Power Rangers Reviews: Introduction

 Hey everyone! How's it going? Are you all having a good weekend? I am. Today I'm here to talk about my plans for a series of Power Rangers reviews that I've decided to do. This is something that I've wanted to do for a really long time, but never could until now because I've never had access to every season of the show before. But between Hasbro starting to upload complete seasons to YouTube as they've done with The Transformers and, possibly, G.I. Joe, and owning many seasons on DVD I've decided that now would be a great time to begin this series of reviews as the franchise has just celebrated it's 29th Anniversary 8 days ago, and next year is it's 30th Anniversary. This introduction will serve as a bit of an overview of the franchise as a whole as well as my personal history with the franchise So let's get into it.

Power Rangers is one of those franchises that, despite it having declined in popularity since it's debut as Mighty Morphin Power Rangers 1993, still has a very strong fanbase stemming from the fact that so many kids watched the original show when they were growing up in the '90s. I was one of those kids, which I'll get into a little later.

Based on the super popular Super Sentai series from Japan, Mighty Morphin Power Rangers debuted on August 28th, 1993 on the Fox Kids Network alongside shows like Batman: The Animated Series and X-Men: The Animated Series, both of which had debuted on the network the year before. And it was popular immediately. In fact it was so popular that aside from it's toyline, which was selling out all over the place, the series ended up having...

...video games....

...multiple comic book series that continue to this day....

...and three movies across many decades. After nine and a half seasons, Saban Entertainment, who had produced the series under creator Haim Saban, sold it's assets to the Walt Disney Company, which included the entire Power Rangers library. So beginning in 2002 with the back end of season 10, Power Rangers Wild Force, Power Rangers was produced by Disney, and aired on ABC's children's programming block, ABC Kids. Which made for some...interesting choices being made, which I'll get into more when I talk about those seasons of the show. But it was clear that Power Rangers wasn't Disney's top priority as they ended up canceling the series in 2009 after the final season produced by Disney, Power Rangers RPM. After putting out a 32 episode "remastered" version of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, Disney sold the franchise back to Saban, who began producing the show again with 2011's Power Rangers Samurai.

However, it wasn't entirely a joyful occasion as Nickelodeon agreed to air the show and so the series saw a decrease in the number of episodes per season, from 32, which was already a decrease from the 40 episodes the series had per season in the later years of it's run on Fox Kids, to 22 episodes per season, which was Nickelodeon's maximum limit for the number of episodes per season for a series airing on it's network. But even though each season would now be split into two, the decision to name the second seasons of the Neo-Saban Era (the umbrella term for the Nickelodeon years) Super Samurai, Super Megaforce, Dino Super Charge, and Super Ninja Steel was not received well by fans. Not to mention most of the shows didn't warrant the name change. But, again, I'll get into that when I cover those seasons sometime next year, as I have many other seasons, as well as movies and comic books, to get to before I get to those seasons. 

In 2018 Bandai America, who had produced toys for Power Rangers since 1993, announced they were backing away from the franchise altogether and that Hasbro would be taking over. But then not long after that Hasbro announced they had bought the entire franchise from Saban and announced plans to rejuvenate the franchise after it's stagnation at the hands of Saban and Nickelodeon. They had to adjust those plans due to the pandemic, but from what I've seen of Power Rangers Beast Morphers (2019-2020) and what I've heard other people say about Power Rangers Dino Fury (2021-2022) the TV show has gotten better since Hasbro took over full production of it in 2019.

My history with Power Rangers is probably just as complicated as the history of the franchise itself is. I originally discovered Mighty Morphin Power Rangers in early 1994 when I turned on the TV to Global and the late season 1 episode, "To Flea or Not to Flea" was on. I don't know why I was sucked in, but I was and I loved the show. I primarily watched it on Global, since we were in the log house at that point and didn't have cable. But I was still staying in the hospital quite a bit so I would also watch it on YTV, along with reruns of Batman (1966-1968). Once season 2 came around in late 1994, YTV had taken the show off the air, and so Global was the only place I could watch season 2, and then they removed it from there schedule sometime between seasons 2 and 3 in 1995.

After getting back into it at the end of Mighty Morphin Alien Rangers, the mini-series that bridged MMPR and Power Rangers Zeo (1996) as we moved to a house where we could get cable, and could watch Fox Kids, I kept up with Power Rangers again until midway through season 5, Power Rangers Turbo (1997), and then saw an episode or two of season 6, Power Rangers In Space (1998). After that I didn't get back into the franchise until late 2002, after Disney had taken over the franchise and the 10th Anniversary episode of season 10, Power Rangers Wild Force (2002), "Forever Red" which saw the return of Jason David Frank as Tommy Oliver and Austin St. John as Jason, the original Red Ranger, had aired. After that I watched season 11, Power Rangers Ninja Storm (2003), all the way through on Family Channel, which also aired reruns of season 8, Power Rangers Lightspeed Rescue (2000), which I caught up on. Then I watched season 12, Power Rangers Dino Thunder (2004) all the way through because Jason David Frank was back as Tommy as a main character.

After that, beginning with season 13, Power Rangers SPD (2005), I would watch at least one episode from the next few seasons, season 14, Power Rangers Mystic Force (2006), season 15, Power Rangers Operation Overdrive (2007), season 16, Power Rangers Jungle Fury (2008), and season 17, Power Rangers RPM (2009). I watched all of them on ABC Kids as by this point Family Channel had less of the Disney content that had been the mainstay of the channel since it's inception in 1988. Naturally when season 0 (originally season 18), Mighty Morphin Power Rangers (2010) came on, I watched it because it was the series that started it all and the one I'd seen the most of up to that point.

While Power Rangers returned to YTV with season 18, Power Rangers Samurai (2011), I didn't have much of a way to watch it because YTV had moved to a different channel here, one we didn't get. But it came back in time for season 19, Power Rangers Super Samurai (2012). From there I watched the two anniversary seasons, season 20, Power Rangers Megaforce (2013) and season 21, Power Rangers Super Megaforce (2014) because they were anniversary seasons and it had been announced that Jason David Frank would be donning the Green Ranger suit once again as Tommy Oliver for the season finale of Super Megaforce. For season 22, Power Rangers Dino Charge (2015), season 23, Power Rangers Dino Super Charge (2016), season 24, Power Rangers Ninja Steel (2017), and season 25, Power Rangers Super Ninja Steel (2018) I went back to watching one episode per season. 

When season 26, Power Rangers Beast Morphers Season 1 (2019) dropped on Netflix, I watched the first chunk of episodes, but shortly before season 27, Power Rangers Beast Morphers Season 2 (2020) dropped, we got rid of Netflix, so I not only didn't get to watch the rest of Beast Morphers Season 1, but I missed Beast Morphers Season 2, and season 28, Power Rangers Dino Fury Season 1 (2021) and season 29, Power Rangers Dino Fury Season 2 (2022), which is currently still to drop the second half of the season on Netflix. With Hasbro putting full seasons up on the official Power Rangers YouTube channel, I'm hoping that all 29 seasons thus far, with season 30, Power Rangers Cosmic Fury (2023) set to drop on Netflix early next year, will all be on YouTube by the time the 30th Anniversary comes around next year when it comes time for me to get to the most recent seasons particularly Beast Morphers and Dino Fury as neither series have DVD releases, though Beast Morphers is on iTunes for me to buy if necessary. So we shall see. In the meantime I have access to every season up to SPD between DVDs and YouTube.

I also had the novelization of the MMPR season 1 episode, "Clean-Up Club", retitled Megazord to the Rescue for the novelization. I don't have it anymore so I won't be taking a look at it individually. But I wanted to mention it here anyway.

Before I go I'm just gonna go over quickly how I'm going about these reviews. Particularly when it comes to multi-season shows like Mighty Morphin, Beast Morphers, and Dino Fury because they're all treated as the same series even with an extra season or two. And unlike the Neo-Saban era shows, like Samurai and Megaforce, the seasons themselves don't have different promo posters. I am going to do separate season reviews for each multi-season show and for the ones that don't have individual posters for each season, I'll just use the series key art that's available on IMDB and the Power Rangers Wiki. I'm also gonna dive into the three movies and as many of the comic books that I own in between seasons too, though I haven't worked out whether I'm going to review the comics in series overview style or if I'm gonna go issue by issue, or in the case of the more recent comics, arc by arc. We'll see though.

I'm also gonna be reviewing the early pitch video that Saban made as it's included as an easter egg on the bonus features discs in the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Complete Series DVD boxset, AND the original pilot episode that aired as the "Lost Episode" during a break for Power Rangers Lost Galaxy in 1999. That's been on YouTube forever, so I can find it no problem.

I apologize to the people who aren't Power Rangers fans and come to this blog, but Power Rangers is one of my passions and the 2023 30th Anniversary of one of my favourite franchises of all time is the perfect opportunity to dive into said franchise. So join me tomorrow for the review of the original pitch video that Haim Saban made for Galaxy Rangers, which was one of the first titles they came up for the show before it turned into Power Rangers. Generally I'm going to be putting these reviews out every six to seven days, depending on how many episodes I watch per night. So until then have a wonderful night and I will talk to you all later. Take care.