The Mighty Morphin Power Rangers have been around in some form or another for quite some time. The series debuted in 1993 and has gone through various retoolings through the decades. The toy license was acquired a few months ago by Hasbro, and CEO Brian Goldner has indicated that we could be seeing a lot more Power Rangers in the coming years, including more feature films.
Speaking at a development conference, Goldner spoke about the acquisition of the license and what it means for Hasbro. He said, per Tokunation:
As I mentioned, we’ve now announced the acquisition of Power Rangers. This is really a great statement about where we believe we are in developing our brand blueprint. The fact that we can acquire the Power Rangers brand and plug and play that right into our strategy where we activate it in entertainment, motion pictures in the future, and then, of course, across toys and games and consumer products and do so globally. We felt the brand was very under leveraged and undervalued. We feel we can exploit it to a much greater extent and it was a great opportunity to acquire the brand.
No word on whether or not future films would follow the continuity of last year’s film, which we started out skeptical about but actually rather enjoyed. Check out our full review here.
Power Rangers has had some surprising staying power, but some of Goldner’s language is a bit troublesome. Talking about “exploiting” the license should give fans a bit of pause, but hopefully, Hasbro treats the Power Rangers’ name well. Look on the bright side — it can’t be worse than what’s happened to Transformers. Hasbro’s new toy line is expected to hit shelves next spring, and we will keep you posted on any information about the next steps for the Power Rangers brand.