Warning: Contains mild spoilers of Might Morphin Power Rangers #101!In the early 1990s Mighty Morphin Power Rangers exploded onto afternoon television with a mixture of colorful heroes, giant robot fights, and weekly one-note storylines. As fun as the program was, it was noticeably one dimensional in the portrayal of its heroes but especially its villains. Now, one comic is explicitly calling out the franchise’s most useless enemies.
The Putty Patrollers, often shortened to Putties, were the standard and interchangeable henchmen deployed by Rita Repulsa in the original Mighty Morphin Power Rangers series. They were called Putties because they were literally made from clay and were mass-produced in the Monster-Matic machine. Though some Putties displayed a level of individuality and skill, for the most part they were typically nothing more than easily defeated cannon fodder in Rita’s monster army. Over the years different types of Putties have been used to go up against the Power Rangers, such as the Z Putties and the Foot Ninja Putties, which appeared in the Power Rangers and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles crossover event. However, most versions have proved to be similarly useless, even in large numbers.
Now in Mighty Morphin Power Rangers #101 from BOOM! Studios, that problem is being specifically called out by the second Yellow Ranger, Aisha Campbell. The issue is written by Melissa Flores with art by Simona Di Gianfelice, and sees the Rangers attack Zedd’s fortress, only to be confronted with a horde of Putty-esque enemies. As they attack, Aisha quips, “Nameless, homogenous goons. How original…” in a line that not only describes their current predicament, but is a huge meta callout to the early ’90s adventures of the Power Rangers in general.
The Power Rangers’ Putties Were A Side Effect Of Low Budgets
Mighty Morphin Power Rangers debuted on August 28, 1993, as part of the brand new Fox Kids programming lineup. Created by Saban Entertainment it was no secret that the show existed mostly to sell action figures and toys, which it was incredibly successful at doing. The fight footage, costumes, and props were mostly rescued from the 1970s Japanese television show, Super Sentai. This use of recycled footage limited the scope and story possibilities for the early iteration of the Power Rangers, which forced episodes to follow a very tight narrative script. Nowhere was this more obvious than in the use of the show’s recurring use of the Putties. Once a week they were easily defeated with the help of cheap special effects and flip kicks, and the show’s reliance on them had a lot to do with the limited Super Sentai footage and props that were available to the creative team. That meant that they were a recurring nuisance that never seemed to accomplish anything more than eating up an episode’s runtime.
The format for Mighty Morphin Power Rangers would eventually change as the show’s popularity took off and the creators had more money and props to move away from two-dimensional plots and bad guys, reducing its reliance on stock footage and the Putties. However, that change also just served to highlight even more that the Putties were never anything more than useless annoyances to Mighty Morphin Power Rangers‘ protagonist and audience, or as Alisha so aptly put it “so original.”
Mighty Morphin Power Rangers #101 is available now from BOOM! Studios.
