It's morphin' time! Well, it's Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers time, given that the first episode premiered today back in 1993. So why not follow us on a journey through this article we were nice enough to throw together for you, where we shall detail the origins and success of the show!
So it all started back in the 80s when Haim Saban of Saban Entertainment was on holiday in Japan, and he happened to catch this weird show on TV called Super Sentai, which featured a bunch of multi-coloured heroes in bodysuits and sweet bike helmets fighting oversized monsters of the week in giant mech suits. Super Sentai was fairly popular in Japan, for the obvious reasons I just outlined in the previous sentence, and Saban saw this show as something that could easily be marketed to a Western audience.
Surprisingly though, what followed was almost a decade of shopping around the idea of an American Super Sentai, which at the time was named Dino Rangers, featured Zords named Droids, and Zordon having the name Zoltar. Despite the fairly budget-friendly method Saban suggested of simply filming American scenes to revolve around the original Sentai fight scenes, nobody in the TV industry was biting, that was until Saban met Margaret Loesch of Fox Children's Network. Seeing potential in what was an incredibly exciting premise that would fit in just right with other children's entertainment at the time, she greenlit the show.
On a side note, even before Loesch quite literally saved the Power Rangers, back in Japan the Super Sentai had someone to thank for their own success - Spiderman. See the company producing Super Sentai, Toei, were also producing their own Japanese Spiderman TV show, and a lot of the ideas that we love about Sentai/Rangers, such as the big monster fights and whatnot were actually lifted from Spiderman and incorporated into Sentai, which was a couple of seasons in by that point and needed something to give it some oomph, just in time for Saban to stumble upon it in his hotel room.
So that's the history of how the idea of the Power Rangers came to be, but let's now take a look now at how it all came together for the first day of shooting. First up there's the cast, all of whom were chosen due to certain talents they each possessed, with each cast member having experience in either martial arts or acrobatics, an essential talent they would need for the many fight scenes they would have to shoot to tie the American footage to the original Japanese shots. One particular stand out of the cast was Walter Jones (Zack/Black Ranger), who created his own improvised fighting technique which borrowed from Brazilian Capoeira, which the rest of the cast dubbed "Hip Hop Kido". Even more impressively, Jones never rehearsed his fight scenes, and would simply wing it on the day, having maybe one quick test run before shooting started.
The cast's familiarity with complex physical requirements also meant that they generally did all of their own stunts too, which meant their work was not only gruelling but dangerous too, and yet despite this it is claimed they were paid as little as $600 a week for their efforts. The show's villain Rita Repulsa, portrayed by Barbara Goodson, also did't fare much better behind the cameras. She had originally got her role by trying her hand at a Wicked Witch of the West impersonation at the request of the producers, however as production loomed closer they took a U-Turn on that portrayal and fired her, telling her if she wanted the part still she'd have to audition again. Goodson was incredibly pissed about this and repurposed that anger into her audition to create a more snarky and intimidating Rita, and for that she once again landed the part.
Further woes for the cast came from their own behaviours towards one another behind the scenes, which in some cases was far from mighty. It is common knowledge that Austin St. John and Jason David Frank (Jason/Red Ranger and Tommy/Green Ranger) were not fans of each other whatsoever off camera which led to some tensions on set, however in later years they became closer and more like their on-screen counterparts. Most disgraceful of all though, David Yost (Billy/Blue Ranger) has stated in interviews that he was often teased and straight up bullied multiple times on set due to his sexuality, which resulted in him walking away from the show after finishing Power Rangers Zeo in 1996.
Finally in regards to the cast, Amy Jo Johnson (Kimberly/Pink Ranger) and Yost once caught on fire when a pyrotechnic effect malfunctioned, Jones was missing his middle finger on his left hand from an accident he had as a kid, and Zordon's actor David Fielding only recorded video footage for a single day, meaning in later episodes they just had to try and sync up the archived footage with his new audio lines. Interestingly too, only the pink ranger wore a skirt to indicate her as female despite both herself and the yellow ranger both being females - which was due to the fact that in Sentai, the yellow ranger is male. So now you know.
So despite homophobia, setting cast members on fire, and everything in between, the show aired its first episode Day of the Dumpster at 7:30am on a week day on the 28th August 1993, and despite this less than favourable airtime it managed to beat out the hugely popular Batman Animated Series in the ratings within two weeks, eventually robbing it of its far better time slot. The first season's popularity only grew with each episode, and by the time season two rolled around Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers was graced with a prime time slot, which was hugely unusual at the time for a children's show.
The popularity also led to a live show touring the states, a crossover episode with the Ninja Turtles, an abundance of merchandising, and two Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers Karate Club VHS tapes were released, led by Jason David Frank due to his martial arts expertise. On the topic of Frank, because of how the show's plot was written around the story seen in Sentai, the green ranger was originally supposed to only be present in a few episode, as the green ranger in Sentai dies fairly early on in the show - however after demands from fans for his return, he was written back into Power Rangers.
So to close us out, here's a few final little fun facts for you - the composer of the theme song Ron Wasserman wrote the song in just two hours, the original series is the longest running incarnation of the Power Rangers franchise with a three year lifespan, The Command Centre was also used in Marilyn Manson's video for The Dope Show, and the character Skull has the numbers 24601 tattooed on his chest, which is a reference to Jean Valjean's prison number in Les Miserables, as well as the prison number of both Skinner and Sideshow Bob in The Simpsons, and Hank Jennings in Twin Peaks.
Happy birthday, Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers!
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