You are now reading part one of the 34th Dimension's very first feature, the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: Super Special Feature +. The "plus" stands for quantity.
If you were a kid back in the early '90s, you probably spent your Saturday mornings like I did: glued to the TeeVee watching shows like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, X-Men, The Real Ghostbusters and, if you were lucky, Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog. But there was one show that came along in 1993 that totally blew everything else away. That show was Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, and it was awesome.
For the uninitiated and stupid, MMPR was about a group of high school students with attitude who became tasked by a giant floating head and his robotic love slave/assistant to save the world from an evil, interstellar hobo/sorceress who woke up after 10,000 years in a space dumpster. That's right, a space dumpster. I couldn't make this up if I tried, and I did not. While writing this entire article.
So, the teens are given special powers drawn from the dinosaurs—granted, only two of them were actual dinos—which allow them to morph into the Power Rangers: an elite team of super heroes with sweet, colour-coded costumes and matching robotic vehicles called Dinozords. In times of peril, these Zords could be fused together and transformed into the Megazord, which would be used to kick all kinds of ass.
Here's a brief rundown on each of the original five Rangers:
Jason Lee Scott
(Austin St. John)
The Red Power Ranger and leader of the team, Jason's powers come from the Tyrannosaurus. He is an expert in martial arts and making others feel inadequate about themselves. Seriously, just look at those biceps.
Jason was the Ranger that all the kiddos wanted to be. He was cool, tough and everyone knew that he got all kinds of ass. In a show where humans interact with intergalactic aliens, "all kinds of ass" takes on whole new possibilities.
Zack Taylor
(Walter Emanuel Jones)
Everyone may assume Zack is just the token black character/Ranger, and he basically is because it was the '90s and we were all just starting to figure out how to not be racist. But did you know that he's also the second in command? I literally just found that out while I was writing this. How's that for progressive race relations?
Zack has the power of the Mastodon, which is like a slightly goofed-up looking Mammoth, and he fights using a combination of martial arts and hip-hop dancing which he calls hip-hop-kido. Okay, I guess MMPR wasn't that progressive after all.
There was a big controversy at the time over the Black Ranger being portrayed by an African-American, but I personally didn't care about any of that because I was only seven years old. I was also the Black Ranger for Halloween that year, which means that I'm racially tolerant.
Billy Cranston
(David Yost)
Billy is the Blue Ranger and holds the power of the Triceratops (the only true dinosaur on the team besides Tyrannosaurus). He's the tech-geek of the group and is responsible for creating the communication/teleportation watches they all wear.
A true testament to geeks everywhere, if Billy were a real person in today's world he would probably be reading this article right now while simultaneously writing programs in machine code to track his stats in World of Warcraft and downloading 80 gigs of Japanese tentacle porn. It has also been suggested to me that he would be a billionaire CEO of a Fortune 500 company, if you can believe something so outrageous.
Billy Cranston: we salute you and your 80 gigs of tento-porn.
Trini Kwan
(Thuy Trang)
Trini is the Yellow Ranger, which as a kid I never realized was also racially colour-coded because apparently someone decided that Asians are yellow? I... just don't see it, and I watched a lot of Simpsons as a kid. I'm pretty sure I know what yellow people look like.
There isn't much to say about her. She's pretty boring compared to the other Rangers and is commonly referred to as "the other female Ranger." Except in the original Japanese series that Power Rangers lifted most of its footage from, the yellow ranger was a dude so maayyybe she has a penis?
She did have the Sabertooth Tiger Dinozord, which is pretty cool. Also, the girl I had a crush on in second grade (I was also in second grade, so it's cool) always wanted to be Trini whenever we'd play Power Rangers during recess. So I guess you win this round, Asia. Well played.
Kimberly Ann Hart
(Amy Jo Johnson)
Last but certainly not least we have Kimberly, aka: the Pink Ranger, aka: The Hot One. There wasn't a straight guy in my second grade class who didn't have a crush on her. In fact, a recent Internet survey concluded that Amy Jo Johnson is the hottest person in the world. Ever. Don't ask me for sources because I don't have any. It's common knowledge that, if you disagree, you're probably a homosexual. Not that there's anything wrong with that. You're the one who's suddenly upset because you found out you're gay. That's your own prejudice and has nothing to do with me.
Kimberly had the power of the Pterodactyl and a cute skirt. She is also my girlfriend and we make out ALL THE TIME.
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