Morphenomenal: How the Power Rangers Took Over the World - Softcover

Moore, Joshua

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1493081616 ISBN 13: 9781493081615

Publisher: Applause, 2025

Synopsis

When it first appeared on American television sets in 1993, Mighty Morphin Power Rangers was like nothing else on TV. The brainchild of Israeli music producer Haim Saban, the show stitched together segments from the Japanese children’s program Super Sentai with newly recorded live footage, and its unexpected popularity quickly anchored Fox’s daytime programming block and further cemented the network as a innovative pop-culture powerhouse. Garish, heartfelt, utterly strange, and bursting with irrepressible energy, the show was a dramatic departure from the animated fare that dominated children’s programming at the time, and came closer than any program before it to being a “live-action” cartoon. Three decades later, Power Rangers is a pop-culture icon and a billion-dollar franchise. The show regularly premiered episodes on U.S. networks through December 2021, after which streaming juggernaut Netflix brought new airings under the “exclusive” umbrella on its platform. Netflix and Hasbro, current rights-holder of the Power Rangers brand, also announced in late 2021 the development of a Power Rangers TV and film “universe” spearheaded by Jonathan Entwistle, whose dramedy series The End of the F***ing World won a Peabody Award and British Academy Television Award for Best Drama Series. Power Rangers, it seems, is trying to grow up.

About this title

About the Author

Joshua Moore has been a fan of Power Rangers since it began airing in 1993, according to his mother. (He was two years old when it premiered). Over the last decade he has written about sports, business, the COVID-19 pandemic, movies, video games, and Power Rangers for the Lexington Herald-Leader and other media, including popular fan site Ranger Command Power Hour. A marketer, freelance journalist, and broadcaster, he also runs Ranger Reader, a newsletter about Power Rangers.

From the Back Cover

The unlikely story of how Power Rangers went from a children’s TV oddity to a billion-dollar multimedia empire.

Edition details

• Publisher: Applause
• Publication date: 2025
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1493081616
• ISBN 13: 9781493081615
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 230