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YMMV / Power Rangers

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Franchise as a whole:

  • And You Thought It Would Fail: It took Haim Saban years to convince a network to give it a chance. It wasn't much of one, the show (which used footage and costumes from the recently-ended So Okay, It's Average Kyōryū Sentai Zyuranger) was only set to run for one short season of forty episodes. But Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers proved to be a colossal hit, and Fox Kids extended and renewed the show at the last minute (literally — they had to hurriedly alter the intended finale and it shows). Additional action footage was commissioned from Toei, with the handful of leftover monster fights being used to fill the gap until the first reels of this arrived. Power Rangers endures to this day, and has been Uncanceled multiple times. As the original "Go Go Power Rangers" theme song says:
    No one will ever take them down... the power lies on their si-i-i-i-i-iiiide!
    • Of course, that's only considering when the damn thing finally got on the air. Saban had been attempting to adapt Sentai all the way back to Bioman, seven years prior. And it was by sheer chance that it even did get picked up. After being impressed by Toei's take on Spider-Man, Stan Lee wanted to bring Super Sentai to America. Lee had a dubbed pilot of Taiyou Sentai Sun Vulcan made and tasked executive Margaret Loesch with pitching the show to networks (HBO, then young and desperate for programming, was a potential home). Despite having a previous reputation for such programs as Muppet Babies (1984), she was laughed out of buildings. Eventually, she gave up and Marvel gave back the Super Sentai adaptation rights back to Toei. Seven years later and now an executive at the fledgling Fox Kids Network (where she and Lee had teamed up again to give another rejected idea of theirs, an animated series based on the Marvel comic X-Men, a shot), Loesch meets a children's producer named Haim Saban. He demoed a few shows to Loesch from his European studio that failed to impress. She asks if he has something that's "new". Saban leaves and a few minutes comes back with a demo tape; he asks her not to laugh at it. Loesch jumps on it and gives the green light to produce the show. Even then the plug was almost pulled on Power Rangers before it even aired, but Loesch told her doubters at Fox that she had a back up if the show failed (and to convince the Fox affiliates to air the show, she cut a deal where they'd get a share of the profits from the toy sales; one can imagine they were happy to air the show once toys started flying off the shelves). The Nostalgia Critic admits that he thought this about Power Rangers... then goes on to add "And that's why I'm not in the stock market."
  • Archive Panic: The RPM finale marked a solid 700 episodes, and with two new seasons already out, and a third season going on currently, the episode count is over 800 episodes. It would take someone quite a while to watch all the episodes. Notably, James Rolfe went crazy trying to catch up with the first season alone (60 episodes!). Luckily, every season (minus the movies) is available on DVD or Netflix for binge-watching. Cut the openings and closings from your watch time, and it'll be significantly easier.
  • Ass Pull: The series is limited by the stock footage available from the Super Sentai series, meaning many of the Artifacts of Doom and Plot Coupons introduced during its run can teeter vicariously between being simply Deus Ex Machinas to full out Merchandise-Driven Ass Pulls Depending on the Writer. Some examples are worse than others.
  • Audience-Alienating Era: The series has had a few dork ages, although some of them are seen a bit kinder with time passing.
    • The specific period during Season 2 of Mighty Morphin after Jason, Zack and Trini's actors left the show, before their characters leave ("The Power Transfer (Part 2)"), because their characters were in the show but only using stock footage and while morphed using bad dubbers for their dialogue.
    • Power Rangers Turbo tried to shoehorn extremely goofy source material into a not-so-silly story (and to add insult to injury, Power Rangers RPM later showed how to do such a thing right, by running with the ridiculous aspects and mocking them in the process). Turbo also had some horrible Scrappies in the form of Justin, Dimitria, and Alpha 6.
    • The "Kallish Era" at Disney is considered a dorky time for the franchise, with an overuse of oversized explosions, over reliance on non ranger powers, problematic characterization of rangers in certain seasons, and issues in writing quality compared with what came before. Power Rangers S.P.D. was already divisive enough, but it was the next two (Power Rangers Mystic Force and Power Rangers Operation Overdrive) that really exasperated the problems in this era. So much so that the followup Power Rangers Jungle Fury was largely forgotten, though that series now gets a consistent stamp of "Underrrated" these days. It took the franchise nearly being cancelled to jolt them out of it with the very different Power Rangers RPM, but unfortunately, this was not the end of the bad times for Power Rangers.
    • The "Neo-Saban" era is generally treated as a Dork Age. Consisting of Power Rangers Samurai (and Super Samurai), Power Rangers Megaforce (and Super Megaforce) Power Rangers Dino Charge (and Dino Supercharge) and Power Rangers Ninja Steel (and Super Ninja Steel), these seasons were loaded with non-existent characters, direct copying of the Sentai without any context or sense, dialogue that was childish even by Power Rangers standards, and a slew of other problems that all came to a head in massively disappointing anniversary celebrations (Super Megaforce and "Dimensions in Danger" from Super Ninja Steel). Dino Charge, headed by former PR writer Judd Lynn, attempted to fix many of the issues fans had with the previous four seasons, but it backfired when the writing quality dropped during Dino Supercharge, which was followed by the even more derided Power Rangers Ninja Steel.
  • Broken Base:
    • Primarily over which seasons are the best/good/bad/crap.
    • Saban's decision to start skipping Sentai series - Tokumei Sentai Go-Busters became the first series to be intentionally skipped in favor of adapting Zyuden Sentai Kyoryugernote . Generally, camps can be split into 2 groups: people who are glad that Xnote  is being skipped while Ynote  is being adapted, and people who are irritated that Y is being adapted while X isn't. Although with Gobusters being adapted into Power Rangers Beast Morphers showing that Saban-er, Hasbro is not opposed to adapting sentai out of order, this may become a moot point.
  • Character Perception Evolution:
  • Complete Monster: Has its own page.
  • Ensemble Dark Horse: There's usually has one stand-out ranger per season, but there are some figures that stand out amongst the entire franchise.
    • Tommy Oliver is probably the most notable example. Starting as a character introduced halfway through the first season and using limited stock footage, Tommy's gone on to be the face of the series. Seasons will bend over backwards to include him if given the opportunity.
    • In terms of villains, the Psycho Rangers from Power Rangers in Space were popular enough to have a trope named after them. Out of them, Psycho Pink is actually fairly popular in her own right as she was the least fleshed-out in In Space but received an episode of her own in Power Rangers Lost Galaxy. Not to mention she's a Power Rangers villain that's actually killed a Ranger in battle.
    • Power Rangers Time Force is probably a standout season, and Jen Scotts is often brought up in the same breath as classic rangers for beloved characters. Usually she trumps even the original Kimberly when it comes to people's favourite Pinks.
    • Power Rangers Operation Overdrive is not one of the most fondly remembered seasons, though even haters really like the Hartford family's butler, Spencer. He serves as not only the Red Ranger's butler, a snarky one at that, but also gives the rangers some words of wisdom that help them whenever they feel down.
    • Power Rangers Samurai is held in even worse regard, but everyone appreciates the inclusion of Lauren Shiba. She's the first female Red Ranger who stays good through her run, and normally serves as the series' representative in franchise-wide events.
  • Fan Nickname:
    • The Japanese-recorded action sequences from the end of the first season (Starting with "Something Fishy" and every episode after "Crystal of Nightmares") and the first half of the second season (until "Missing Green", before they began using Dairanger monsters on the show) is dubbed Zyu2 in fan circles, due to the fact that they were recorded specifically for Mighty Morphin Power Rangers and were not from any actual Zyuranger episodes.
    • The fandom groups the various seasons by whichever company held the rights to the series at the time they were produced. Mighty Morphin through Time Force are collectively known as "The Saban Era", Ninja Storm through RPM (and possibly the 2010 Mighty Morphin reversion) are known as "The Disney Era"note , Samurai through Super Ninja Steel are known as "The Neo-Saban Era", and the fandom has already begun referring to Beast Morphers onward as "The Hasbro Era".
  • Fanon: Due to every Power Rangers series other than RPM and Dino Charge being in the same universe and the fact that many elements or other occurrences in the show aren't officially explained, this happens a lot. There's even more when one considers things that were once going to be official explanations, but were later taken out for one reason or another, such as the Lightspeed Aquabase being built from old destroyed Zords, Billy having developed the Turbo morphers during Zeo and the Great Offscreen War three thousand years ago mentioned in Lost Galaxy and Wild Force being the same event, indicating that the Galactabeasts and the Wildzords are connected.
  • First Installment Wins:
    • Mighty Morphin' was an instant hit, and became a major phenomenon, on par with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles a few years earlier and Pokémon a few years later. The sequel series couldn't possibly keep up that momentum, and Mighty Morphin' is far and away the best remembered installment, and the one that the average person is referring to when they say simply Power Rangers.
    • Within Bruce Kalish's run, SPD is pretty much the only series that has a sizable contingent of fans. After all, it boasts some of the better acting of the series, a large amount of Character Development, and Bridge Carson, one of the most eccentric characters to ever put on a Ranger uniform.
    • Subverted in regards to the Neo-Saban era, where the first entry, Samurai, was a top contender for the worst entry in the franchise for a while - and while Megaforce is now seen as worse, Samurai is still a Contested Sequel at best. In the case of the Neo-Saban era, it's third installment wins, since Dino Charge is considered the best.
  • Friendly Fandoms:
    • With fans of tokusatsu shows. While people might debate about the quality of the adaptions, a solid chunk of the western Super Sentai and Kamen Rider fans are still friendly with Power Rangers fanbase due to it being a huge gateway into the wider genre of tokusatsu, the only adaption that they really hate being Masked Rider.
    • Also with the Devil May Cry community thanks to the large number of actors who've worked for both franchises, especially Johnny Yong Bosch, Reuben Langdon and Dan Southworth.
    • Fans of Cobra Kai often like to compare the characters in that series to power rangers or assign them ranger color due to the commonality of being a show focused on teenagers, with very high school problems, who fight using martial arts on a regular basis.
  • Gateway Series: For many westerners, this introduced them to tokusatsu.
  • Girl-Show Ghetto: In the toylines, the female Rangers usually get basic action figures produced and that's it, while the boys get Environment-Specific Action Figure variations out the wazoo. With the Jungle Fury and RPM toys, Bandai America has actually created extra marketable (read: male) Rangers for the toyline to give these extras to, rather than give them to the existing female Rangers. Then again, that's less misogyny and more because girls don't sell: young boys really are the primary consumers of action figures for fighting series, and in second and third grade, owning a Pink Ranger "doll" can be hazardous to your health. Some series have made non-Yellow females a Blue or White Ranger rather than Pink, so that even if little boys don't want her action figure (because the costume will usually have a skirt on it) they can still be persuaded to buy other merchandise based on the character - her weapons, mecha, etc. Averted in the '90s. Kimberly was (and is) one of the most popular Rangers, Pink or otherwise. The Pink and Yellow Rangers were included in plenty of the merchandise, including children's clothing and the McDonald's Happy Meal toys— something that would never happen today. There was even merchandise targeted directly to girls, such as Kimberly and Trini/Aisha Barbie dolls.
  • Growing the Beard: The series began as a show where a Five-Man Band does humanitarian stuff around their school, fights the Mooks, then the Monster of the Week, and then goes back to school - Strictly Formula. Starting with Power Rangers in Space, plots became more complex and characters more human as it went on, and Card Carrying Villains were replaced (to some extent) with villains with better-defined motivations. In Space is generally used as the template to which all later seasons owe their inspiration: a strong season-long Story Arc, aggressive Character Development, some sort of romance on the side and culminating into a big Grand Finale.
    • Even before this, the initial series would probably have collapsed into obscurity without the Green Ranger and the Dragonzord. They modified the dynamic of the team (and the show) and, perhaps more importantly to Haim Saban and Bandai, sold more toys.
      • Season 2 was where the show proved it had legs. Prior to that the episodes were very formulaic (with the exception of the Green Ranger saga) and the overall mood was almost pure cheese until the genuinely scary Lord Zedd came along, starting with the destruction of the old Zords and the removal of the comical Rita Repulsa. This coincided with a noticeable boost in production quality (the actors appeared in costume with the helmets off, in addition to staging American-made fights scenes to better match the story) and the special effects jumped up in quality. Longer storylines became the norm and this got even more noticeable in season 3. Even when the show had to resort to using the suits of its source footage starting the next season to save money from all the original footage that had to be shot, the more serialized nature of the story stayed, albeit in a more limited form.
    • The series generally goes back and forth between strong periods and weaker seasons, which often results in Win Back the Crowd. Producer Bruce Kalish was known for over-using explosions and the like for his 4-year run after Dino Thunder ended. RPM was the first season in years without him, and was comparable to the series as The Dark Knight was to the Batman (1966) live action show, by fans who have seen neither.
    • Within individual seasons:
      • Power Rangers Turbo The additions of T.J., Cassie, Ashley and Carlos on-screen, with Judd Lynn taking over writing duties more-or-less concurrently. The new characters and more consistent writing gave new life to an otherwise moribund series. (After these changes, the ratings saw noteworthy improvement.) Looking back, the second half of Turbo gets a far more favorable reception than the first half.
      • Power Rangers in Space For this particular series, the major storylines and dynamics of the season, such as the characterization that makes Ecliptor a fan-favourite, really all hit their stride once Darkonda shows up. There's a lot less filler from that point on.
      • Lost Galaxy started off kind of slow and was too clearly riding the popularity of In Space. About the time the Magna Defender shows up it starts to make its own identity, especially with his Heroic Sacrifice and Mike returning to the group.
      • Ninja Storm: took a while to grow it, but when they added in the Thunder Rangers to the team permanently, or The Samurai's Journey was the point the beard finally grew in.
      • Power Rangers Samurai had a good deal of growing pains with Saban returning to produce the franchise and keep people excited about the new series. Much like the original MMPR the arrival of the Sixth Ranger, Antonio, proved to kick the series up a notch. There's also when Deker's human appearance (A bearded Rick Medina), which is also considered when the show grew into itself.
  • Hilarious in Hindsight: Reacting to the violence in Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers, New Zealand banned the show. Yet that didn't prevent Disney (and now Saban) from shooting the series there since Ninja Storm. It appears that the ban has been lifted recently as episodes of Power Rangers Samurai began airing on Nickelodeon in mid-2011.
    • Reportedly Disney was embarrassed to own the franchise (they only got it because it came with the package of the Family Channel that Disney acquired from Haim Saban) because it didn't really fit with them and then almost immediately after they sold the series back to Saban they ended up purchasing Marvel in order to tap into the boy market.
    • When Saban bought the franchise back from Disney, he was able to get them to cut the price by claiming he would take the show to The Hub, which anyone who actually knew anything would know couldn't happen at the time, due to the block being co-owned by Hasbro, while Power Rangers toys were made by Bandai. Fast-forward to 2018, and Saban opts not to renew their partnership with Bandai of America, instead partnering with Hasbro.
      • Even funnier when you realize that Bandai of Japan's rival is TakaraTomy, which co-produces Transformers with Hasbro.
      • And then Saban sold the entirety of the franchise to Hasbro, while staying on as a creative consultant for future seasons for the time being. Interestingly, this is much like Disney buying Lucasfilm from George Lucas, who, after producing several divisive Star Wars films with the prequel trilogy, wanted to sell the franchise to a company so he'd stop receiving as much flak for them. Saban might have felt similarly, as the Neo Saban Era has had more misses than hits (with the only season most can agree is good is Dino Charge), and recently falsely copyright claiming Power Rangers reviews on YouTube most likely to keep any bad criticisms from being heard by blocking them about a week before the announcement of the sale.
  • I Knew It!: Many guessed that the 28th season would be adapted from Kishiryu Sentai Ryusoulger. Come the announcement at NY Toy Fair 2020...
  • It's the Same, Now It Sucks!: A common complaint about the Neo Saban era was that with the exception of Samurai, the villains have all been aliens so farnote . Fortunately, Beast Morphers broke this trend, although only time will tell if the rest of the era will follow suitnote .
  • LGBT Fanbase: An argument can be made for the WHOLE franchise, starting with the dozens of attractive young men running around in rainbow spandex. One could also cite the No Hugging, No Kissing rule as playing into it; many of the friendships which are meant to be platonic are so emotionally charged that they come off as Ho Yay. In addition, the show's diverse casting always carried an implicit message that anybody, even those considered outside the norm of a typical square-jawed, rugged manly-man is able to be a hero. Many teams have had characters that the fandom at large views as coded gay or bi (Kelsey, Vida, Jayden and Antonio, or Riley for example). It also helps that many of the ranger alumni are LGBT+ allies, and have participated in NoH8 photoshoots. With Power Rangers S.P.D. we can also point specifically to Doggie Cruger, who became an instant Bara Genre icon. His counterpart from SPD's source material, Tokusou Sentai Dekaranger, is submissive (and VERY muscular) in almost every erotic pic of him (even if it's straight!)
  • Macekre: While chopping up the Sentai episodes is common, season 3 of the original show really has to take the cake. In Kakuranger, the robots which would become the Shogunzords appeared first, with the proto-Ninjazords as the Mid-Season Upgrade. Saban flipped it around since there were only 5 Shogun zords and 6 Rangers. The best example: the first Monster of the Week in season 3, Vampirus, comes from episode 36 of Kakuranger. And let's not get into Zyu2 and Dairanger...
    • Let's put it this way: The episode 'Ninja Quest' includes American produced footage, a monster battle from Kakuranger, stock footage from Zyuranger and Dairanger, as well as footage from Zyu2. Five sources for one episode.
  • Magic Franchise Word: "Morph" and "Morphenominal!"
  • Memetic Badass: Tommy Oliver, the Green Ranger/White Ranger/Red Zeo Ranger/Red Turbo Ranger/Black Dino Ranger/you get the idea. To a lesser extent, Carter Grayson, the Red Lightspeed Ranger.
  • Memetic Mutation: Own page here.
  • Mexicans Love Speedy Gonzales: This American-made recreation of a Japanese series has a fanbase in Japan, since, all things considered, it's as much a Sentai as its Japanese counterpart.
  • Misblamed:
    • Bruce Kalish, being cited as one of the promotors of the overuse of Kalishplosions, which made the Rangers in his tenure look... weak. Along with some questionable liberties given and characterizations of the rangers on his run. While not much, he was vindicated thanks to the weak start of the Neo Saban era, and the news that due to Disney's Executive Meddling, it limited his creativity and forced him to use a lot of Kalishplosions...though that did NOT stop him from passing the Buck to Stunt-director-turned-executive-producer Koichi Sakamoto, who still to-this-day takes the ire for them from the fandom.
    • As pointed out by Internet reviewer Des Shinta when he reviewed Zyuden Sentai Kyoryuger and Power Rangers Dino Charge, Kalish and Sakamoto were scapegoated over Kalishplosions ONLY because no-one in the fandom bothered to check the credits of the episodes to find who the stunt coordinator was. Mark Harris, the head stunt coordinator and stunt director from SPD through RPM, was the man actually responsible for them. As noted by fans they began to pop up in episodes in Ninja Storm and Dino Thunder where he did the stuntwork, but were scantly seen due to the previous head stunt director, Makoto Yokoyama, being around. But when Yokoyama left to do the stunts for the Garo franchise in 2004/2005, Harris got the gig full time, and his poor use of explosions then flourished. Sadly, this attitude of blaming Sakamoto over Kalish however has endured because of Dino Charge, due to Dino Charge using footage from Kyoryuger which he was the head director for...only when people began citing him for Dino Charge's bad original effects and echoing-complaints about the Kalish Era's stunts, one would only need to look at the credits once again to find that Mark Harris returned to the franchise WITH Dino Charge to continue his awful stuntwork.
    • Jonathan Tzachor also became this after the failures of Samurai and Megaforce, which were considered eons away from the job he did in the series up until In Space (especially in the latter). In particular, as Linkara pointed out in History of Power Rangers, the cast and the staffs of Megaforce actually had ideas to make Megaforce more creative and had more development, but Tzachor shot down all those ideas for the sake of more action scenes and more following to the Sentai footages due to his personal preferences. Little wonder that he was removed for Dino Charge and replaced by Judd Lynn. It's worth noting that evidence suggests that Tzachor wanted the franchise to follow the Sentai back when he was working on it during the time before Disney bought the franchise - mainly, he was one of the people that favored having Turbo be more in line with the comedic Carranger footage, whereas Doug Sloan, the head writer, wanted the series to be more serious, as well as just how much of a Shot-for-Shot Remake of Gaoranger Wild Force wasnote . It's likely that the other people who worked on the series prior to his return with him were the ones who kept him in line (Doug Sloan and later Judd Lynn); much like what happened in Wild Force, not having someone to keep him in line was what led to Samurai and Megaforce turning out the way they did.
  • Moment of Awesome: Of course it has its own page!
  • Moral Event Horizon: Own page here.
  • My Real Daddy: Fans informally divide seasons by showrunner or writers at the time. While the contributions of Haim and Cheryl Saban, Shuki Levy, Tony Oliver and others have been noted for Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers, any fan will say that the shows that Judd "Chip" Lynn and Jonathan Tzachor produced, alongside head writer/story editor Jackie Marchand, are among PR's Golden Era (1995-2001) and may also include Eddie Guzelian's RPM in the mix (with Lynn returning to wrap up RPM in 2009). Later, what they started considering PR's real daddy is Judd Lynn, as at the beginning of Neo Saban era since Samurai, Jonathan Tzachor, who was called back to direct that and Megaforce, didn't fare very well to the fans and fans were getting sick of his Sentai fanboyism. So...when Judd Lynn was called back for Dino Charge to replace Tzachor, the fandom rejoiced.
  • Narm: Various accounts, including particular acting moments and some Battlizers looking ridiculous (Just look at Lost Galaxy, Lightspeed Rescue and Dino Thunder).
  • Narm Charm: In general, the adult fandom doesn't so much accept the inherent cheese as eagerly snarf it down.
  • Padding: Most series of live on this trope. Hope you like morphing sequences! You know when an episode ran short when the full sequence plays instead of the instant, five second and/or split-screen variations.
  • Periphery Demographic: The show has a staggering amount of adult fans for a kids' show. This is probably because most of the current adult fans were children when it first ran.
  • The Problem with Licensed Games/No Problem with Licensed Games: With 37 video games on various consoles/handhelds, there have been games in both categories:
  • Rescued from the Scrappy Heap:
    • Carter Grayson from Power Rangers Lightspeed Rescue was originally considered a bland, uninteresting character. However, over time, he has become a Memetic Badass. "Yesterday Again" showed that He Really Can Act. Also in comparison to the past rangers in "Forever Red", he does come across as too reliant on his weapons, but few other rangers had the same "go in guns blazing" mentality. So Carter doesn't use the typical strategies other Rangers use but instead just shoots at the bad guys or tries to run them over with the rescue jeep.
    • Ricardo "Rick" Medina is an interesting case. Originally playing the hated Cole in Power Rangers Wild Force, he was almost completely forgotten. Then, when Saban announced that Medina would be returning in Power Rangers Samurai, the fans almost went irate. This all changed, however, when his character Deker showed up. (That, and Medina himself was less of a jerk in Real Life as well.)
    • Blake Foster (Justin from Power Rangers Turbo) is another odd case. Justin was hated for being an annoying brat. However, ever since he finished puberty, fans are much more loving of Foster, especially since he has expressed his appreciation of the fandom. Justin himself was redeemed fairly well in "True Blue to the Rescue", where he comes to save the day.
    • For one with a much faster turnaround, there's Alpha 6, also from Turbo. He was introduced as Alpha 5's Totally Radical, slightly ruder replacement. In the changeover to Power Rangers in Space, 6 had some emergency repairs that removed those traits and made him a straight expy of 5, making him much more acceptable.
    • Back in the franchise's early years, before they began their Discard and Draw approach each season, any time an actor left, their replacement was hated on sight. However, given time and a little Character Development, most are able to shed their Suspiciously Similar Substitute origins and become well-liked on their own merits. Rocky, Adam, Kat, Tanya, TJ and Cassie. The only one who didn't get this was Aisha, who had the unfortunate problem of spending most of her tenure Out of Focus (though Karan Ashley is a fan favorite, at least.)
  • Retroactive Recognition: As a result of its longevity and literally several hundred actors involved with the franchise. An obscenely complete list can be found at After the Power Blogspot (Currently stopped at Cameron Jebo's appearance on Austin & Ally). Of particular note is the following:
  • The Scrappy:
    • Powers Rangers Lightspeed Rescue: Vypra, due to bad performance by Jennifer Yen, that is pretty bad for franchise’s fare.
    • Power Rangers Turbo:
      • Justin, who had shades of the Creator's Pet. But a lot of it comes mostly from concept rather than execution. He was a young kid compared to the older Rangers and no matter how hard Blake Foster tried he always stuck out among the group. But as a character he was fairly well rounded: skilled and observant but with moments of jealousy, pride and short-sightedness. It doesn't help that Justin's actor Blake Foster recently went on social media to attack Abraham Rodriguez (Power Rangers Beast Morphers' Nate). Foster has subsequently received a lot of backlash from fans and fellow PR actors alike.
      • Alpha 6 could qualify. While Alpha 5 was dorky-but-lovable, Alpha 6 was an attempt to make Alpha cool by using forced-hip slang ("Yo, Rangers!"). It's no coincidence that as Turbo ended, he was damaged, and his voice chip needed to be replaced with one of Alpha 5's.
      • Dimitria, both for replacing Zordon and being limited to interrogative statements for the first half of the series.
      • Elgar, mainly for being obnoxious and not remotely threatening.
    • Power Rangers Operation Overdrive: Dax. The show tried to give him quirks like Bridge from SPD, but he came across as more annoying than funny. He's also supposed to seem like he's underappreciated due to being just the stuntman, but he doesn't give any reasons to make himself endearing or anything to appreciate. While episodes that highlight him as The Everyman rather than a Plucky Comic Relief make him more sympathetic and likeable, they are few and in between compared to his more annoying behavior.
      Linkara: Shut up, Dax!
    • Power Rangers S.P.D.: Sam, specifically Future-Sam a.k.a The Omega Ranger, mainly because we don't know a damn thing about him. That he does appear in the finale, for all of three seconds, without his costume, was seen as an insult by the fanbase, and he rivals Cole and Justin for Most Hated Ranger Ever — those two win because they have personality quirks and flaws that make them unlikeable — Sam is hated because he lacks any of this, due to the writers bypassing him as often as possible. Bruce Kalish has acknowledged that Sam could have been handled better.
    • Power Rangers Samurai: Mentor Ji, for being a crappy teacher, his blatant favoritism towards Jayden, his self-righteous attitude, his redundant name, and his tendency to put down Antonio for not being born into a Samurai lineage. His actor turning out to be a sexual predator didn't help matters.
    • Power Rangers Megaforce:
      • Troy has so far gone down as one of the worst Red Rangers of all time due to him having absolutely no personality. (Ironically, his similarly-disliked Goseiger counterpart Alata was hated for having too much personality. Marvelous came off as not having much of a personality most of the time too, but he was written to be generally reserved in his emotions, plus had the badass credentials to make up for it and an actor who did more than just stood there stoically when the scene wasn't focused on him, while Troy is the result of a first time nonunion actor combined with poor scripts and, most likely, mediocre direction.) This wasn't helped when, in "Spirit of the Tiger," he became a massive jackass out of nowhere for insisting that "A ranger must never let go of his weapons". (That wasn't even in the Gokaiger episode either. Marvelous was more of the type of leader to, more often than not, let his teammates figure their problems out on their own, only helping when needed. Maybe it's a result of the writers injecting some personality into him, as some of the actors wanted, but not understanding what kind of personality was required and where.) The other four Rangers are exempt for at least having more personality and development than Troy (especially Emma and Noah), and Robo Knight and Orion seem to be avoiding it altogether.
        Linkara: "Here's a little game. Which of these two characters is the robot?" (In a scene between Troy and Roboknight)
      • Gosei as well, since he only exists to tell the Rangers when they have a new power up.
  • Seasonal Rot: With a show as long-lived as Power Rangers, not every season's going to be good.
    • The fans near universally hated Power Rangers Turbo (Season 5), due to it being a serious story at odds with the tongue-in-cheek Carranger footage, plus seeing Justin as The Scrappy. People have mellowed out a little in regards to Turbo both due to it improving midway through as well as the fact that, despite its flaws, it did lead directly into Power Rangers in Space, one of the most popular seasons of the series. Time was also kind to Justin, as fans reevaluated him later and now consider him a pretty decent character that just looked bad on paper.note 
    • Power Rangers Wild Force (Season 10) had its share of dislike too, for subpar acting, an Anvilicious Green Aesop, and too much gratuitous focus on the mecha over the plot, which is also derided for being a near-carbon copy of its source material, Hyakujuu Sentai Gaoranger a series already regarded as mediocre at best. Like with Turbo, the fandom's mellowed out and its reputation isn't as bad as it used to be. Mostly because it has two of the best team-up stories in the franchise that have yet to be topped in terms of overall quality and the few changes it made to its Sentai counterpart are very often praised such as the Master Org.
    • Nowadays Power Rangers Operation Overdrive (Season 15) seems to most occupy the designation of "worst season ever" among the fanbase. It had plot holes, an overreliance on Stuff Blowing Up (even by this show's standards), and "heroes" that weren't nearly as heroic as most Rangers. While not quite as vindicated as the aforementioned seasons, opinions have loosened up a bit compared to later PR series that followed. With it being agreed that, compared to Megaforce, Operation Overdrive is at least consistent in its story that makes it easy to follow and had some legitimate twists.
    • Power Rangers Samurai and Super Samurai suffered from similar problems to Wild Force, namely the low quality of the acting and plots that almost always followed those from Shinkenger to the letter and due to the pronounced japanese values and culture influence on the source material it became hard to translate everything there as well as other series.
    • Power Rangers Super Megaforce (Season 20-ish — sensing a pattern yet?) also got this. To wit: having to adapt two separate Sentai (Tensou Sentai Goseiger and Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger), plot points that don't seem to have any impact or made little sense, the rangers gaining new weapons and zords only to discard them, bland villains and a very anti-climatic finale which was supposed to be a celebration of everything Power Rangers up to that point.
    • Power Rangers Dino Super Charge has fallen into this due to its overuse of fillers and the polarising finale. Which is a pity, considering how solid Dino Charge was.
    • Power Rangers Ninja Steel and Super Ninja Steel, which are the 24th and 25th season respectively are often derided for their very simplistic childish writing, lazily recycled plot points, inconsistent characters, and a very preachy tone in terms of morals that don't even make sense when you think about them.
  • Slow-Paced Beginning: Most Power Rangers series start off with filler (often Aesop of the week type episodes), but pretty much all seasons hit their stride a few episodes in, once the first major story arc occurs.
  • Special Effect Failure: As a whole, this trope is pretty much a beloved staple of the series, what with the Stock Footage, scale models, green screening, and everything else. Nobody minds. Conversely, when the Jungle Fury finale used the animal costumes from Gekiranger wholesale without any changes whatsoever, many fans cried foul then too.
  • Star Trek Movie Curse: Interestingly, they had this pattern for a while. Every fifth season are the ones considered the worst: Turbo, Wild Force, Operation Overdrive, and Super Megaforcenote . To a lesser extent, this is also true of seasons that celebrate other milestones - aside from the aforementioned Wild Forcenote , Samurainote  also falls victim to this, although RPMnote  strangely averts this, being considered one of the best seasons in general.
    • Another one is how seasons that are based on fan-favorite Super Sentai seasons end up being poorly received (Power Rangers Turbo, Power Rangers Operation Overdrive, Power Rangers Samurai, and Power Rangers Megaforce) while adaptations of Sentai seasons that were either bad, divisive, or So Okay, It's Average ended up being decent or fan-favorite seasons (Power Rangers Zeo, Power Rangers Lost Galaxy, Power Rangers RPM, Power Rangers Dino Charge, and Power Rangers Beast Morphers).
    • Interestingly enough, due to Saban not adapting Gosei Sentai Dairangernote , every 5th seriesnote  with a new set of ranger suits (as in the suits are traded out completely) ends up being a good season, whereas the one before (coincidentally, it's always an anniversary series) usually is the one that bombs - In Space, Ninja Storm, Jungle Fury and Dino Charge had the 5th, 10th, 15th, and 20th set of costumesnote ; Turbo, Wild Force, Operation Overdrive, and Megaforce, the 4 respective anniversary series, had the 4th, 9th, 14th, and 18th/19thnote  sets of costumes. At the moment, Ninja Steel is set to be the first exception to this rule, as the Super half will be the 25th anniversary, yet the series is on its 22nd set of ranger suitsnote .
  • Subbing Versus Dubbing: In this case, "subbing" means being as faithful as possible to the source materialnote  and "dubbing" equals Pragmatic Adaptationnote . Notably, this debate only applies to the franchise's internal politics; "dubbed" series tend to be better received by the fans than "subbed" series (with the exception of Time Force).
  • Surprisingly Improved Sequel: A case could be made for the early seasons, as the show went from an almost plotless beat-em-up to... well, having plot.
  • They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
    • With the Gokaiger footage coinciding with the series' 20th anniversary, you'd think it would make sense to go from Super Samurai straight into that. Unfortunately, Saban was contractually obligated not to skip any Super Sentai series, and Nickelodeon had messed things up by halving the number of episodes in a season, forcing Saban to split the Shinkenger adaptation over two years. The best Saban could do at that point was to merge Goseiger and Gokaiger into one story, so that Gokaiger is at least closely related to the anniversarynote .
    • This is a common feeling regarding any of the unadapted Sentai series that were skipped since Kyōryū Sentai Zyurangernote . Many fans feel like skipping these more unconventional seasons for those that were likely to be more popular was a poor move and think they could have been adapted into great seasons. However, since Tokumei Sentai Go Busters was adapted into Power Rangers Beast Morphers in 2019, after being skipped itself in favor of Zyuden Sentai Kyoryuger, some fans still hold hope that these missing seasons would be adapted in the future.
  • Vindicated by History: Most of the seasons with negative receptions tend to get this in the years following their release, usually thanks to something worse coming along; the most notable examples are Turbo, Wild Force and the Kalish Era as a whole (Though Overdrive is still passionately hated in some circles).
  • What Do You Mean, It's for Kids?:
  • Win Back the Crowd:
    • Power Rangers in Space won back old fans of Power Rangers lost after Power Rangers Turbo, as well as new ones.
    • Many years later, Power Rangers RPM won back fans that had been dissatisfied with the previous succession of mediocre to bad seasons, as well as being Darker and Edgier, making it enjoyable for the intended, younger audience and older viewers.
    • The rights then reverted back to Saban, resulting in Power Rangers Samurai and Power Rangers Megaforce. Both of them were major disappointments for fans for various reasons, though Samurai has been given some minor leeway because it was eventually revealed to have been a very rushed series, and basically translating Sentai plots directly. Megaforce lost even more fans because it lacked interesting characters, relied heavily on action scenes, and was an incredibly disappointing 20th Anniversary series. note  Then came Power Rangers Dino Charge and took all the lacking parts from Megaforce, making those things great. It won the crowd back with its first episode (entirely lacking Sentai footage) and gave the characters personalities and depth.
  • The Woobie: Johnny Yong Bosch, Karan Ashley and David Yost are the biggest real life examples.
  • X-Pac Heat:
    • Will from Operation Overdrive is probably one of the most loathed characters in the franchise. The sad thing is, this doesn't have anything to do with the character himself (in fact, he used to be something of an Ensemble Dark Horse of the team), but when his actor, Samuell Benta, stole a banner from Power Morphicon that was supposed to be auctioned off to charity (and afterwards smugly stated he had the banner and had no intention of giving it back) many fans turned on the character. Whens rumors popped up that Benta might actually be brought back to cameo in Super Megaforce in an Operation Overdrive tribute episode (which never materialized), fans rioted online.
    • Blake Foster got some backlash just from playing Justin in Turbo, but he really came under fire in 2019 when it was revealed that the Gold Ranger in Beast Morphers would be Nate, the small and nerdy tech-guy of the team. Foster called him a "weenie" and didn't stand out amongst the team, and the fans rioted and pointed out that he was quite hypocritical considering the amount of hate he used to get. Fortunately, since then he's apologized to Abraham Rodriguez (Nate's actor) and the two have made up.

For the toyline specifically:

  • Author's Saving Throw: Hasbro has made many such instances.
    • The Basic Figure line offered more realistic, screen-accurate builds than Bandai, along with painted weapons.
    • Zord Builder is no more, so the Megazords can be more screen-accurate. The full on Megazords also offer far more articulation than older toys, particularly the T-Rex Champion Zord.
    • Lightning Collection has its own throws:
      • Psycho Pink, Psycho Yellow, the A-Squad, and Astronema did not get figures back in the day, with Hasbro even offering variants of Astronema with her different hairstyles.
      • Rita, Zedd, the Ninjetti Rangers, and Mesogog all suffered from terrible figures under Bandai, with Rita in particular being widely mocked for it's terribleness. Their Hasbro versions are much more screen-accurate and feature the same excellent articulation as the rest of the Lightning Collection figures.
      • The Mighty Morphin Remastered line includes heavily improved sculpts, making the figures more show-accurate and the civilian heads look more like their actors, along with extra accessories and special hands and accessories to pose the Ranger morphing.
      • The single-figure release of the Cog includes Zeo Ranger III's tonfas, which were missing from the original figure.
  • Broken Base: Who makes the better toys, Bandai or Hasbro?
    • Bandai:
      • Supporters like that the franchise was a high priority, thus giving each year's line plenty of toys. The basic figures also tended to be well put together, with little quality control issues, with numerous variants as that year's line went on. The Zords also tended to be relatively stable and the Zord Builder system allowed for a lot of playability and customization. Their Legacy role play weapons were also of very high quality, often including die cast metal. The Zords in the same line often also used die cast, giving the figures a higher quality feeling.
      • Detractors will argue that the figures suffered from poor molds that often gave the male Rangers Heroic Build and the female Rangers an Impossible Hourglass Figure, that the Basic Figure weapons were usually a garrish single color (whereas Hasbro will at least have some paint on them), and the Deluxe Zords were missing a lot of features from the Japanese molds, thus making the various combinations Off-Model. And while the diecast metal on the Legacy Zords gave a higher quality feeling, the molds were obviously not designed to handle the extra weight, as most of the combinations were very top-heavy and prone to leaning or falling over outright. Plus, the forced Zord Builder ports often caused unneccsary leftover pieces or flimsy joints. The Legacy figures also had pretty poor molds that exaggerated the issues with the Basic Figures, rarely came with the Ranger's individual weapons, and certain figures (most notably Zeo Gold) had some extremely poor design choices.
    • Hasbro:
      • Supporters like that the Basic Figures have more realistic builds and painted weapons, with extra details molded in to show the texture of the suit. The Deluxe Zords also offer a high range of articulation, which even got Japan's attention, as Toei began to offer articulation in their mecha toys shortly after Hasbro acquired the license. With the Lightning Collection, the figures kept the realistic molds from the Basic Figures, offered a very high amount of articulation, and had a variety of characters that either didn't get proper figures before or only had poor ones in the past, including screen-accurate versions of the Metallic Armor and Ninjetti Rangers, the A-Squad from SPD, and major villains like Astronema and Mesogog.
      • Detractors argue that the Basic Figure line is significantly more sparse than any Bandai line (Dino Fury is especially notable due to missing multiple auxiliary Zords and the strange distribution of the basic Rangers) and often don't include any Monsters of the Day. Furthermore, the figures are often only available for a few weeks on store shelves before being out of print, which jacks the price on Amazon and other third party sellers. This was especially true of the Beast Morphers line, where people had an extremely difficult time finding Red and Gold's Zords, which were the centerpieces of the various Megazords, while the Beast-X King Zord was never released at all. As for the collector's lines, the role play weapons are often seen as inferior to Bandai's, since it has no die cast metal, despite costing more. The Zord Ascension Project toys are seen as brittle and often include various extra detailing that wasn't on any of the previous toys or the in-show suits (such as the Dino Megazord's solar panels on the chest). With the Lightning Collection, detractors feel the figures are of lower quality than other collector figure lines, with inconsistent paint applications even among figures of the same line (SPD was especially guilty), and a change in manufacturing locations resulting in extremely poor quality control starting in late 2022. There's also the general sense that Hasbro doesn't care as much about the brand compared to Transformers, Marvel, or Star Wars.
    • A third group feels that both of the American branches suck and opt to stick with Japanese brands such as Figuarts.
  • It's the Same, Now It Sucks!:
    • Zord Builder toys often got this, as the forced integration of the joints sometimes resulted in the Megazords combining in different ways than the show.
    • Bandai's packaging from Samurai until Ninja Steel all had the same design style and layout, most notably using bright red as the primary color scheme. Many have noted that this ended up making all the toylines blend together and difficult for parents to know when a new season had started. It wasn't until Super Ninja Steel where Bandai went with a different layout and color scheme, first grey/white and then black.
    • Cel-Shaded Mighty Morphin Pink was widely derided for being a completely unnecessary figure, as she didn't even come with different accessories (like Black), a different head (like Red or Yellow), or was a 2-pack with a villain (again, like Yellow). The only difference was some minor paint details meant to imitate a cel-shaded look. There wasn't even any civilian head based on Kim's comic look. It also didn't help that it was the fifth version of Mighty Morphin Pink to be released just in the Lightning Collection alone.note 
    • The Power Morpher is derided for trying to be similar to the original 90's toy, complete with matte paint and using notches in the coins for locking in, rather than being a deluxe high-quality product Bandai released. Furthermore, fans also disliked how the first two variants were for the Pink and Yellow Rangers instead of a variant based on Green and White's Morpher.
    • The comic-based Mighty Morphin Red and Yellow swap 2-pack had some complaints due to the helmets simply being reused from the normal figures, meaning Jason's Yellow helmet is too small for his body and Trini's Red helmet is too big for her body. Though at least those don't have the cel-shading effect Pink had.
    • The Mighty Morphin Black Ranger release in late 2022 felt like an odd release, as while it did feature an improved head sculpt, the only other new feature was that he included a weapon used in one episode of the show instead of his Power Ax, as well as Adam as the civilian head instead of Zack. Furthermore, this was released only a few months before the Remastered figure was released, making the figure largely redundant unless you really want a Season 2 Adam head.
  • Seasonal Rot:
    • The Zords got this starting in Operation Overdrive, when Bandai started using their own molds instead of importing the Japanese ones. Their mecha were usually smaller, had less paint applications, and often missed features from the Japanese toys.
    • While the lines during the Neo Saban era were often seen as lower quality than before, the Ninja Steel line was especially guilty. The various vehicle sets were of exceptionally low quality, the Zords were even more unimpressive than previous lines, the auxiliary Zords were packaged with their own repainted Megazords instead of sold on their own, and the role play weapons were significantly cheaper feeling than previous years. The Ninja Power Stars, the main gimmick of the line, was seen as especially lazy. Instead of electronic plastic shuriken that could double as helmets for the Megazords, Bandai's version had no electronics and were tiny, cheap plastic with a low-quality sticker and pathetic foam blades on the sides and could not be used as helmets for the Megazords. The Super Ninja Steel line included variants that were sticky or soft, which couldn't even fit in the morpher. Speaking of which, the morpher itself was changed from the sword to the shuriken weapon and the reader couldn't even allow the Power Stars to spin freely.
    • Hasbro's Retro VHS Packaging line falls under this. None of the Megazord figures have very good articulation (typically just the arms and head) and their legs are often have very little paint detail. Furthermore, of the eight Megazord figures released thus far, seven of them are from Mighty Morphin, with the Galaxy Megazord being the sole exception. Technically one of the other figures is from Ninja Storm, but that figure is Ninjakon, a toy-only character that is just a repaint of Hasbro's previous Ninjor figure. The Ranger figures suffer from similar loose joint problems that other figures in plastic-free packaging deal with, include unpainted white weapons, and are $7 more expensive than other Basic Figures.
    • Under Hasbro, the Dino Fury line became this. The initial wave only had Red, Blue, and Pink Rangers (alongside Boomtower) but instead of their signature sabers, each of them came with a unique non-show weapon. When Black and Green were finally released, one could only find them in their arm armor modes, with Green (and Pink) later being found in full armor variations. The only way to get the regular forms of all five Rangers with their signature swords was to buy a five-pack exclusive to Amazon. Distribution was also a problem, as the power-up forms for both Red and Gold, as well as the Cosmic and Punchy Armor forms for Green and Pink, only had a brief run and went out of print about a month after release. The line also only had the three main Megazords released originally, with the Dimetro Zord not being released until 2023, after Dino Fury had ended.
    • The Lightning Collection starting in 2022 fell into this hard. While the Rangers selected wasn't a problem, Hasbro switched factories from China to Vietnam, which resulted in a major drop in quality control. Figures had broken limbs, missing or wrong accessories, parts from other Rangers put on (such as Lost Galaxy Green having Mighty Morphin Black's boots), and multiple paint issues. Dino Fury Green was especially problematic, as her neck piece would pop right out of the chest when trying to take off her civilian head.
    • In general, the switch from plastic trays to full on cardboard packaging became this. Originally, people disliked it because the boxes no longer used the custom art the line originally used, meaning in-box collectors would not having matching styles. Once the boxes launched, however, further problems showed themselves, as the lack of a plastic tray resulted in heavily bent weapons and the figure's limbs were often bent unnaturally, leading to them being more easily broken right out of the box. And since the boxes are windowless, one cannot preview the figure beforehand to see if there are missing accessories or bad paint applications.
  • They Changed It, Now It Sucks!:
    • The switch from using the Japanese mecha molds to original American molds is seen as a major downgrade, removing various features, featuring less paint applications, and sometimes not even being able to transform into every mode seen in the show.
    • Going from 5" scale to 4" scale for the Mighty Morphin 2010 and Samurai lines was widely panned back in the day. Similarly, some hate that Hasbro's Basic Figures are 6", thus not allowing them to be in scale with Bandai's figures.
    • Hasbro's Zord Ascension Project toys include details seen in concept art and use Toei's official stats for the height of each toy. The first point is loathed due to making the figures too detailed and unnecessarily muddles the simpler designs of the proper Megazord. The latter is hated due to how certain Megazords are taller than one another (with the Astro Megazord figure being almost six inches taller than the Dino Megazord figure) and argue that Toei themselves don't actually assign stats with any care, as evidenced by the Zeo Megazord canonically being almost three times larger than the Dino Megazord, despite the show itself showing all the Megazords (barring certain exceptions like the Supertrain Megazord or RPM Ultrazord) at around the same height.
    • Going from plastic tray packaging to plastic-free packaging is seen is a major downgrade. Many of the figures end up coming in broken or with bent weapons, and the lack of a window means one cannot check the figure themselves if it's missing accessories or paint beforehand. The uproar was so bad that Hasbro reversed the decision starting in 2024.
    • The Remastered versions of Mighty Morphin Red and Green have gotten this. Red includes Green's Dragon Shield and arm bands, which can be removed and places on any other Ranger, including female Rangers, but lacks the Dragon Dagger or the black holster to hold it in. Even worse, it's also the only figure in the sub-line to not include a head sculpt. Green does include the Dragon Dagger, but also comes with two Blade Blasters (holster and blade modes) instead of the Sword of Darkness, and his holster is a black normal holster rather than the longer dagger holster seen on previous figures. Worse, he also lacks his Dragon Shield entirely, so if one wants a proper-looking Green Ranger with the updated design, they have to not only buy Remastered Red, but also one of the previous Green Rangers (or Drakkon) and replace the holster manually.

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