Cones for days!

May 10, 2016 8:05 AM

Every single monster on the original Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers, ranked.
posted by numaner (12 comments total)

Aye yi yi yi yi!
posted by Fizz at 8:32 AM on May 10, 2016 [2 favorites]

Scorpina should be #1.

That is all.
posted by ELF Radio at 8:38 AM on May 10, 2016

Crabby Cabbie got robbed. You just don't see enough exhausted/"exhausted" (like, weaponized vehicle emissions) jokes in contemporary children's programming. Puddy Patrollers also should have been WAY higher or WAY lower, depending on how charitably you saw their "bloobloobloobloo" leitmotif. I don't actually have an opinion about which they should be, but it's an insult to the genre to have them lurking around the 55th percentile. These are ravings that only a man who ranked Goldar outside the top ten could produce.

Slightly related: I did not realize until just now that the 90's had a signature guitar lick, and it was the theme song to this terrible show.
posted by Mayor West at 9:02 AM on May 10, 2016 [1 favorite]

I'm sorry, list, but the fact that Goldar is not in the top 5 is a mistake, the fact that he's not in the top 10 makes your list seriously questionable, but that he's not even in the top 20 is enough for me to throw it out completely. It should be like, Scorpina #2 and Goldar #4. (I don't know why I have such strong emotions about this, I haven't thought about this show in at least 12 years).
posted by Neronomius at 9:48 AM on May 10, 2016 [1 favorite]

So they're making a Power Rangers movie, eh?

I was too old for this show when it came out and just found it hilariously bad and really weird. I am curious to know if the younger kids also found it at all odd, with the wild arm gestures and poses and the voice dubbing etc
posted by Hoopo at 10:47 AM on May 10, 2016

I am also too old for the show - I was 18 when the first season hit, so I found it to be somewhere between MST3K and just-plain-embarrassing. BUT, I do like various Japanese nostalgia sci-fi products, like Kamen Rider and Gamera and the like. I even watched Ultraman in syndication on our oddball channel growing up. So, the seed was there...

Just two weeks ago, I decided I should watch the lightest, most frivolous thing I could think of as my last media of the night, for a new de-stressing routine I am developing. Netflix now has every season of Power Rangers. I thought "hmm... I wonder what these newer seasons are like..." and looked up a list of recommended seasons. "Ninja Storm" was listed as the most humorous and willing to laugh at itself. Okay, "Ninja Storm" it is... Not bad! I'm not sure what value of good it would have, but it does have a Maori guy as the lead, plus a girl as a main character. I love low-tech special effects if they're imaginative and the show seem to have that as well. The costume design for the rangers in Ninja Storm is sharp, too, in my opinion.

Then I am at a retro video game and toy store in town and see some Power Rangers in baggies on the wall. I thought "Let's see if I can find some wacky kaiju here..." Reader, I found something better! A yellow female ranger with a sabertooth tiger helmet! If there's anything my six-year-old loves, it's big cats! Next is classic monsters, and then is girl heroes. Rarely do I more closely hit the bullseye on buying her random toys than on that purchase! She loved it. It's apparently the Yellow Ranger from the Power Rangers movie.

I haven't introduced her to the show yet. I think she might really like it, but it also might bring on a real bout of "hitty hands." I'd love to hear from MeFites who grew up with the show.
posted by Slothrop at 11:03 AM on May 10, 2016 [3 favorites]

So this show was basically my first real American tv franchise that I obsessed over. My little 10-y/o Vietnamese self just had to watch it first thing after school every day. I identified with Trini because I think she might have been one of the few (if not the only) Asian actors on children's shows at the time. But I thought Zack was just the coolest because African Americans were basically a very novel idea to me then, and the only exposures I had were American movies with exaggerated black characters that my family would occasionally watched in Vietnam (think most Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone movies). So this black teenager who was dancing and bobbin' like other teenagers I've seen around town was just the coolest. Then there was Billy who wore glasses all the time like I do (I totally enjoyed the one episode where he was basically half blind for most of it because a Putty Patrol broke his glasses).

And of course the Zords were just the about the most awesome thing. That red T-Rex were the stuff of dreams.

Then when I went through puberty, I definitely saw Amy Jo Johnson in a uh.. different perspective. (Nothing against Trini, but she looked like a lot of Vietnamese girls I knew, so Kimberly was... special).
posted by numaner at 12:05 PM on May 10, 2016 [1 favorite]

I'd love to hear from MeFites who grew up with the show.

It was a really cool concept and show that turned into "oh, dang, another rerun?" very, very quickly. Seriously, I swear my local TV station just airedthe same 5 or 10 episodes over and over for what seemed like a year. Everyone I knew of the age that the show was marketed to grew tired of that crappy manuver really fast.

It was a shame too, now that I recall it did seem to feature a somewhat varied and multicultural crew doing cool stuff together.
posted by RolandOfEld at 1:25 PM on May 10, 2016 [1 favorite]

IIRC, because I came to America in '94, I actually started the show with season 2, where Lord Zedd came to power. I was still pretty new to American TV so I was more hooked by the monster-of-the-week aspect and didn't really get any plot continuity. When I understood that concept more, with regard to seasons and reruns (it was actually my mom getting hooked on Full House that taught me, because you can see the Olsen twins getting older), I was less confused when reruns of season 1 showed only Rita, and then it went into how Zedd was released. Then eventually the Green Ranger / Tommy storyline came and my budding teenage mind was so ready for something new, it was super exciting.
posted by numaner at 2:38 PM on May 10, 2016

I was 9-10 for Power Rangers, and it was a legit phenomenon. It aired at 7:00 in the morning, before school, and all the kids in fourth and fifth grade made sure to watch before school, so we could talk about it all morning. A bunch of preteens suddenly became morning people because of this crappy show. Even the putties were kind of cool, because they were like these rock hard bad guys and it seemed like fist fighting rock hard dudes would be rough going.

Except Bulk and Skull. Fuck those guys.
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 3:32 PM on May 10, 2016 [1 favorite]

I love that the tombstone guy's (Doomstone!) costume doesn't even make an attempt at a name on the tombstone. I guess it could be Michael as put through a very drunk casesar cypher.
posted by the uncomplicated soups of my childhood at 6:33 PM on May 10, 2016

What's the classic ratings booster? A wedding!

The Mighty Morphin' wedding was between Rita Repulsa and Lord Zed (#1 and #13) with many of the others in attendance.

(My, um, kids liked to watch it).
posted by eye of newt at 12:02 AM on May 11, 2016 [1 favorite]