https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/4/2/1/AAAG8cAAEoAF.jpg It's like Jay Leno had sex with Smurfette. The only reason I know that they didn't is because that would've made the list too.
In 1996, Haim Saban was riding high off the success of Power Rangers, and even though VR Troopers AND Masked Rider had failed, he was gonna try again, dammit! And so, once again, he spliced a bunch of Japanese sentai footage together with new American filmed footage and we got... Big Bad Beetleborgs, in which three comic book obsessed kids go to a haunted mansion and get beetle themed superpowers from a bunch of monsters and some blue guy named Flabber. Flabber is the source of much of the show's comic relief and, as mentioned before, he looks like a blue Jay Leno. The action itself was typical Power Rangers-style fare but without the cool music and with generic looking vehicles rather than cool robots. The villains were totally forgettable, save for maybe one guy in season two (which was called Beetleborgs Metallix and the theme song was basically the original show's theme song but with "Big Bad Beetleborgs" replaced with "Beetleborgs Metallix") who looked like what Beetlejuice might've looked like before he died. The thing about Big Bad Beetleborgs is that it's probably the wackiest of the post-Power Rangers sentai footage ideas to date, and yet it ended up being one of the most successful... which, again, we're sort of grading on a curve because Masked Rider and VR Troopers both bombed. Regardless of this show's middling level of success, there's no way this concept could've been made by someone who wasn't under the influence of some kind of drugs. The mansion/Flabber scenes were exceptionally cringeworthy, and apart from the show's annoying theme song and Flabber, there's nothing memorable here to speak of. Big Bad Beetleborgs represents the post-Power Rangers sentai adaptation era at its absolute dumbest, and proved that Power Rangers truly did catch lightning in a bottle.
I didn't mind Beetleborgs so much. It's largely forgettable and the recasting of the red beetleborg between seasons threw me off, but it felt like a precursor to FOX/ABC Family style of shows to come like Big Wolf on Campus*. I think the monster stuff was the best part with the Beetleborgs shuffled in to sell toys/the show. It wasn't a great show, and I don't think it should be this high up the list.
*I tried to think of other shows, but somehow unlocked the memory of the Flash Forward theme (the Ben Foster & Jewel Staite show, not the post-Lost copycat**) and it's driven all other thoughts out.
I am also thankful I've got this nostalgic harmonica ditty playing on loop and not "Troopers. Three. Virtual Reality."
**Wow, a write-up about a trend-riding failed show and my brain takes a long roundabout to another trend-riding failed show. Lost & Power Rangers can both claim fame to having some legitimately terrible coattail riders. Invasion, Superhuman Samurai Syber Squad, The Event, Tattooed Teenage Alien Fighters from Beverly Hills, Alcatraz, Mystic Knights of Tir Na Nog, Revolution.
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"In my headcanon, some staffer saw Trump pull out his phone and start typing so they just Terry Tate Office Linebacker'd him out of his shoes." - FFD