The History and Controversy of Captain Power 

I never had the VHS tapes and the show was cancelled pretty quickly in my area. I really liked the toys, they went well with other lines of the time.

Were these the VHS tapes where it was like a cartoon flying mission that tried to be like a video game that you played with the toy ship?

Yes @@arturomail

I didn't know that Dr. Lyman Taggart was Lord Dread's real name. Adult language was also included. But not foul language.

Agreed. She doesn’t look like she blinks very often. Creepy.

Now its blue haired freaks and lesbian SJWs that do it.

Parents bitching too much

@@hia5235 It’s not as big of a problem as you like to pretend it is. Nice dog whistle though

Do you want to know the real truth what was problem with 80's cartoons and series?The real problem never was about money,but xanophobic brainwashing american propaganda,where americans are showed as the 'heroes' and anyone ellse as a 'villians'.You can se that hipocritical double standard in every 80's and 90' movies like,top gun,gost busters 2,superman,and captain power.One of the worsts things that i have se was in 80's cartoon He-Man and the masters of the universe,where they have treat that blonde girl shera as the dummest person,by telling her that its mans job,and you could get hurt.Two other things in the He-Man was upseting to,one is where He-Man gives 'good advices' on the end of the show,like report anyone who touch yours private parts,so picture a situation with proctologist,and gineconogyst,with yours child.And the other one is how he's never identified as princ adam,even so he never wears a mask when he's transformed in the He-Man.So it make you ask yours self,what the fuck is wrong with this cartoon characters,are they all retarded,or just blind that they never noticed that princ adam is one and the only He-Man.PS:Some of the 80' shows where good then and stay good today,my favorite was ulysses 31,sport billy,bluffers,asterix and obelix,and evoks.But true masters of good quality cartoons where japanese,and remain japanese.

I now know that this sci-fi series contains adult situations.

I wanted a fighter jet, but I never got one.

The Lord Dredd vehicle was better, because you could aim better. Or. At least, I could.

The Phantom Striker! It was my prized possession as a kid. It really worked with the show, and if you got shot too many times, the pilot would actually eject.

I had the bad guys' jet and tank. I used to love that show........and then video games got better.

I remember it working like crap

When I was a kid i only saw 3 episodes in colombia and to this day I never knew the name or what it was about cuz I knew no english...after decades of wondering what it was I finally found it!

Yeah... I do remember that the CGI characters scared the shit out of me... xD

This is so great. I completely forgot about Captain Power BATTERIES NOT INCLUDED lol

I'd read that.

It kinda was lol

Now that they have destroyed that show over wrong think political character assassination and de personing. You are correct. Your comment has aged like the finest Bourbon or wine or 🧀 or whatever you like. 👍

Shhh make sure to NOT tell them THIS is what inspired Babylon 5. OMFG, did I let the pooty tat out of duh bag? Yes, I just did. POWER ON! ❤❤❤😂😂😂

lol

@@ventarfield7115 imagine thinking Gina Carano made that show 😂 that’s mighty fine brainwashing, though, you regurgitate bullshit very well.

And this is why I love my fellow Gen Xers! You fucking get it!

So loved exo squad, I wished they made a live action movie of pirates of the darkwater.

Captain Power was 80's, my friend.

Exo squad was awesome 👍👍👍

Loved Pirates of Darkwater

Soar-on was the first computer-animated character in a live-action TV series.

​@@howardbeatman2820 Oh, that is very cool!

Ditto to many of the above... though I didn't own all of it. I owned the gun and a few figures.

Unfortunately the the toys didn't take off in Australia otherwise I would have wanted them. Especially Saoron because he looked so awesome. But damn I loved the show. And even rented the pilot a couple of times on video.

Me either...I love the 📼 setup and my canopy ejecting all over the house

@Cr6479 Very much the opposite.

...Jessica Steen, she also played in sci-fi series Earth 2 (1994)...

Nothing to do with that spandex I'm sure... ;) but yeah me too lol

I seem to recall there was an episode where Pilot sacrificed herself for her comrades. Pretty grown up for a kids show...it impressed me enough that ever since whenever I've seen Jessica Steen in anything I say "Oh yeah, I really liked her in Captain Power..."

and then super happy to see her in Armageddon threatening to kick Bear in the balls.

I loved Captain Power And The Soldiers Of The Future. The show really was ahead of it's time. I'm surprised that it hasn't been rebooted as a movie yet.

Yes it for sure as hell was.

JMS was the best. Though not so much at finishing things though.

#Facts

lol ptsd flashback in coming.

Ditto as a poor white boy. 36 in 2021.

I got a Captain Power figure on his base just few months ago (I'm 38). I love it so much.

2022, age 43, grew in Mexico City, loved the show -regardless of the shitty dubbing - and knew about the interaction back then and, forever hated a neighbor kid whose relatives got him the toys while on a "shopping trip" to the States yet he knew nothing about the show, he even used the "gun" to play "laser tag" vs my lil brother and moi... loathe him even more now for his not knowing back then the historic value of those toys, I mean, at age 10 I already knew my SW's and Joe's would be worth something someday XD

I'm 42 and watched this in Australia back then, and I never even knew there were toys for it, let alone laser games for TV and figures. But I still loved the show on its own. Annoyingly, most of my friends never even remembered it by our 20s and 30s. I still get blank looks now whenever I ask an Aussie my age if they ever saw it.

glad to see the interactive part wasn’t a part of my imagination 😂 great memories though

I have different 4 tapes and loved playing them over and over .

I remember those training tapes as being mail-order optional. I had level 1, 2 and 3, but only had 2 toys. I’m probably remembering that wrong though. The animation was superb though. I watched the hell out of those.

The whole show is on DVD along with a great retrospective documentary. I can't recommend it highly enough. The show aged better than you would expect.

@@SpockvsEgon Actually I bet it did age well thanks to the great animation and timely themes. I'd love to watch this show again as an adult.

Ha - I just commented on the VHS tape, it was great!

I believe it was called the Soaron Sky Sentry. Apart from the show, "training" videos were produced which gave you practice with your PowerJet XT-7 and introduced you to the main enemies. The videos were immersive and I suspect a large budget was set aside for the incredible animated sequences. Look them up on RU-vid.

I vaguely remember a scene where a guy was digitized, then they brought him back but he was missing his arm... I was like Damn!

Loved this show when I was 10

@@KydNotorious The premise was that all of humanity was going to be stored digitally then downloaded into perfect robot bodies. The twist was that Overmind wasn't storing the information. He felt humanity needed to be wiped out, he was just telling Dredd what he needed to hear to keep things going until it was too late. The finale was going to require Captain Power and Dredd to team up to fight against Overmind. Imagine that reveal to a kid. "Yeah, remember how we were going to save everybody who was digitized? There's nothing to save. There never was." Damn I wish they'd gotten more seasons.

Now man is digitizing himself

How does this not have more likes?

But franz Ferdinand isn't anywhere near metal... For that matter neither are Poison and Stryper.

@@stephenjwarnecki7367 Stryper is a Christian Metal band. Poison is debatable. Franz Ferdinand I agree with, though. They're straight rock.

@@OtakuUnitedStudioI know that they're "cristian metal", but im very particular about how i classify Heavy Metal & Punk. Stryper are as Metal as Poison. I like both bands. I just wouldnt call them Metal

@@stephenjwarnecki7367 What are they called then?

That's okay, I just bought 40 Star Wars figures online and got another two at the store. Are they for my nieces and nephews? Of course, when I die.

@Advant Garde Trust me, they have.

Me: _(Looks at the small army of painted Gundam models on my shelf I've accrued over the pandemic)_ Yeah. Haha. Children. What a bunch of morons.

POWERRRR UP!

That was awesome!

Thanks man, it seems like you had a good childhood full of joy and love, poverty-stricken is a mere fase, it build character.

you had a nice family, supportive on the hobby.

It was a pretty dope show...

Weeeeeeeeeeelllllll Kyle's mom's a bitch, she's a big fat bitch, she's the biggest bitch in the whole wide world......

the cartoons sucked though. nothing of value was lost. in fact it paved the way for cartoons becoming a broader art form instead of just commercials for kids.

The birth of the SJW was the 80s.

@@DVSnark lmao

That's what the left is all about.

He went on to write the dub for Naruto.

That kid was the oldest son in The Great Outdoors movie.

mantis999999999 holy shit bro I got to test these too along with Inhumanoids n battlebeasts n u wanna hear some crazy shit I tested them in school too but I was in Catholic School they musta paid my school some good money cuz they're definitely not the type of toys that look like something Catholic priests n nuns would normally approve of lol

LOL, could never afford these but I loved Battle Beasts since you always got two.

I too was in a private school and was used as a tester. strange, maybe we were targeted because they thought our parents could afford the high toy price?

mantis999999999 no one assumed you were drugged nitwit

Zoes Dada what?

What's likely holding it back is that due to how the digital effects were created its impossible to do present the show in HD, without re-rendering the special effects from scratch. Without an HD version, it's unlikely that it'll ever hit the streamers.

@@heroesytumbas Butthurt caucasoid says what?

Netflix is shit.

Peter Kuplowsky, the show was likely shot on a 16 mm film, back then a lot of the TV shows were made that way. You don't have to re-render something you can easily scan from the film negatives in HD quality.

It should be rebooted as a movie. With the visual effects and technology of today, a Captain Power movie could be awesome.

Life's good when you're a -ninja block- target square.

Hello fellow human. I am not machine. Let us go do human things. Like eat food rations and drink water.

''Star Trek and Terminator meets He-Man And G.I. Joe'' sounds about right to me. Captain Power was ahead of it's time. I think it should be rebooted as a movie.

That was probably the pitch meeting.

Pilot died?! Dammit! Spoilers!!!

Yep, she was wounded when the bad guys found the secret base and sacrificed herself to (ostensibly) kill off one of the CGI robots (the flying silver one if I remember right). Oh crap, spoiler alert.

👍

You seem uncertain about that.

So would I but why did you put a question mark at the end of the sentence? Is that a question or are you uncertain that you would like to see a reboot?

I remember being sad the only female in the cast died.

Doesnt make it any less sad. That team all the men were also powerless to save her.

The saddest passing of a super hero. 😢 All she had to do was get out. 😭

spoiler alert

Yeah, that death was the first time I saw someone not win on TV, I think. A powerful moment.

isaac wilson this show actually birthed Babylon 5.

JMS was the story editor for this series and, since he was already a sci-fi fan, commissioned scripts which were far better than they had any right to be (one was the first cyberpunk story I ever saw on screen).

He was also behind the first season or 2 of Real Ghostbusters - you know, the GOOD episodes!

This show was actually a really cool watch.

Steel Panther has pretty much got them all covered.

I had a couple of those toys, like the giant uni-motorcycle cannon and a couple figures. Remember the cannon launched projectiles.

Pause the TV, in the late 80’s? Sounds bullshit

Diego S *captain

Power Rangers was a direct adaptation of the Super Sentai series. I used to watch Sentai turboranger long before power rangers debuted.

All i want is a Soaron figure!

Power Rangers come from Super Sentai. Super Sentai and Kamen Rider come from Spider Man. Bring them all together!

I know, right? It gives major Metal Hero vibes. If only toei would revive Metal Hero... Maybe they wil since Super Sentai is on it's last legs if Ryusouger fails, which toei is really worried about if that one TV Asahi guy warned on /krg/ a few months back.

@@TheMexicanLynx i would love to have the recent Kamen Rider Amazons feel if not the same team/production/writing do the adaptation

@@TheMexicanLynx Wait, it's on it's last legs? How did that happen?

@@scifiguy9000 TL;DR version is: Sentai hasn't pulled good numbers of Audience or Toy sales for a long while. Kyoryuger did good... in Korea, but not Japan itself. And the miserable failures of Neo Saban's Power Ranger efforts don't help matters either. According to a TV Asahi dude a while back who posted on /krg/ (among some info to check his identity was real), Ryusouger has to do "at least as good as ToQger" for Sentai to keep on going. And ToQger toy sales and audience numbers aren't exactly a high standard from what I gather.

Which is ironic seeing as how the actor who played Captain Power (Tim Dunigan) also played the role of Templeton "Faceman" Peck on the pilot episode of "The A-Team". He was replaced by Dirk Benedict afterwards.

Legendary

@Myrmadon you mean my spelling is wrong?

@Myrmadon English is not my native but I'm intrigued... can explain?

Beast Wars was on point. That, Mighty Max, and ExoSquad were my go to weekday morning shows. I was "sick" a lot more than I should've been during that era.

When these were brand new I was mesmerized by them once I played with the Powerjet and TV that Wal-Mart had set up on an endcap. But it was too expensive. A little later on, my Mom also bought me the toys at a discount retailer (sort of like Big Lots) after the line had been discontinued. The show was hard to find on TV so I rented the vhs tapes at first, but soon thereafter I saw a used tape for sale at a local video rental store and bought that. I loved this toyline, the interactive technology, and TV show. It is so underrated and under appreciated.

It’s really true. The TV show itself barely had any of the toy interactivity, I remember the main part you could get some play during was the end credits which featured a jet flying in the background. The show itself was quite good, legit sci-if adventure drama. It might have been better received without the toy line, and probably without the somewhat silly looking reflective metal costumes.

Pretty much all of this. Looking at it from a creative standpoint, this show took a lot of risk and innovated a lot of things that I give the team credit for. It was trying to create something new, something that required viewers to do more than just sit on their asses if they choose to but like so many good things, moral guardians come up and have to screech about it. Here's something they failed to mention; it wasn't as if Captain Power was the only show aimed at kids on. If kids couldn't get the accessories for it...who cared? There were other shows they could enjoy and be apart of. It wasn't as if Captain Power formed some elite part or division and even if those cliques formed it wasn't as if it never happened before. Kids, and people in general, are going to have their own little cliques of what they like and for every Captain Power fan there were going to be kids who thought it was stupid and didn't like it. Shit like this happens; outright trying to stifle a series isn't going to put an end to it. And as a final note, yes the same people complained about Power Rangers. They complained that even as heroic as they were they were still teaching kids to be violent because their fighting styles and weapons. Never bow down to moral guardians. Their intent isn't to protect but to make their personal grievances everyone else's grievances. If their intent is to save children or whatever, they would have invested the time and money on making their own 'safe' brands to show just how right and powerful they were but they can't do that. They can't do that because they don't have the creativity and for the most part they have an inkling of an idea that kids aren't going to like what they like and they stand no competition against more popular series and brands, or at least they don't think they do and are too cowardice to take the risk to do it. You know; the same risks some of these series made to even get off the ground in the first place. Yeah, it was gimmicky but I still give them points for at least trying for something new, something interactive but at the same time didn't depend 100% on the toy in order to be watchable. Imagine had this continued and other companies picked up. We would have had some misses as with every trend but something like this having the chance to evolve more and more would lead to some pretty cool ideas. You just need a dedicated team behind it I guess.

Or maybe they were spot-on, and only the failure of the show prevented those fears from coming true.

No they were not spot on. I had the ships and didn't even use them all the time. You could watch the show just fine without them. As for the "violence" some adults are too stupid to realize a lot of children don't think about that thing.

I remember Captain Power most fondly. I even remember to this day the episode where one of the team was killed in action (I think it was the pilot or movie?) That was so unexpected that I couldn't believe that one of the characters, even a comparatively minor one, was actually dead. And then Transformers The Movie came out...

Why would you be ashamed to say that you watched it? I loved Captain Power And The Soldiers Of The Future as a kid. Hopefully, it will be rebooted as a movie.

I bought the dvd of the only season produced for television. Not ashamed to say it

It was just releasd on DVD in Germany - and i love to watch it now as much as i loved watching it back then.

@@Gunh3d1 Wow.....!!!.... Auf Deutsch.... wirklich ? I would love to have a copy . As a youngster I used to watch the spanish version of this series.

@@danny2m12 The set contains all episodes of the 1st season in german and english language and the never in Germany released 2nd season in english language only. Plus as bonus a movie cut together from some episodes that was released in Germany on VHS under the title 'Galaxy Heroes'. The picture quality is far from perfect but definitely beats all my VHS collections. And there is no better version available worldwide.

It really sucks how expensive it was. That was one of the big things my mom saved up for. Seems like I remember her spending about $200 on our set which is like buying a PS4 and a few games these days. I think she was hoping other kids we knew would get it so we could play it together (since a lot of their families had good money). The one other kid I knew that had it would never play it.

That was one of the main problems. The jet was really the main toy in the line but was so expensive. I managed to get it for a birthday present or something, then picked up the bad guy version when it was on the way out, drastically cut in price.

It wasn't a problem because you didn't need them to enjoy the show.

Should have just started shouting out generic random kid show title words. You would eventually hit the right combination.

@@KasumiKenshirou I'd think it would've done well as a show for teens and young adults. You could still sell toys since most of them collect merchandise anyway.