When I was a young’n, I was completely and utterly scarred by the terrifying visage of Johnny Sokko’s giant robot (known in Japan by the slightly unimpressive nomenclature Giant Robo”), a severe face the likes of which I wouldn’t encounter again until the first time my child repeated one of my jokes to my mother-in-law.  It was, understandably, several years before I recovered from that trauma sufficiently to really appreciate the subtle poetry of men in rubbery suits crashing through cardboard cityscapes, but eventually (with the help of an enormous Gaiking action figure) I had my giant robot epiphany, which is also the name of my new Mumford and Sons cover band  Still, these days the robotic leviathans are all over the place, to the point where it is said that chick dig the giant robot cars, which begs today’s query…

The MS-QOTD (pronounced as always, “misquoted”) still loves that the Power Rangers got the concept of the Megazord from Spider-Man, asking: Who’s the awesomest giant robot of them all?

Saturday morning, the Widget and I sat down to watch the first episode of the latest incarnation of Power Rangers, the hilariously named ‘Power Rangers: Megaforce.’  While I was wondering if we’d get a cameo from Barry Bostwick, the child was pretty entertained by it all, and it was not a bad episode at all.  It featured some old-school call-backs to the first season of Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers, some things that seemed to be flash-forwards, and some attractive leads, albeit limited in their acting skill.  After 20 seasons, the show has outlasted dozens of imitators and has a pretty impressive track record even after jumping from network to network and production company to production company.  All told, they’ve more than quadrupled the X-Men’s Saturday morning run, yet still get no respect.

The MS-QOTD (pronounced, as always, “misquoted”) expects the usual self-defeating nerd-on-nerd hate about the Rangers, but is braced for impact, asking: If you saw it, how’d you feel about Megaforce Episode One?  If you didn’t see it, why not?

It’s always interesting to see early appearances of characters we know and love.  Superman’s chest symbol evolved for several years before turning into the stylized yellow fishies we all know and love, Spock was seen openly smiling in ‘The Cage’ and the Thing was a lumpy clay beast for quite some time.  Though Power Rangers/Sentai as we know it started a couple years earlier, the first Super Sentai series was Battle Fever J, a show notable for a few of these kind of inconsistencies, notably an Orange Ranger and a full-helmet wig for the Pink Ranger (which, frankly, always gives me a case of the screaming heebie-jeebies.)

The MS-QOTD (pronounced, as always, “misquoted”) always thought that the skirt costume on Star Trek: TNG’s male crewmen were fair play for the ladies, asking: What are your favorite examples of not-quite-finalized premises in pop culture?