the collection

how some power rangers toys drove us mad in 1995

1995. The Mighty Morphin Power Rangers were all the rage among the five-year old demographic and the movie just came out, so McDonald’s jumped all over that and was offering some cheesy Power Rangers toys with their Happy Meals. There was a belt and a siren and some other stuff I don’t remember. But that’s not important. What matters is they also had power zords. Not just zords. POWER ZORDS. There were six of them at just $1.49 each. However, you could only buy one at a time and they were introduced weekly. It’s like McDonald’s wanted to make a game out of it, a game parents were sure to lose. Just let me buy all six zords at once and be done with it. But, no. They were going to make us eat our weight in crappy cheeseburgers in order to make our children happy.

Keep in mind, this started out as a quest For The Children.

Now, you need to know this about me: I was, before being reformed, an obsessive collector. If I started a collection, I had to finish it. It’s why I own The Phantom Menace and a case of pogs and three different versions of one Type O Negative album. So by going to McDonald’s that first week to make that initial purchase the first of six zords therefore starting a collection, I was dooming myself to six weeks of fast food.

1. Yellow Ranger, Bear Ninjazord
2. Pink Ranger, Crane Ninjazord
3. Red Ranger, Ape Ninjazord
4. Black Ranger, Frog Ninjazord
5. Blue Ranger, Wolf Ninjazord
6. White Ranger, Falcon Ninjazord

That was the order in which they would introduce the toys. We — I mean my kids — wanted that White Ranger Ninjazord more than anything else, so of course it was last. Six weeks. Six long weeks.

Thankfully, my best friend Barbara was just as obsessive as I was when it came to collecting things. I mean, our kids really wanted these things. Power Rangers were all the rage. They were huge. It was like one day the kids were watching Barney and singing songs about manners and the next day they were throwing nunchucks at their grandmother. They were fixated. And they wanted the toys. Seriously. They wanted them. They had to have them. Not me. It’s not like I was obsessed with the White Ranger or anything. Not at all. Not me.

So we went to McDonald’s. Often. We’d check in to see if they introduced the new Ranger yet. Sometimes we’d make the kid behind the counter show us the box she was pulling the zords out of so we could see if there were any colors in there she missed. We’d beg them to tell us which day the truck with the new zords were coming. We We went for breakfast. We went for lunch. We went for dinner. There was no rhyme or reason for the time they would drag the new zords out and sometimes they’d have one color in the morning and another at night. Our kids became fixtures in the ball pit. We had our own table. At one point we realized how sad the whole scenario was.

So we started hitting other McDonald’s.

We noticed some stores were using different release schedules and after using an Excel spreadsheet to figure out where and when the toys would be released, we were able to nearly finish the collection after just three short weeks of cheeseburgers and french fries. But there was still the issue of the White Ranger to deal with. It seems everyone wanted that one and it was hard to get. When we hit the McDonald’s in my town the Friday it was supposed to come out, they were already gone. What the hell? It’s 9am, what do you mean you are sold out? Barbara said I got a crazed look in my eyes. Too much fast food will do that to you.

So we did what any parent who blurred the line between what their kids’ needs and their own wants are and drove all around Long Island, visiting as many McDonald’s as possible. The kids had long ago become sick of ball pits and sick of french fries. They stopped caring about the zords back at week three. But we had to go on. We had to finish the collection. We had to have the White Ranger zord.

We clocked about 100 miles on my friend’s car that day driving from one end of Long Island to the other. Everywhere we went, the White Ranger was gone. The kids were crying to go home. We were cruising the Southern State Parkway with four crying kids — two five years olds and two three year olds — one of whom was puking up a cheeseburger and one who said she was refusing to hold in her pee if we didn’t get her home right now. My friend and I looked at each other with a “what the hell is wrong with us” stare. We’re fucking crazy. There’s something wrong with us. Let’s get these kids home.

We were on our way home, feeling somewhat defeated when Barbara spotted it. A McDonald’s. Hidden away in a shopping center. She swerved into the turning lane before I could even mutter “what’s one last stop going to matter now? The car is already covered in puke and pee and french fries.” We went through the drive through. I held my breath as Barbara asked.

SCORE!!

They had the White Ranger! High fives!! We turned around to celebrate with the kids, but three of them were asleep and the other one was whispering something like “Kill the Power Rangers” over and over again.

It was worth it. I could sleep at night again knowing my collection was complete. I no longer had to look at the Zords lined up on my son’s shelf and break out in hives knowing there was one missing. The elusive White Ranger had been found. All it took was about 40 Happy Meals, three tanks of gas and one car detailing.

You don’t even want to know what happened when Taco Bell had Star Wars toys.

I will never tell that story. Ever.