Power Rangers

When Power Rangers exploded onto the scene in 1993 it became a global phenomenon. Sold out toy shelves, live appearances, and merchandising galore. It was the hottest property since Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles in the ’80s. It’s no surprise Saban wanted to ride the bandwagon they created and in turn they (and others) developed several shows to ride the coattails of Power Rangers, referred to by fans as “Ameri-Toku” series.

We’ll be examining each of these in depth in an upcoming series of articles, why they worked, why they didn’t, and why none of them seemed to catch on and stick around likePower Rangers has for over twenty years. For now though, we’ll be ranking all of them, including Power Rangers, from worst to best!

8. Kamen Rider Dragon Knight

That tagline is the biggest lie in the history of ever. The second adaption of the popular Japanese franchise on our native soil had a ton of ambition. Too bad that ambition was to try and be “cool and sunglasses” for it’s intended audience of thirteen year old boys. There’s no other explanation for the show’s obsession with fights and lingering shots of girls asses. The story telling was weak and with endless recaps and three clip shows, the show barely has any actual content to digest. The story of Kit trying to find his father and then trying to save the world from General Xaviax was paper-thin at best.

I’ll give it a few points for trying to aim it’s intended audience higher than kids but the story telling ended up being more like a fan fic. Oh also, the characters consist of such wonderful personalities as an asthmatic solider who can’t stop shouting, “MARNIES!!!!!!” and Brad Barret. Who always wins. He repeats that about five hundred times.

7. Super Human Samurai Syber Squad

Would you believe a show with that silly of a name actually had the most star power out of any Ameri-Toku series? Not only did Matthew Lawrence of Mrs. Doubtfire/Boy Meets World fame star, the main villain was voiced by Nigel Thornberry himself, Tim Curry. While he was easily the best part of the show, the series itself doesn’t hold up. The footage from Japanese series Gridman is beautiful but the rest of the show just looks cheap.

With only four standing sets, plots didn’t really have any room to develop past goofy Saved by the Bell style antics. Couple that with fights being reused several times (Super Human Samurai was 53 episodes, Gridman was 39) the show is a slog to get through, especially if you try to marathon it all at once. Also, dig those ’90s fashions! Blossom style hats will be in style forever right?!?

6. Big Bad Beetleborgs/ Beetleborgs Metallix

Have you rewatched this show recently? No? Well when you do, you’ll understand why the title really should have been, “Wacky Time with the House Monsters.” Halfway through the show’s first season it quickly shifts focus from the titular Beetleborgs and instead focuses on the antics of the horror movie influenced House Monsters. While this is what the show did best, it certainly isn’t what I’m looking for in an Ameri-Toku, that being a sitcom guest starring some super heroes and villains.

When the show did focus on its main characters and gave them plots that didn’t revolve around the monsters they were pretty decent, but they’re so few and far between it just can’t hold up. It’s a show that was at odds with itself the entire run. It needed to pick what it wanted to be, although I will say it had sort of found the right balance by the time Metallixrolled around.

5. Masked Rider

With an appearance in Power Rangers third season premiere, you’d think Masked Rider would have been a slam-dunk. Well by the time the show premiered it had wiped that story from its own continuity and went for a situation comedy featuring a multi-cultural family, an evil insect force, a fish out of water alien, and a TOTALLY NOT THE INSPIRATION FOR FERBYS alien pet named Ferbus. It…well, the show happened. But despite the situation comedy aspects, the show isn’t as bad as some fans like to complain (since most haven’t seen past the first episode).

Dex’s alien nature does make for some fun gags and when we actually see him missing his home world it does play very emotional with the audience. It’s also hilarious to see them try and match Dex actor TJ Roberts with stock footage from Kamen Rider Black RX, to the point where he sometimes mysteriously turns Japanese in a few shots. It’s a sight to behold.

4. Tattooed Teenage Alien Fighters From Beverly Hills

If Masked Rider is mocked within the Ameri-Toku fandom Tattooed Teenage Alien Fighters From Beverly Hills is the punching bag. Which is a shame, because I’d actually put its story telling on par with season 1 of Power Rangers. It doesn’t have any budget to work with thanks to being the first wholly original Ameri-Toku production that didn’t utilize a Japanese series for stock footage, but unlike Super Human Samurai it actually manages some world building.

We get a picture of the universe they inhabit, and even get the plot of Power Rangers Super Megaforce recent two parter, “Silver Lining” twenty years early with the series best entry, “Universal Hitchhiker” which features a hero from a destroyed world. It’s surprisingly deep stuff for a show with such a stupid name. The show’s main characters are more fleshed out and well defined than most recent Power Rangers characters, and it’s a shame we didn’t get to see them in more situations than the five standing sets allowed.

3. Mystic Knights of Tir na Nog

Out of all the series, this is the one that least tried to copy Power Rangers and it benefited. Featuring strong storytelling, gorgeous visuals, and inspiring music, the only thing holding Mystic Knights back from success was many of its Ameri-Toku aspects. That being the transforming/toyetic aspect of the series. While most of these series lived and breathed by toy sales, Mystic Knights always seemed to have the toys as secondary to the epic story it was conveying. The mystic armor our heroes donned for fights was never as important as their personal quests and was the least memorable part of the series. It didn’t help that even with such formidable weapons as swords, bows, maces, and tridents all they ever did was shoot lasers out of them.

What the series got right, and why it ranks high on this Ameri-Toku list, is the world building. This was a series rich with fleshing out its own people on both sides and the mythology. Sure, it dubiously adapts Celtic myths but that doesn’t make it any less entertaining. It also gets bonus points for being completely original without adapting a Japanese series.

2. VR Troopers

A show clearly of its time (although with Oculus Rift on the way, maybe its time for a revial?) VR Troopers still stands head and shoulders above its competition for just being so damn fun. It’s ridiculous, our main hero is a guy who opens and closes every episode whining about how much he misses his dad. He hangs out with a computer genius, a struggling reporter, and a talking dog that sounds like Jack Nicholson. Oh yeah, they also transform into super heroes powered by Virtual Reality. Yet, all three barely fight together because the stock footage for battles was taken from three separate Japanese series. Whenever a fight would begin, the heroes would just nod to each other and head off in different directions.

That fact doesn’t take away from the enjoyment when we get such classic lines as, “Are you thirsty? Here, have some punch!” Classic.

1. Power Rangers

Here’s a question for all of you, why is Power Rangers celebrating over twenty years on air while none of these shows could crack a third season? Well, besides the ever so obvious toy sales, Power Rangers was the first. It had the lightning in a bottle. It became a pop culture phenomenon. Even if some of these shows were beating it in ratings, likeBeetleborgs, they aren’t really remembered. Power Rangers has stayed on air constantly since it’s inception, surviving two production changeovers and shifting networks. It’s a concept that works, the original “teenagers with attitude” is a beautifully simple idea that the other shows either overly complicated or just didn’t understand.

Power Rangers is also flexible as hell, the show changing around every year to be something different and yet incredibly similar. Whether it be in high school, space, traveling around the world, or from the year three thousand, it’s a show that can constantly reinvent itself, something none of the other series really had the capability to do.

The studio behind ‘The Hunger Games’ and ‘Divergent’ will be raiding different source material for their next teen movie franchise – the ‘Mighty Morphin Power Rangers’ are getting a second cinematic makeover (the first was in 1995) courtesy of Lionsgate. The Power Rangers first sprang into action on TV in 1993, but it’s unlikely any of the original cast members will be returning for the new movie. Whatever happened to the kids inside the suits? It’s almost like they were doomed from the moment they stepped into the spandex…

The Curse Of The Power Rangers

Red Ranger aka Jason Lee Scott – Austin St John

The de facto leader of the Power Rangers in the first season, martial arts expert Austin St John (real name Jason Geiger) was square-jawed, heroic and athletic – but that wasn’t enough for the show’s creators. It’s thought producers were keen to keep the show’s cast flexible, like a televisual version of ever-changing Puerto Rican pop-band Menudo, but that didn’t sit well with the existing actors. It might have been a scare tactic, but St John left the Power Rangers halfway through the second season, the official reason being a “contract and pay dispute”. He was replaced as Red Ranger by Steve Cardenas, who also played the Red Ranger in ‘Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie’. St John slipped into obscurity, and apart from the odd convention appearance, he now works as a firefighter.

Blue Ranger aka Billy Cranston – David Yost

David Yost played boffin Billy Cranston – his last name cribbed from actor Bryan Cranston, who provided voices for the show’s monsters – for four years, but all was not well off-screen. Yost revealed in a 2010 interview that he suffered at the hands of bullying from the show’s production crew over his sexual orientation, who he claims told him he “could not be a superhero” because he was homosexual. Yost quit and tried to ‘pray the gay away’ with conversion therapy for two years before having a nervous breakdown which required five weeks of psychiatric care. He has since held a range of assorted jobs in the entertainment industry.

Yellow Ranger aka Trini Kwan – Thuy Trang

Questionable colour schemes aside – they made the Asian girl the Yellow Ranger, really? – Thuy Trang never got a chance to shake off her Power Rangers persona, as she was sadly killed in a car accident in September 2001. She left the show in season two along with Austin St John and though she had roles in the likes of ‘The Crow: City Of Angels’ and ‘Spy Hard’ (incorrectly credited as a ‘masseuse’ instead of a ‘manicurist’), Trang found acting work hard to come by. Tragically, the actress was killed in California in 2001 when the car she was a passenger in lost control, hit a roadside rock-face and fell over a safety barrier. She died from her injuries on the way to the hospital. Trang’s ‘Power Rangers’ co-stars attended her funeral to pay their respects.

Black Ranger aka Zack Taylor – Walter Emanuel Jones

Jones also fell foul of contract negotiations and exited ‘Mighty Morphin Power Rangers’ mid-way through the second season due to disagreements over wages. He was replaced as the Black Ranger by Johnny Yong Bosch, but Jones did actually return to the ‘Power Rangers’ universe, albeit suffering the indignity of providing monster voices for a show he used to star in.

The actor did have a few other movie roles, including wrestling movie ‘Backyard Dogs’, which was the lowest-rated movie on IMDb for several years. Since ‘Power Rangers’, he played a zombie in ‘House Of The Dead 2’ and featured in a PetSmart commercial. How the mighty (morphin) have fallen.

Pink Ranger aka Kimberly Ann Hart – Amy Jo Johnson

Amy Jo Johnson has enjoyed the most high profile career of the ‘Power Rangers’, although given the company she shared, that’s hardly a glowing endorsement. Johnson – who played perky, preppy Kimberly – followed her stint in the Power Rangers with a role in JJ Abrams’ TV show ‘Felicity’, plus a recurring role in Canadian police procedural ‘Flashpoint’. We can’t vouch for the quality of made-for-TV movie ‘Magma: Volcanic Disaster’, nor can we espouse the values of her singing career, though Johnson has released three studio albums to date. She’s also directed an award-winning short film and will star in Piper Perabo’s cop show ‘Covert Affairs’, so maybe the curse is yet to strike…

Green Ranger aka Tommy Oliver – Jason David Frank

Baddie-turned-goodie Tommy eventually fulfilled his character arc and became the leader of the Power Rangers when he shed his Green persona and suited up as the White Ranger. Off screen, however, Jason David Frank’s career took an unexpected turn. He left the show in 1997 (returning for a tenth anniversary special) and left acting behind to focus on his career as a hardcore Christian MMA fighter. Seriously. He even set up a clothing line called ‘Jesus Didn’t Tap’. Frank has left the entertainment industry behind but still hopes to resurrect the Green Ranger with a possible feature film, sparked by an apparent conversation he had with Stan Lee at a convention. (We haven’t the heart to tell him Stan Lee probably says that to everyone). He is, however, a world record holder, for most pines broken in freefall. Which sounds a bit like falling out of a tree.

Zordon – Robert L. Manahan

The actor who provided the voice of ethereal ‘Power Rangers’ mentor Zordon wasn’t immune to the curse – he died of an aneurysm aged just 44 years old. He appeared in a whopping 75 episodes of ‘Mighty Morphin Power Rangers’ and assorted movies, booming advice from his time warp prism. A respected sound editor, Manahan’s final credit was unfortunately ‘Power Rangers In Space’, which probably didn’t make it into his eulogy.

Bulk & Skull – Paul Schrier and Jason Narvy

This might be the saddest thing we’ve ever read. Paul Schrier, who played bully Bulk, was the last original cast member to leave the show and still attends ‘Power Rangers’ conventions as you’d expect. His co-star, Jason Narvy, is another matter. Acting student Narvy received a Bachelor of Arts degree and a Masters degree and studied with the American Shakespeare Centre, where he played the title roles in ‘Henry V’ and ‘Hamlet’ among other works. He also studied at the Lee Strasberg institute (fellow attendee: Marlon Brando), is a member of the Screen Actors Guild and holds a PhD in Theater Studies from the University of California. Despite all this, he’s still best known for playing ‘Power Rangers’ bully Eugene “Skull” Skullovitch. Weep for him.