Geki Touja Toy Review

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Darien_Shields
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Geki Touja Toy Review

Post by Darien_Shields »

I posted a review of Magiking a quite while ago and it seemed to go down pretty well. Recently I've bought a few sentai mech toys off of eBay, so I thought I'd have a bash at some more reviews again. If you guys don't like the written version, I've seen a good video review of it on youtube by Baltmatrix. I meant to add some pictures but I don't know where they've gone... I might add them again and edit them in later if I can find them.

Geki Touja DX Review

Disclaimer: The version I have is actually the Power Rangers Jungle Fury European release, I think it's called the Jungle Max Megazord or something. However, to my knowledge the Japanese and Western releases of this are essentially identical.

Appearance:

Geki Touja is a pretty striking figure for a couple of reasons; one, he's a fair bit bigger and heavier than the other sentai mechs I've bought, and two, he has a very sharp colour scheme. The toy is a division of the three primary colours and black, with a couple of silver highlights. It's simple and light on paint apps (which is one of the reasons it's identical to the Japanese release), and the result is a very aesthetically pleasing toy. On top of that it's more shapely, with well proportioned sculpted arms, a clear chest, waist, hips and legs. He looks good on the shelf.

Individual Modes:

Geki Touja is made up of Geki Tiger, Geki Jaguar and Geki Cheetah. Tiger makes up all of the mech except for the lower legs. In tiger form it's pretty disappointing. The front half is half decent, with the nicely sculpted head and two arms ending in claws. Beyond that, though, you've got two very stubby hind legs, a ramrod straight and incredibly narrow tail, and worst of all the huge black battery pack stuck to his rump.

Geki Jaguar and Geki Cheetah are broadly identical and generally more pleasing than Tiger. I had expected these to be about the same size as one of the leg pieces on Dekaranger Robo, but they're both actually a fair bit chunkier- appropriately enough for a 3-man sentai. Both have a fair deal of poseability, including mouths and necks, although their hind legs can only fold backwards.They have a couple of distinct qualities between them; for some reason Jaguar has sun glasses (never noticed this in the show), and Cheetah has a joint between the neck and the head, although her neck cannot move as far forwards. Overall they look better and have more options than the tiger.

Gimmick:

The toy's main gimmick is a motor that lets it spin either its upper body or its lower body for a spinning punch or tornado kick. Personally I got pretty tired of this in the show, and in the toy I popped the batteries in for all of five minutes before taking them out again. The gimmick isn't bad, but it isn't my cup of tea. That said, as a result of the spinning gimmick the toy has a much greater amount of movement in the arms, as well as a swivel joint in the torso. This practically doubles the toy's poseability (from "not much" all the way to "a little"). The big downside is the battery pack, which I complained about earlier.This seems like a really clumsy addition that gets in the way of the legs and does nothing for the figure visually. I guess there's no space inside the figure's torso due to all the motor parts, but the external battery pack is a royal pain. You'll notice that this is the biggest discrepency between the toy and the show; in the show (and minipla toy) the black part is much, much smaller.

Recommendation;
I found this for about £15 on eBay, and it was very much worth the money to me as a sentai fan. If you liked Gekiranger, the toy looks very show accurate and, as I said before, its colours work really well together to make a good looking toy. If you're more familiar with Transformers and are thinking of branching into sentai, Touja still has a lot of poseability problems and lacks the complexity to make up for it, so I'd go for something else as a starter, MagiKing if you can get it. But it's a solid toy, and I loved Gekiranger to bits, so for me it's a real winner.

Oh, also, I heard a rumour that the Japanese version had lights in the fists, but I heard another rumour saying this feature was dropped. The western version that I have definitely does not have lights in the fists, but can anyone confirm whether the Japanese version does or doesn't?
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