault, more the fault of someone who didn't, or perhaps couldn't, have all three zords together when designing them. It's well known that Megazord struggles to hold the weight of Dragonzord (and it's great metal feet) on its shoulders. Adding Titanus just makes matters worse. And it's all going to be stood on a free-wheeling base.
Titanus does come with clips to support the knees of Megazord, but under the weight of Dragonzord's feet plus the weight of Titanus's metal feet (that clip onto Megazord's arms) these simply shot off sideways. Maybe if they'd encompassed the entirety of the joint, instead of simply slid on, they'd have been more successful but you'd still have the toppling-over problem resulting from balance problems. The only way round this I see would be to have either dropped all the metal from the toys, or add loads of it to the Triceratops and Sabre-tooth Tiger who have to support everything.
Whilst something that everyone who owns these toys is definitely going to try out, I would not recommend displaying them in this combined mode as toppling is inevitable. Besides, they all look so much better stood separately. As you can tell from the photos, I didn't attempt to take nice exterior shots of these, just sat them on a table and pressed the button on my camera really quickly.
If you like Titanus as, well, Titanus then you're not going to be disappointed with this toy (yes, it's a toy and despite the age recommendation on the box is perfectly suitable for kids to play with), indeed it's likely to far exceed your expectations. If you're more interested in Titanus for its Ultrazord-making abilities then, well, if you already have Dragonzord then you'll already be well aware of the problems. There isn't a solution or alternative, however, so this is the only way you'll be able to make the Ultrazord, however unstable it may be.
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