I hope to be caught up to Don Bros in 2024.

I was wondering with the series being region locked for me an other places to see 1975 - Turbo Ranger? 5 Man and Jet Man are on Shout Factory DVD.1975 is when they started the first series.

As far as the base suits for the monsters goes, the worst, imo, was kiramager. Even a dummy like me could notice they were just swapping the heads on those things. Also I think it was kiramager, but the crotches on those suits were ravaged, man. I don?t know what the heck was going on. People were sliding around in sandpaper or something.

I?ll leave with the words of a wise man

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=r85Q56k31FI

I'm not an '70's kid, but having spent a ot of my childhood watching '70s-'80s mecha shows on YouTube, hearing Battle Fever J's openng made me feel extremely nostalgic.

If you haven't heard Battle Fever J's opening, well, how do I describe it? It's just undeniably late '70s. And it's glorious. That's all I can say.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrIMlwGeHWI

If one were to buy into the idea that Sentai got downgraded to a B-show, the Kiramager MOW suits would be proof of that. FWIW, I think the designs of the helmets/heads are still very clever and well made

As hard as it is to believe, Shirakura said in an interview Rider's suit budget was less than Sentai. This is why arcs get stretched out into two-parters and why some villains aren't killed off right away

Well this makes sense that the sentai suit budget would be higher, because that is one of the primary things they were exporting over for power rangers.

Not sure if that plays into the consideration nowadays, though. But I could see inertia kind of taking over and the higher suit budget continuing for no reason.

I've also heard that while Sentai doesn't do well in terms of toy sales, it does do well in sales of things like photobooks etc among fans. Lupat especially did well there. Perhaps it's a thing of the shows themselves doing well despite toy sales so more budget is allocated there, while Rider needs less to succeed financially

Obviously, there are many ways a show can make money, but I've always felt that toy sales are the main measure of success/failure for Toei. That is, TV ratings now mean little, given online viewing. But if you do not limit yourself to the toys themselves and look at the entire merch, as well as the participation of characters in all sorts of events, and so on, it turns out that it is almost impossible for an ordinary fan to figure out which tokusatsu show is successful and which is not. In the end, only the Toei bosses would know the truth.

Completely different shows and company and situation, but something this reminded me of.

Way back when, when the US basic cable channel AMC was airing Mad Men, Breaking Bad and Walking Dead all at the same time, there was a bit of a controversy about AMC massively slashing the budget for Walking Dead and running out the creative staff.

At the time all three shows were big, but Walking Dead was massive and was the biggest show on TV. Breaking Bad and Mad Men were more prestige type things but Walking Dead was prestigious and a cash cow. (Massively oversimplifying here). It was really weird that the budget would be cut for the biggest show on the network and the budgets would be left alone for the comparatively smaller ones.

Turns out there was a whole bunch of behind the scenes business reasons for it: AMC wholly owned walking dead, while it was licensing out from another studio for the other two shows. Anyway, my point with this tangent is that it?s not unheard of for a big money maker show to get nickel and dimed, while money is lavished on a smaller show. Is it 100% relevant to this situation? Probably not, but I just like to share.

Doctor Who had cash problems during the 12th Doctor with props and what not but geven the cheap build they still put out great year runs each year it was on.

On another note I watched both PR and SS so I don't miss any episodes.

Now I'm full on Toei with non stop new ones all the time and no weeks off. I picked up Zen recently so I'm a year behind. Kyo - Zen has been non stop new for me with Don Bros due in April or May.

I can also remember the DC superhero shows from the CW. The most popular were Arrow and The Flash (the latter was for some time the most viewed show on the channel), but at the same time, they were significantly less spent on them than on Supergirl and Black Lightning. And also than Stargirl and "Superman and Lois", but in their case HBO MAX throws money. And the reason is that popular shows already had a regular audience who would continue to watch, albeit laughing at ridiculous costumes, cheap special effects and stupid plot (screenwriters also cost money), while a lesser-known series had to work hard to keep viewers attention. .