An Interesting Toyline from the '90s: Sonic Ranger by Soma

 Hey everyone! How's it going? I'm doing pretty well. I had a pretty awesome weekend as I got to spend most of Saturday with Brad, away from the house. Which was great. I'm not here to talk about that though. Instead I'm here to talk about a toyline of which I had six figures of. I haven't actually been able to find any info about them or the company that produced them, but I would like to share my memories of them because they're toys that I played with alot when I was a kid. So let's get into it.

In August 1993 Mighty Morphin Power Rangers debuted on Fox Kids in the United States and on YTV and Global in Canada. Accompanying the show was a toyline that debuted around the time the series began. Naturally the popularity of Power Rangers seeded numerous knock-off/rip-off toylines from various companies.

One of those knock-offs/rip-offs was called Sonic Rangers by Soma. Again, I can't find any information on the toyline, except for a YouTube video that shows off several figures from the line, which aside from the ones I had when I was a kid, mainly consisted of small PVC/Vinyl figures that more resembled Power Rangers by way of Transformers due to their designs. The ones I had, which are pictured above, were the larger figures that came with accessories, similar to how the Power Rangers figures came with accessories. Their design makes them look like a cross between Power Rangers and RoboCop. Which is cool. So which ones did I have? Let's find out shall we?

The first Sonic Ranger figure I got was the Red Ranger. I don't remember whether or not I got it unopened or loose, but I do remember it had all three of it's accessories, which, as you can see from the image, are a shield, a sword, which is possibly a laser sword according to the artwork on the packaging, a shield, and a gun/laser pistol/blaster, though the figure didn't have a holster included for the pistol. Which is odd, considering most figures that came with pistols in the '90s had holsters attached to them. The coolest feature is when you press the button on the belt buckle his visor lights up green. Of course, I didn't know any better, so I actually thought I was getting a Power Rangers figure, even though the iconic toyline and Bandai logos weren't anywhere on the packaging. But, considering Bandai wasn't the only company making Power Rangers merchandise at the time, I don't remember noticing the absence of the Bandai logo. 

 The next figure I got was the Blue Ranger. The reason I remember that the next figure I got was the blue one is because I got it while I was in the hospital for something. These figures came out in 1994 so it could've been any number of things that I'd been admitted to the hospital for as 1993 to 1996 were the last years that I would be admitted to the hospital for anything really serious until early 2003 when I was admitted for kidney failure. But that's a story for another time. Aside from the colour of the figure the only difference between it and the red one is that it's visor lights up red, instead of green, when you pressed the button on the belt buckle.

I don't remember for sure, but I think I got green, black, yellow, and white at the same time. Nana got them at a garage sale or something like if I remember correctly. There really isn't anything unique about these figures. They were simply the same figure repainted the individual colours without any kind of indication on the helmets or elsewhere on the costumes that they were supposed to be different. Especially because they all came with the same sword/shield/pistol accessories. But we had all six.

When we got all six, my siblings and I took them outside to be our outdoor "Power Rangers". And we used them as Power Rangers since I only had the Red Ranger, Black Ranger, and Green Ranger figures and the rule was if we took a toy outside to play with, it couldn't be played with in the house. So we kept them in an empty (and cleaned out) ice cream tub with the labels removed since we had so many figures in general. The only time we didn't use those tubs for our figures was when we had carrying cases for them as I did for my Ninja Turtles, Star Wars, and Star Trek figures, or if they could fit in our larger toy boxes. Even though there was no Pink Ranger with this line, we pretended that the White Ranger was the Pink Ranger, and kept the pretending to the Ranger colours for the first season of the show (red, black, blue, yellow, pink, and green).

So what spurred this post is that a few years ago, my buddies at Fandom Knight did an episode of the Sentai Review that focused on the knock-off toylines that came out of Power Rangers and the Sonic Ranger line wasn't mentioned. And I remembered they existed because I remember having them but I don't remember if they're still packed away in a box somewhere or if we got rid of them. Aside from the Red Ranger and the Blue Ranger, I didn't get these figures in package and we hadn't kept the packaging for the Red or Blue Rangers and I didn't remember the name of the toys. So I did a search on Google Images just after the podcast episode in question had come out. And I finally came across the figures. Not right away because I came across the smaller PVC/Vinyl figures first. But on the package that I saw in the images, I recognized the artwork, and took note of the name. So I typed the name of the toys into Google Images and hit the search button. Sure enough images of the figures that I had had in the '90s popped up and I promptly shared an image of either the Black Ranger or the Green Ranger on the Facebook page for the Sentai Review as I'd commented on their YouTube video that I remembered having a few knock-off Power Ranger figures but didn't know what they were called and I was excited to share my findings.

Alrighty folks, that's going to be it for me for today. I will be back at some point this week with more posts, but I wanted to talk about these figures as I'd been thinking of them today for some reason. So until then have a wonderful evening and I will talk to you all later. Take care.