Here are all 6 Spaceballs in-hand. I know what people are thinking: "WHADDAFACK THEY DONT DO DA PLANET AND ANIMAL FACE GIMMICK THEY RUINED MUH SENTAI HOLY GRAIL". Now it's been a while since I watched Cosmic Fury, but I believe that they had the colored balls on their own for their morphers and barely showcased the animal faces on said balls apart from the stock footage, so why complain about something they did in their way apart from the cliche "bastardized adaptation" trope we've heard this fandom rinse and repeat. I bet people would still complain about how the Kyutama would be handled if we had a true Kyuuranger adaptation. At least these have some nice metallic paint to simulate the clear plastic details, though these are not as impressive as the keys that came with the Dino Fury Zords.
Here are all of the Zords in-hand. I never cared about these Zords for looking far too toyish and goofy like with some recent PR/Sentai mecha designs. I get the whole motif on making the Zords turn into spaceships of some capacity, but they end up looking more like kiddy rides you'd find themed after lesser-known Toku shows not made by Sentai or Rider. Out of the lot, the Swordfish Zord at least feels the most recent out of the bunch, though apart from the Lion Zord, all four of them suffer from having the noticeable one-cheek bubble butt look thanks to where the spaceballs go.
The Cosmic Lion Zord continues a small trend of making a main Ranger Zord be red, a lion, and form the torso. It might be the strongest one out of the set, but it still comes across more like a half-baked Lego ship with how blocky and non-descript it comes across. Apart from the face and the claws, the lion theme is mostly swallowed up by a space shape. I get that PLEX wanted to keep the humanoid frame as intact as possible because of the gimmicks, but would it have hurt them to try making this a more aerodynamic? Sure, some Zords don't offer much in their proportions, like the Pterodactyl from MMPR or SWAT Flyer 3 from SPD, but at least they are still recognizable as either a beast or a vehicle. This feels like it's trying to recreate the Megaforce Zords but with less effort in balancing out vehicular and animalistic themes; not all of them were perfect but they did a better job than with this overall. The back of the upper arms should be grey, but I don't know how much of an improvement it would be other than matching the Sentai toy, visually.
As for the Cosmic Shark Zord, I have to ask what's wrong with calling this a swordfish? We've had one in Samurai that was named as such, and while sharks may be the more popular sea creatures by comparison, what makes this shark-like to begin with? It'd be like calling a semi truck a car when they each have specific traits beyond their roles as ground vehicles. I could see this one working well as a spaceship, though the bulbous backside does make its proportions somewhat off. Without it, you could pretend this is like a droid tri-fighter. Also remember when people thought we weren't going to get a Kyuuranger adaptation because of Yellow's helmet? Idk if that is debunked but the solution of making custom suits was at least a helpful idea without skipping a Sentai season, regardless of how the new suits turned out (neat idea but so plain in execution imo). It could use a little more color break up on the front, though.
The Cosmic Chameleo Zord may not be as proportionate as the one we got in Jungle Fury, but at least it does retain the tongue gimmick from the Japanese version. Personally, I'd argue that there is some form of novelty from how it's shaped if you were to pretend this was a vacuum droid rather than a normal Zord. Hell, that spaceball could work as a sack holding the trash. It could use the copper near the nose, though.
As for the Wolf Zord, can I say that I really like that Billy got to use it in reference to the days he used to ride the Ninja Wolf Zord? It may not be as sleek and organic-looking as that, but at least it is a neat idea. Sadly, it suffers the most from being predominantly colored in a sort of cheap gray, and I feel that maybe painting the Zords up with silver could at least reduce some of the woes that revolve around the overall set? On the bright side, he has rolling wheels and can rotate his head as well as open the jaw. One other thing I want to mention: in spite of having legs, it still flies around like a spaceship in a goofy ass way like the Autobots in Transformers Energon when they're in their altmodes, and I'm referring to the ones who turn into ground vehicles (even some Decepticons were guilty of that).
And finally, we have the Bison Zord. It also suffers from having the cheap grey plastic, but at least the mostly black body hides that compromise. It poses the same as the wolf, though he could use some extra black for the snout and red circles on the treads. Again, wheels are a nice touch, but it also flies in the air like most ground vehicles Transformers in Energon lmao.
The combination is very simple, especially with big gaps that make it easy to tell what goes where to make room for all those colorful craters. It almost feels too much like a baby's first Megazord, though be warned that the clips could break like many Kyoryuger Mecha did from a decade before Cosmic Fury. The resulting Megazord mode looks...poofy. I get what they're going for, and I have seen how athletic the Super Mini-Pla could be (more on that later, mark my words), but I can't help but look at how stumpy and chunky this feels. It definitely has that super kid-friendly chunkitude with how basic and slapped on everything is, almost comparable to most Mecha from Zyuohger but with less Minecraft. It's almost like it's sole purpose is the light-up gimmick and nothing else, even with the articulation that is somewhat there. I also don't like how much the forearms stick forward from the rest of the arms, almost like they should go in more.
The head feels almost incomplete with the face plate's lack of silver paint, and that is what I mean when the cheap gray look affects the Megazord's aesthetics. Sure, it's buried under the rest of the head, but at least a little bit of paint would have went a long way. Articulation only consists of a neck swivel, waist swivel, and shoulder rotation. That's it. Now, I know the average Sentai fan would look at this and think "Muh Sentai accuracy reeeeee", so what else can this Megazord do?
I mean...you could swap the limbs? In spite of the awkward proportions this makes, at least you retain some of the play value the original Kyuurenoh featured. Sadly, we did not get any more Cosmic Zords for even further combinations and limb swaps, leaving this as far as it can go, right?
Well, to make up for that, the set also gets a base of sorts to stand on. We have the Zord Link ports on the base meant for the feet, and while Hasbro left it as this unpainted marbly grey plastic, at least the sculpted details are decent. It is pretty cheap, however.
The other Zords can attach to the base while the red and extra gold spaceball can go on the shins with extra Zord Link blocks to serve as the feet. We also get little forearms to pull out from the shoulders, and this is the alternate non-show configuration we get. It almost feels reminiscent of the Thunderbird Assault Team with the Red Dragon in its warrior mode, but only as a mode Hasbro made solely for the toy. I guess this is a neat idea for extra play value, but I can't help but ask if all of this is worth $70 when it was first announced? The answer is no. $70 for this is extremely absurd, especially when it does less than prior Hasbro Megazords as we'll get to.
I know people are going to say "erm ackshully Kyuurenoh is the superior toy and you should buy it and Sentai good and Hasbro bad ☝️🤓", but while the Sentai version could be argued as "better", I did not want to buy slightly more for a Mecha design I hated. It's looks like a basic-effort design that they came up with and went "oh we'll make it light up and nobody would give a shit on how stupid it looks". Sure, it has the gimmicks and extra Zords, but would I care about those if they're just as uneventful as this? Probably not.
For a comparison with the Beast-X Megazord, you could see a massive size difference on top of how much more proportionate Hasbro made it compared to the Go-Busters version. In spite of how wobbly and loose the parts are, at least it adds to the original Japanese version rather than continue the trend of Bandai America's budget.
And here we have a size comparison with the Dino Fury Megazord in its Warrior Formation. While not all of the Zords were created as equally (Tricera and Ankylo), they at least made up for it with their sculpted details and better quality than what the Rangers got in their final season.
Now why should people compare the Hasbro Megazords instead of the Bandai Japan toy? Because of one reason: articulation. The Racer and Champion Zords both have neck movement, traditional shoulder rotation, outward arm movement, rotation and bend at the elbows, hips, and knees; Racer has a waist swivel while Champion has wrist rotation and even ball-jointed ankles. We even saw the ZAP Megazords do even better with their articulation! Admittedly, their 2020 Dino Megazord was rather meh, but at least the price you'd pay for all 3 Zords wasn't as bad as the Cosmic Zords; plus, they still added waist rotation, thigh rotation, and even more arm movement than on prior mainline versions. These two should be the gold standards for Hasbro Megazords, and the Cosmic Fury Megazord ends up being a failure by comparison.
Overall, it's common to hear people look at the Cosmic Fury Megazord and think it automatically sucks and is nowhere near the godly Sentai version. And while the Toku fandom continued acting like Spax3's shitty review on the equally shitty Sonic Genesis GBA port, I felt it made more sense expecting better from this Megazord set considering we had a good direction with engineering for Beast Morphers and Dino Fury. I want to look into the whole behind-the-scenes process that went down with this set, both in terms of engineering, pricing, and plans for more Cosmic Fury stuff; there was no way this was all we would get in terms of Zords. Not only that, but why would Hasbro not do an upscaled Super Mini-Pla with better joints and ditch the Zord Link gimmick? If Hasbro cared about "toy design" like what they said about the suits, why not do the same for the rest of the line? Jfc there are so many missed opportunities for the Cosmic Fury line, and I don't even like to agree with the Sentai purists that think in a vacuum and assume they were right the whole time but I just have to ask WHAT HAPPENED?! Again, people could easily convince me that Kyuurenoh is better, but I said what I said on the overall design. At the end, a Megazord made of Christmas globes is nothing worth gassing up or shitting over when both versions are lame for different reasons. I'm happy I got this for a low price on Amazon (probably $40-50), but you're better off finding an unsold Dino Fury Zord and giving it a new home in your collection.
Final ranking: ⭐⭐ out of ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ (at full price)
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