Iconic TV Show Ending After 50 Years

Japan’s iconic superhero series Super Sentai, which inspired the Power Rangers franchise, is ending after 50 years on the air.

Local media reports indicate that Super Sentai will end due to merchandise and event proceeds not being enough to cover production costs. Broadcaster TV Asahi declined to answer questions about future programming to MANTANWEB.

Super Sentai premiered in 1975 and follows five teens who transform into masked fighters in order to battle aliens. In the series, the team is made up of three men and two women, and is led by one hero in a red suit — a familiar formula for Power Rangers fans. The rest of the team is also color-coded, featuring green, black, blue, yellow and pink fighters.

The show’s martial arts sequences and live-action animation made Super Sentai an iconic show in Japan, and it would go on to inspire the Power Rangers series in the U.S.

The original Power Rangers debuted in 1993 under the masterminding of Israeli American mogul and entrepreneur Haim Saban and launched countless spinoffs.

“I’m laying in bed in my hotel room in Japan. At the time there is no Netflix, no cable, no nothing — just three channels playing game shows,” Saban recalled of a 1984 business trip that inspired his Power Rangers idea during a 2017 interview with the Los Angeles Times. “All of the sudden there were these five kids in spandex fighting monsters. Don’t ask me why, but I fell in love. It was so campy!”

Inspired to reimagine the series for a U.S. audience, Saban found Power Rangers to be a tough sell. “Every selling season, I would go out and offer it to the networks — and would get kicked out of the room,” Saban recalled. “They told me how crazy I was.”

It was only after Saban Entertainment had its first hit with 1992’s X-Men that the tides began to turn, with former Fox Kids President Margaret Loesch telling Saban she was looking for something “quirky and different, with comedy and action” that would appeal to boys.

Saban then pitched Power Rangers to Loesch, and while the project started off on shaky ground, she agreed to move forward with what would ultimately become a cultural phenomenon.

“I was sweating bullets,” Loesch told the Times. “For a while, it was me and Haim against the world. But Haim has guts. If he believes in something, he will stick with it.”