At last, after 10,00 years, she’s free! Well, maybe not 10,00 years, but it sure feels like a while. The original Mighty Morphin Power Rangers villain Rita Repulsa rarely sees toy form. And when she has, in the past, renditions have usually featured generic likenesses that don’t really resemble any specific person. It’s possible there were legal issues — unlike the masked Rangers, recast in the U.S., the unmasked Rita initially remained the same actress from Kyōryū Sentai Zyuranger (before being recast domestically in season 2). Hasbro‘s reps wouldn’t answer questions about the likeness issues when I asked them last Comic-Con, but the company appears to have cleared everything up. It helps that they own they entirety of Power Rangers outright now.
The bad news for diligent collectors of the Lightning Series of collector figures…is having to re-buy Lord Zedd to get Rita. Now, Zedd is an extremely cool figure, who made our ten best list for last year. But a little bit of new silver deco on his chest, as reported by io9, may not be enough of a variant for some people.
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Rita and Zedd’s two-pack derives from the second-season marriage of Rita to Zedd, who had at that point supplanted her as the primary villain. The set includes a green crystal, love potion, and wedding cake. Rita features a fabric dress and her signature staff to “Grow monster grow!” We can’t say for sure if the actress likeness is authentic to Carla Perez, who played her from season 2 onward. But it looks pretty close.
The Rita-Zedd wedding 2-pack should hit stores by the end of summer. We expect to see them used as nerdy wedding cake toppers thereafter. Let us know what you think in comments.
