Friday is Artificail Life Form Day No. 7

This week, Megazords! Megazords are enormous robots which fight evil that are made of smaller robots or zords. The term zords was made up for the live action show “Power Rangers”. ”Power Rangers” was definitely a show that was on long after I was watching kids shows but who didn’t know who they were. If there was a preteen boy or girl for that matter in the house you probably heard their theme; ‘Go go Power Rangers, Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers!’

Much like Voltron, which I talked about last week, the first Megazord was made up of 5 different large robots. In this case they were Dinozords which consisted of Tyrannosaurus Dinozord, Triceratops Dinozord, Pterodactyl Dinozord, Mastodon Dinozord and Saber-Toothed Tiger Dinozord. Note by the way that the last two listed were not actually dinosaurs at all. Oh those crazy marketing people. In times of duress the 5 Dinozords would combine or ‘morph’ into the larger Dino Megazord! On a side note the fact that they would ‘morph’ aided in the naming of the show, however the title “Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers” suggests to me that the Power Rangers (the pilots of the 5 zords) were actually the ones that should have morphed. Shouldn’t it have been called “Mighty Morphin’ Dino Zords”? One less syllable so even at that a more streamline title……..but I digress.

Like most giant robot creatures that came from the creative minds in Japan the Megazord was super strong, excellent in hand to hand combat and could summon a sword of immense power directly from the sky. Where it came from I’m not sure. Maybe it would just randomly orbit the Earth until summoned to battle by it Megazord master. No really.

Over the period of the time the show has run there have been some 80+ Megazord combinations and many more smaller zords that turned out to be a much more daunting task than I thought it would be to find out how many there were. Suffice to say that the many variations of zords was a boon for the toy industry as every new zord type or course needed to be owned by their loyal following, youthful audience.

Next week. Another live action import from Japan. We’ll be taking a look at Johnny Sokko and His Flying Robot! Hang on folks, this thing is just getting warmed up.