The Life and Strife of an Ex-Power Rangers Addict

So at twenty one years of ages, I've recently been looking back and reminiscing about some of the things I used to shamefully indulge in in my teenage years. Y'know, when you thought you knew all the answers and that you were so damn cool?

You know what- I sure as heck wasn't always that cool- because chronicled below is a time I used to think was so awesome back then, but am a bit guilty about right now

 But hey, you're going to be laughing with me, not at me... right?

If you were a kid growing up in the nineties, then Power Rangers was amazing- most specifically the Mighty Morphin variation. Five cliched, "every day" American teens who would don some of the tightest, brightest spandex you'll ever see and ride around in giant robot freakin' dinosaurs in order to fight the evil wrought by an extra-terrestrial foe.

Seriously, Americans, robots and aliens- that's like every cool thing ever if you're five years old! It was genius- and, as I found out as I got older, would share an accolade with Microsoft Windows as being some of the money-makingest copy/pasting ever, as it turned out that Power Rangers was 75% recycled material from a Japanese saturday morning kids show of a similar conceit.

Mighty Teenage Stereotype Rangers.

However, I could never have anticipated that I'd end up watching it again in my teens.

It all started when I was perhaps 14, when a boredom-induced,Summer school holiday internet browsing session lead me to stumble across a website called Ranger Central, which is pretty much a Power Rangers encyclopedia, and one hell of a way to kill time. The subsequent nostalgia trip lead me down the rabbit hole known as Youtube, where I proceeded to wallow in an endless mire of Power Rangers clips and episodes.

I ended up torrenting like all of the original Mighty Morphin series and watching just about any incarnation of Power Rangers that was available on Fox Kids, joined the forum at Ranger Central and got sucked into writing a fan fiction, and even ended up doing pixel art of my own made-up Rangers. I reckon the only thing that stopped me from buying an 18 inch,  fully-articulated Dragonzord was my lack of a job. But a job would've just meant less Power Rangers, so screw jobs.

Maybe I was scarred because my parents never got me one when I was a kid. I hope you're reading this, Mum. In fact, I asked for Power Rangers toys for ages, and you know how many I got? One. Seriously, one? THERE WERE FIVE RANGERS.

And so became the resurgence of my love for Power Rangers.

I need help, I thought. I can't go on like this, I thought. I must tell someone, I thought. So I told some friends- and got them hooked too. It's pretty much the equivalent of a serial drunk going to Alcoholics Anonymous, taking a 24-pack of Stella Artois along with him and everyone cracking open a cold one.

I'll never forget a time when I had a sleep over with a couple of school friends that started with watching Terminator and Aliens and devolved into watching Mighty Morphin Power Rangers on TV at three in the morning. Seriously, I didn't even know they showed at that hour. But, an addict always knows where to find his next fix.

I'm not really sure how I got out of that dark place... maybe it was because I started playing Yu-Gi-Oh! (yeah, that was bad too). Maybe because I finally got a  PS2, and could be cool and play some modern games, not just the ones on my Mega Drive over and over. Maybe I filled up my hard disk with Power Rangers episodes and decided enough was enough. But, thankfully, that troubled time is behind me behind me.

Wait. Oh no.

I just clicked the link to Ranger Central.