The Power Rangers Dragonzord is going to Kickstarter, not stores
Playmates couldn’t find a retailer willing to stock the combinable Dragonzord, so the 10-inch Zord goes to crowdfunding on August 18. The company loses its Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles license four months after that.
Playmates Toys is putting the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers Combinable Dragonzord on Kickstarter, with the campaign going live August 18.
The Green Ranger’s Zord is the piece fans have been asking about since the Re-Ignition line launched in Fall 2025 with five combinable Dinozords and no Dragonzord to go with them. Retailers would not take it.
Playmates says the campaign is the only way to get one for the foreseeable future.
What the Re-Ignition Dragonzord actually is
The figure stands close to 10 inches. Missile-launching hands, a drill-spinning tail, articulation at the hips and shoulders.
It combines with the Re-Ignition Dinozords already on shelves, which is the part that matters to anybody who bought the first five. That gets you Dragonzord Battle Mode and the Mega Dragonzord.
One caution worth having before August 18. The images circulating are early renders, and Trojan told ComicBook.com in late July that the grey computer models are the closest thing to the real product, with a painted master roughly three weeks out at that point.
Some collectors on TokuNation have been vocal about wanting to see a physical prototype before pledging.
Why Playmates went to Kickstarter instead of retail
Jeff Trojan, Playmates’ VP of marketing, gave the fullest answer in that ComicBook interview, and it is a plain description of how the toy aisle works.
Shelf space gets fought over between competing brands first, then between a company’s own products. A Zord that loses that fight can go online-only, and at that point Playmates has to decide whether the tooling money makes sense for a smaller audience.
He also dropped a hint about why the Dragonzord never made the cut in the first place: Walmart held an exclusive window on Green Ranger product last year.
Playmates spent the start of 2026 talking to partners without finding a route. So the campaign became the test. Trojan said Kickstarter lets the company find out whether the fan base is “large enough to justify the tooling expense on our largest zord yet.”
That is the correction to a detail floating around fan coverage. The Dragonzord is designed, not manufactured and shelved. If the campaign misses, the tooling never gets cut.
Tigerzord and the White Ranger, meanwhile, went to Walmart on schedule in early August. The retail pipeline works fine for the things retail wants.
Hasbro stopped making Power Rangers toys in 2024
Worth remembering who owns this brand, because it isn’t Playmates.
Hasbro bought Power Rangers in 2018 and then handed the toy business to Playmates in an April 2024 licensing deal covering every region except Asia. Hasbro kept the entertainment rights and the strategy.
That deal was not a one-off. Hasbro has been steadily farming out brands it owns to companies smaller than itself. Basic Fun! took Littlest Pet Shop and grew it into a $40 to $50 million brand, by CEO Chris Cocks‘ own accounting. Just Play and The Loyal Subjects hold licenses. Super7 has Visionaries, retro My Little Pony, and Furby collectibles.
Cocks has been open about the reasoning, though he was talking about video game studios when he put it most bluntly on the Q2 earnings call this year: Hasbro can find partners who are “people who, frankly, are better than us at it.”
Apply that to plastic and you get Power Rangers at Playmates, and a Dragonzord that Hasbro’s own retail relationships never had to carry.
The TMNT license runs out December 31
Here is the context Playmates has not connected out loud, and we are drawing the line ourselves.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles has been the company’s business since 1988. In a Hong Kong stock exchange filing last December, Playmates told shareholders the license “will not be renewed upon expiry on 31 December 2026,” with 90 days afterward to clear inventory. Renewal talks had started in October 2025, two months after Skydance closed its Paramount merger.
The same filing put TMNT at as much as 77% of annual revenue in recent years.
The numbers around it were already rough. First-half 2025 turnover came in at HK$186 million against HK$445 million the year before, a 58% drop, with gross margin on toy sales falling from 56% to 43%.
So Playmates is running its first direct-to-fan campaign roughly four months before its biggest revenue source walks out the door. Trojan said the company would consider more Kickstarters if this one mobilizes enough people.
He framed the campaign as putting the Dragonzord’s fate in the hands of fans. That is accurate, and it is also a company with a hole coming in its books finding out how many of those hands are out there.
Article compiled and edited by Derek Gibbs (entertainment editor) and the Clownfish TV newsroom.
D/REZZED is part of Clownfish TV. For more news, views, and rants on gaming, tech, and pop culture, visit clownfishtv.com. Watch the show on YouTube at @ClownfishTV where new episodes drop daily. Subscribe to the Clownfish TV podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart, and wherever else you get your podcasts. Sign up for the free newsletter at more.clownfishtv.com.
Hat Tips:
ComicBook.com, Matthew Aguilar (July 25, 2026), verified for the exclusive Jeff Trojan interview covering the shelf-space explanation, the Walmart Green Ranger exclusive window, the tooling-expense reasoning, the render-versus-paint-master question, the stretch goals, the Tigerzord Walmart rollout, and the openness to future campaigns
Playmates Toys, Kickstarter pre-launch page (accessed August 15, 2026), verified for the campaign’s existence, the Re-Ignition branding, and its pre-launch status
Playmates Toys, Stock Exchange of Hong Kong filing (December 23, 2025), verified for the TMNT non-renewal language, the December 31, 2026 expiry, the 90-day sell-through window, the October 2025 start of renewal talks, and the revenue-share figure
Playmates Toys 2025 interim results announcement (August 15, 2025), verified for the HK$186 million first-half turnover, the 58% year-over-year decline, and the gross margin drop
Hasbro newsroom (April 22, 2024), verified for the original Power Rangers licensing agreement, the excluded-Asia territory, the product categories, and Hasbro retaining entertainment rights
The Toy Book (October 2025 and August 2026), verified for Chris Cocks on the Basic Fun! Littlest Pet Shop performance, the named outbound licensees, and the partner-strategy quote from the Q2 2026 earnings call
TokuNation, Chris (July 18, 2026), verified for the original Toy Fair explanation on the Dragonzord’s retail situation and the community reaction