'93 Mighty Morphin Power Rangers Morpher Restoration Project.

The next time I do a blog, somebody remind me to take more pictures, kay? LOL, anyways, welcome to a new blog about a recent project I undertook. Awhile back while I was cleaning, I found my original '93 Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers Morpher. It had a lot of good memories so I held onto it. Recently, I learned of people undertaking restoration projects to not only fix the look of their Morpher, but also make it more TV accurate. 

So, I read. I spent weeks researching, reading other people's blogs, seeing how it came apart, what type of paint to use, etc etc. Couple weeks ago, I finally decided to undertake the project.

I forgot to take a picture, but mine was in pretty much the same condition. The black stickers were peeling and the red had faded somewhat and there were various nicks to the paint. Only difference was that my speaker (the disc in the middle behind the red plastic) was out of its round holder.

The one major problem I had to fix was the sticker placements when I replaced them later. 

The TV show Morpher, both in Japan and in America, the handle and the buttons were at the bottom, but Bandi America for some reason decided to have it at the top. It's a easy fix, just got to turn it upside down and place the new stickers on correctly. That however, is later on after I get all the painting done.

The first thing I did was remove the silver plates. Once those were off (again, I didn't think to photograph this process), I found that the red plastic had two screws. I removed those and carefully pulled up on the red plastic because the wiring is old and I didn't want to damage it any, I just wanted to fix the placement of the disc. After carefully maneuvering it into place, I gently replaced the red plastic and after making sure it was aligned properly I screwed it back down. I then took a q-tip and some rubbing alcohol and cleaned the red plastic itself as it had some dirt and dust built up from over the years.

The next step; sanding. I acquired a sanding block because I thought it would be a lot easier to use instead of sandpaper. It took me about an hour, but I managed to sand away the paint, any nicks, and any leftover sticker residue.

To the left is the plate I sanded, to the right is the one I haven't done yet, but did take the time to remove the stickers first.

I then started on the second one and found it just as easy.

The plates after sanding, I test fitted them back onto the morpher to make sure I didn't warp them while I was holding them and sanding. Yes, I know there's still silver around he edges, but every photo I found on the web on painting this thing they had the same lines, so I figured it was okay.

From here, I realized that I needed to go ahead and order new stickers. Thanks to the various blogs, I found a site that was recreating the stickers for the Morpher, in various styles. The original, TV show recreation, and the original Japan Zyuranger version. I opted to recreate the TV show, so that's what I ordered.

Next I had to figure out how to paint these evenly. In one blog I read, the gentlemen used hot glue and skewers to hold up his plates during plating. I didn't really want to go this far, because I was afraid I wasn't going to be able to get the glue off. So instead I took a couple tooth picks, cut the tips off, and stuck them into the mounting holes on the back side of the plates, once I stuck them into a cardboard container it was as good as any stand and I didn't have to alter the plates any to do it. Again, I forgot to take pictures :-/.

So after setting them up, I went about painting them. I did both the front and the back. The first one turned out wonderfully and after I let the paint cure for a couple of days next to my heater (I wanted to be sure) I decided to go ahead and sticker it up since the stickers came in.

Shiny.

The second one though, something went wrong... not sure what but there was runs and a couple bad spots. So I sanded it down again and tried painting it again on the next nice day I had.

This time, I had another problem, some kinda runny wrinkle effect. After asking on my page what to do, because I didn't want to sand it down again and ruin it, I set about trying to find something to take the paint off but without damaging the plastic. 

Somebody suggested paint thinner, but all that did was move the paint around. I was going to try paint remover, but before I tried it, I googled it and it turns out paint remover will eat through plastic. Knowing my luck, I would ruin it, so I said no to that. I then spent the next hour in google and to my surprise I found several sites saying that oil based paints can be removed with rubbing alcohol. I had my doubts, but I decided to give it a shot, I had nothing to lose after all.

To my utter shock, the paint actually came off. It didn't just come off, it practically slid off. So I was back to what I had originally sanded down and was happy I could start again. However, it was several attempts later and a couple of rewashes before I finally got a coat on that I was happy with.

Awesome.

Once I let it cure for a bit, I went ahead and got it all stickered up.

Niceeeee.

I wasn't done yet though. I took both halfs of the plates outside and cleared coated them to make sure the stickers don't peel and to help protect them. After I let the clear coat cure, I put everything back together.

Ah, but something's missing. I lost the original coins that go with this. Kind of pointless doing all of this work just to not have a coin in it huh? So I loaded up ebay, there's a seller on there selling metal replicas of the original coins. I managed to find these weathered ones that looked awesome and I bought those, I managed to get four out of seven, figured that'd be good enough for now.

Which one to pick though was the question. I decided to go with my favorite color blue, so I picked the triceratops coin.

Thus, the project is done. It was pretty fun while it lasted, and now I have my original morpher restored like new again and I'm going to proudly hang on to it. Eventually I might acquire another Morpher and repaint it gold and get the Dragon and Tiger coins, but that's another day! 

I hope you enjoyed reading about this project as much as I enjoyed doing it and writing about it. Hopefully I have inspired you to do some kind of creative project of your own. If I have, share it with me on my page! I love seeing stuff people come up with.

Until next time folks, same Nerd time, same Nerd channel!