How Toys Took Over Hollywood

Many of today’s blockbusters make as much profit from selling toys as they do from selling tickets. Robbie Collin investigates

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Haim Saban turned on the TV in his hotel room and couldn’t believe what he saw. It was 1985, and the Israeli-American entrepreneur was in Tokyo on a business trip: he was a self-described “cartoon schlepper”, who bought the rights to Japanese children’s animated shows and released them in the West with new English voice tracks. It was a decent living – enough to sustain his production company. But what he was watching now would make him a billionaire: a children’s programme, called Super-Electron Bioman, about five brightly coloured warriors who fought giant monsters with a giant robot. But it wasn’t a cartoon. The monsters and robot might have been swathed in rubber and plastic, but beneath the suits were real actors.

Saban knew that by re-dubbing a cartoon, its foreign origins could easily be concealed. His billion-dollar brainwave was realising that a live action show – specifically this one, with its jumpsuit clad, completely unidentifiable heroes – could be handled the same way. Back in California, he shot new story scenes with an American cast, edited in the fight scenes from Super-Electron Bioman, and touted the result around the television networks. None would touch it. But Saban knew he was onto something – and six years later tried again with Dinosaur Squadron Zyuranger, another series from the same Japanese franchise. This one clicked. Mighty Morphin Power Rangers (as Saban renamed it) became an international hit. For a kids’ show, it was staggeringly more violent than anything else around. But its three-and-up audience found the violence thrilling rather than scary. The monsters might have knocked over skyscrapers as if they were shoeboxes, but they weren’t threatening in the slightest. They looked like toys.

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