Toys with missiles bays, pointy blade weapons, guns, jets, removable armor pieces and excellent poseability makes for a super cool toy. The Liger Zero DX rocks. It's a very cool and fun figure set. I came across it almost by accident back when I still built models and was perusing the Zoids listings on Ebay when I came across a Liger Zero that said "die-cast", and then noticed the strange series numbers being "KZ". I hadn't seen any Zoids from this series before and quickly discovered to my excitement that it was also fully poseable. It kind of blew my mind. So when I did a search under Zoids KZ I found a couple of armor sets and the mother ship, a Liger Zero DX set which included all three sets of armor along with the Liger Zero. My mind was sort of blown once again. So without doing any further investigation I bought it, being a pure impulse buy. It has since then remained one of my favorite figures.
Tomy has made two attempts at making a line of Zoids figures that weren't models and were poseable. This first attempt being issued as the KZ line, and the only Zoids series with die cast content to date, seems to have been an experiment, considering that the entire line consisted of two figures and three sets of exchangeable Liger Zero armor to comprise the entire KZ line. The Liger Zero DX set was part of this first attempt at Zoids figures and included the Liger Zero and all three sets of Jager, Panzer and Schneider armor all in one package. The KZ line is arguably the best line of figures/toys in the entire Zoids twenty-plus year legacy, and for a number of reasons. First and foremost would be that they are poseable. While the surface aesthetics of the classic arsenal of Zoids mecha models have always been intriguing, the limitations of non-articulated/ non-poseable models has stood as a glaring drawback to their overall appeal. They look cool, but what are you going to do with them? And then there is the whole model building issue, which for those of us who are severely time constricted, models are not an option, which is probably the case for most people.
The Liger Zero DX is an articulation monster. The KZ line of Zoids figures have multiple points of articulation with a fair number of them being ratcheted joints and all the others being ball joints. I haven't sat down to count the number of articulation points, but I'll just say it's a lot, like somewhere in the mid twenties to thirties. There is some die cast content, but not too extensive generally. The build is solid and tight, but I have noticed that the plastic can be quite brittle on the sometimes very small pegs of the armor. This brittleness could be due to age, but I would advise exercising some caution when fitting on the armor pieces. They fit on fairly easily, but don't push too hard to get a tighter fit.
The interchangeable armor is a very appealing aspect, and intermixing different armor styles is really cool too. In a sense the interchangeable armor makes up for no transformation or gattai action. Counting the original Liger Zero armor, you actually get four different sets of armor, with roughly a dozen or so pieces to each set, so there are plenty of different combos to try. Each armor style has a unique look and character with the focus of each armor set being in different area if specialization, such as speed, guns, etc..
One thing I'll mention about this set too that I don't often address is the cool packaging. The packaging design on this is great. It's got a great energy but very streamlined as well. The art of good toy packaging seems too often to be of little concern, but Tomy really did a great job with this one.
Why the KZ series of Zoids wasn't continued, I'm not sure. It would seem to have all the neccessary elements to be a successful toy series, and considering there has always been something of a Zoids following, this should have helped also, but whatever the case, the KZ series was discontinued. You can still find individual versions of the KZ Liger Zero and the separate armor sets being sold somewhat regularly, but unfortunately the DX set is a bit on the rare side, although I still see one pop up here and there a couple times a year. I truly wish Tomy would have continued on with the KZ series so that we could have had many more of the Liger Zero armor set such as Liger Phoenix armor, Jet Falcon armor, Murasami armor, and a dozen others that have so far only been seen in model form. But then all good things must come to an end. If only it hadn't been so soon.
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