“GO GO Power Rangers!” If you grew up in the 90’s, this catch phrase was a big part of your childhood. If not, you probably heard of the live- action children’s television series at some point, but did you know it was created by Israeli Haim Saban?
Nowadays, Saban is deeply involved in politics, with the interests of Israel at heart. He is hosting the annual Saban Forum (an annual dialogue between American and Israeli leaders from across the political and social spectrum,) as part of the Saban Center for Middle East Policy. But before that, he was the founder of Saban Entertainment, which originally produced the show.
Its first entry, Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, debuted on August 28, 1993. As of today, the show consists of 21 television seasons of 17 different themed series and two theatrical films. The multi-million dollar franchise is enjoying a great success in international markets and continues to air in many countries worldwide.
For more daily updates about the day-to-day life in Israel, you can follow Israelife on Facebook To those of you who aren’t familiar with the costumes heroes, here are the premises of the show, courtesy of Wikipedia:
Each series revolves around a team of young people recruited and trained by a mentor to morph into Rangers, able to utilize special powers and pilot colossal assault machines called Zords to defeat and overcome evil forces that threaten humanity. For example, in Mighty Morphin, alien wizard Zordon recruits “teenagers with attitude” to harness the power of the dinosaurs to overcome the forces of evil space alien Rita Repulsa.
When “morphed,” the rangers become powerful superheroes wearing color-coded skin-tight spandex battle suits and helmets with opaque visors. Each team's costumes are nearly identical aside from individual rangers' color and helmet design. Morphed Rangers generally possess superhuman strength, durability, and ability in hand-to-hand combat. Some possess superhuman abilities such as super-speed or invisibility, attributes somewhat related to their Ranger abilities. In addition, each individual ranger has a unique individual weapon as well as common weaponry used in ground fighting. When enemies grow to incredible sizes, Rangers utilize individual Zords that combine into a larger Megazord.
Rangers teams operate in teams of five or three, with more Rangers joining the team part way into each season. Each team of Rangers, with a few exceptions, obeys a general set of conventions, outlined at the beginning of Mighty Morphin and implied by mentors throughout many of the other series: Power Rangers may not use their Ranger powers for personal gain or for escalating a fight (unless forced to do so), nor may the Power Rangers disclose their identities to the general public. The penalty for disobeying these rules, at least in Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, would be the loss of their power.
