Welcome back to Saturday Morning Superstars! Last week, I wrote about the shows that delighted kids during the ’90s, but there were so many that I had to devote a second column to the decade. The reason why is that two new networks emerged — FOX in 1990 and The WB in 1995 — with their own full lineups of Saturday morning programming. FOX, in particular, seemed to deliver some of the most popular kids’ shows ever!
Superheroes have always had a home on Saturday mornings, but few had as massive an impact as FOX’s X-Men. The show was intended to be part of the network’s fall lineup for 1992, but production delays only allowed for two episodes to air as a “preview” with the series officially launching in January 1993. And the first two episodes were riddled with animation errors and even missing scenes which were corrected when they aired again in January.
FOX threatened to fire animation studio AKOM but ultimately didn’t, which is kind of too bad. The animation on X-Men, was pretty crappy, especially during its first season. It got better but then towards the end, it got worse when Saban attempted to animate it in-house with contributions from two new studios, Philippine Animation Studio Inc. and Hong Ying Animation.
(I should point out that while the animation kind of sucked, the writing and voice acting were incredibly strong.)
But clunky animation aside, X-Men got huge ratings and Marvel’s mutants became a merchandising phenomenon, popping up on clothing, backpacks, candy, and every other thing you could slap a cartoon on. Perhaps most memorably, Toy Biz cranked out hundreds of different X-Men action figures, although those were based on both the cartoon and the comics, and later, the movies.
The live-action movies weren’t directly based on the cartoon, but I firmly believe they would never have been made had it not been for the animated series making the concept a household name.
X-Men consisted of five seasons and 76 episodes and retains a devoted fan following today. Though it was known as just X-Men when it aired, it is commonly referred to as X-Men: The Animated Series today.
In 1994, FOX added another Marvel ‘toon, Spider-Man. It was also a massive ratings hit and went on to run for five seasons of 65 episodes. The show included episodes guest-starring the X-Men, and the final season included the storyline “Secret Wars” (based on the ’80s miniseries) and featured The Fantastic Four, Iron Man, Captain America, and Storm. Other Marvel guest-stars included War Machine, Daredevil, Blade, Doctor Strange, and The Punisher.
Like X-Men, Toy Biz cranked out hundreds of Spider-Man action figures and a lot of the other Marvel characters got toys simply because they appeared on the show.
In 1997, FOX added a short-lived cartoon starring the Silver Surfer. There were also cartoons based on Iron Man and Fantastic Four which aired together as The Marvel Action Hour, but that was syndicated and not part of a network lineup.
FOX also broadcast Batman: The Animated Series, but that was an afternoon program, although later seasons aired on The WB’s Saturday lineup, along with Superman: The Animated Series. Other superhero cartoons from the 90s included WildC.A.T.S., The Tick, Disney’s The Mighty Ducks, Gargoyles: The Goliath Chronicles, and Big Guy and Rusty the Boy Robot.
But it wasn’t all about crimefighters. One supervillain starred in her own hugely popular series, Where on Earth Is Carmen Sandiego?. The cartoon was based on a line of computer games, and there was a live-action framing sequence in each episode that implied that the show was a video game being played by an unseen person.
Where on Earth Is Carmen Sandiego? followed a world-class thief named Carmen Sandiego, voiced by Rita Moreno, who traveled the globe stealing artifacts. She was pursued by two teen detectives, Zack and Ivy.
The show was a ratings hit and ran for four seasons and 40 episodes. It was also praised by parents groups because it was mostly non-violent and was kind of educational. It also won a Daytime Emmy.
There is an updated version, simply called Carmen Sandiego, which kicked off on Netflix in 2019 and is still running.
Pokémon originally aired in syndication, but in 1998, The WB added it to its Saturday morning lineup. Pokémon is one of the biggest hits ever and some form of it has continued to air until the present, and it inspired a number of imitators including Digimon and Cardcaptors.
Another noteworthy series from the ’90s is the first fully computer-animated cartoon, ReBoot. This Canadian series originally aired on YTV but was shown in the US on ABC. It launched in 1994 but canceled after one season when Disney purchased the network and filled it primarily with its own programming. It went into syndication but was spottily distributed. Finally, US audiences were able to see it in its entirety when Cartoon Network picked it up in 1999. A… *ahem* reboot, ReBoot: The Guardian Code, was released on Netflix in 2018, but it deviated from the original concept and presumably didn’t do well, as no other seasons were made.
In my previous column, I mentioned that live-action shows like Saved By the Bell and Goosebumps were massive hits. But live-action absolutely exploded in the ’90s, thanks to the biggest superheroes to hit the screen — Mighty Morphin Power Rangers.
This bizarre series contained footage from the Japanese series Kyōryū Sentai Zyuranger, which featured actors/stuntmen in spandex costumes with motorcycle-like helmets battling monsters in rubbery suits. But after the monsters grew to enormous size, the heroes would have to jump into their Dino Zords, robotic vehicles based on dinosaurs. (Actually, two of them, the Mastodon and Sabretooth Tiger weren’t dinosaurs, but they were still referred to as “Dino Zords.”) The Zords could then combine to form Megazord.
The sequences of Megazord fighting the giant monsters featured stuntmen in large rubbery suits fighting in what looked like a toy city, something very reminiscent of Godzilla and similar movies.
For Power Rangers, these Japanese scenes were mixed with new footage featuring American actors. The show focused on a wholesome group of teens who are recruited by Zordon, an ancient guardian trapped in a time warp, to defend the Earth from the witch Rita Repulsa who just escaped from her prison on the moon.
The show starred Austin St. John as Jason Lee Scott/Red Ranger, Amy Jo Johnson as Kimberly Hart/Pink Ranger, Walter E. Jones as Zack Taylor/Black Ranger, Thuy Trang as Trini Kwan/Yellow Ranger, and David Yost as Billy Cranston/Blue Ranger. The team is later infiltrated by Tommy Oliver, played by Jason David Frank, the mysterious Green Ranger, however, it turned out that he was given his powers by Rita and ultimately betrayed the heroes. But the character proved so popular that he later returned as a hero. In fact, Tommy was so popular that he was eventually made the leader of the team as the White Ranger.
Kids were mesmerized by this colorful, frenetic series, and it became a ratings powerhouse. The toys were instant sell-outs with parents scrambling to find them in a manner similar to the Cabbage Patch Kids craze in the ’80s.
The show was so massive that a live-action theatrical movie was released in 1995.
145 episodes aired over the course of three seasons, but at that point, the creators, Saban Entertainment, had run out of footage from the original Japanese show. But there were other similar shows, part of the Super Sentai series, so Power Rangers was rebranded… and has been rebranded many, many times since. It’s still going!
Power Rangers Zeo was the first new version and debuted in 1996, retaining much of the existing cast (although there had been many cast changes from the first season). That was followed by Power Rangers Turbo in 1997, which was preceded by another theatrical movie. Power Rangers in Space and Power Rangers Lost Galaxy were the remaining versions from the ’90s.
The TWENTY-EIGHTH season, Power Rangers Dino Fury, is due to arrive on Nickelodeon later this year. (That 28 figure is a little bit of a cheat, because that includes the series that were rebranded as “Super,” even though the cast and premises remained the same.)
With Mighty Morphin Power Rangers being the biggest show on Saturday mornings, it inspired a slew of knockoffs, also created by Saban and aired on FOX. First came Masked Rider, a retooling of Kamen Rider. That was followed by Big Bad Beetleborgs, based on Juukou B-Fighter (first season) and B-Fighter Kabuto (second). Finally, in 1998, Saban crafted the Irish mythology-based Mystic Knights of Tir Na Nog, which did not recycle existing Japanese footage. None of these matched the success of Power Rangers.
Not created by Saban, but still clearly inspired by the success of Power Rangers, was Brats of the Lost Nebula, which featured puppets by Jim Henson’s Creature Shop. Unfortunately, these were kind of disturbing, unlike the cuddly Muppets.
It may or may not have been inspired by Power Rangers, but in 1998, FOX introduced another live-action series, Young Hercules, created by Robert Tappert. This was a prequel to his syndicated hit Hercules: The Legendary Journeys. Sam Raimi served as an executive producer, but the most notable thing about Young Hercules is that it starred Ryan Gosling after he had starred on The New Mickey Mouse Club, but before he became a world-famous movie star.
I briefly mentioned Pokémon… briefly because I know very little about it. But it was a massive smash that crossed into nearly every form of media and like Power Rangers and X-Men was and still is a merchandising bonanza. It was so massive that it opened the floodgates for Americans to embrace what was previously a fairly obscure artform– anime.
And in the new millennium, anime was everywhere. Find out more about that and more in next week’s Saturday Morning Superstars column!
Do you have any favorite shows or memories of Saturday mornings in the ’90s?
