More than three decades since it changed children's television, Power Rangers still holds some secrets. Since 2021, Morphin Museum has archived and displayed props, scripts, concept art, dailies and other ephemera on social media. Recently, the anonymous collective opened up a Patreon to support their preservation efforts. They were reluctant to appear on an episode of Rangercast -- they prefer to keep the focus on the artifacts rather than themselves and say anonymity helps them acquire material. However, they were happy to answer our questions via email.
What is Morphin Museum, for those who haven't heard of it?
The Morphin Museum is a digital-first, fan-run archive aiming to preserve Power Rangers history. Our work prioritizes rare artifacts from production â from footage to scripts, press materials, props, costumes, and everything in between â while also showing love to the toys, media, and collectibles we remember growing up with.
The goal is to continue to keep the legacy of the franchise alive by digitizing it for future generations to explore and enjoy, and also making it universally accessible to audiences worldwide. While conventions have been a great avenue for fans to meet their favorite cast and crew from the show, the reality is that not everyone has that access and opportunity â be that due to cost, proximity, or other prohibiting factors. So it was a mandate of ours from the beginning to create a venue that was interactive from anywhere in the world, free of charge. There is no exclusive content we offer that can be unlocked with money â every Morphin Museum visitor has access to the same material.
To the extent you feel comfortable, who is Morphin Museum? How many people are involved?
Thatâs a somewhat complicated answer. The Museum began as the seed of an idea originating from a single fan who began collecting on Day 1 in 1993. After decades of building their burgeoning collection and acquiring a number of rare and unique pieces along the way, they were looking for an outlet to share that joy and privilege. Having a collection is great â but for them, what fun is a massive collection when itâs collecting dust and hidden away for one single person to enjoy? Especially in the age of social media and accessibility. After all â nobody lives forever, and we wanted to give back to the beloved brand and its community that practically raised us in those early days.
And so the idea of a web-based museum founded on social media came to be, along with establishing both public and private partnerships with a collective of collaborators as time went on â which is to say, not everything you find at the Morphin Museum is sourced from a single collection. Short of a blank check from Anton Mercer or Andrew Hartford or even Billy Cranston, itâs not realistic for any one fan to have the goal of âowning it allâ â so we quickly adopted the mantra of the Museum being powered by private collections via a collective of fans who have acquired their own treasures over the years; using the museum to maximize our efforts and output to offer the best of the best artifacts in existence across the globe. Which is to say â it really does take a village, and ours grows as the museum grows.
How and when did you begin this work? What kind of collections were you starting with?
Our originating collection started like many others â with the basic toys and collectibles available in 1993 during MMPRâs heyday. That collection only began to expand into artifacts from production circa 2003, when productionâs move to New Zealand forced a purge of rare materials on eBay â including among other things props, costumes, and approximately 200+ VHS tapes roughly spanning from Lightspeed Rescue through Wild Force.
The Morphin Museum itself was a long-gestating concept. The @MorphinMuseum socials were originally reserved as early as September 2018 but didnât launch until Power Rangers Day in August 2021 â nearly three years later. As weâve grown to where we are today, weâve expanded well beyond the original founding collection â having since both acquired and been loaned more materials to exhibit.
Give fans a sense of how large your archive is. How many videotapes, for example?
Generally speaking, the expansion of the archive is an ongoing effort. We currently have roughly 250-plus VHS Tapes and DVDs weâre working through, though we hope to continue growing that number. The person behind the X account PR Media Info has been an absolutely critical part of the Power Rangers Preservation Project specifically, offering up her archival skills to digitize materials that were sitting in a basement for 20 years. And digitization is a real-time thing. Not only do those formats have to be digitized, but they have to be formatted, sorted, and ultimately reviewed to familiarize ourselves with whatâs on each tape and its proverbial "value" to the fandom to assess next steps.
Why is the archival of this material important to you?
Power Rangers has been a constant influence on our lives over the past three decades. It has such a rich, deep history and cultural relevance; and it's our honor to contribute to that legacy by preserving it for the community as it is, the community in its many forms over the past three decades, and whatever form the community may take in the future. As physical media continues to disappear and streaming access proves unreliable as a dependable permanent home, and especially as the franchise stalls without any kind of production for the first time in 30-plus years, itâs essentially become the communityâs responsibility to step up and do the work to make sure Power Rangers lives on (#PowerMonth and #ILovePowerRangers being great examples). That responsibility isnât for everyone, and thatâs okay! But if left up to the devices of <insert current brand ownership here>, weâd have nothing left as the brand withered and died with zero fanfare â and weâd do anything in our power to stop that from happening.
Further, teamwork has always been a hallmark of the Power Rangers brand â and thatâs exactly what it takes to tackle a project like this. No one person is capable of every single skill involved; itâs a tried and true group effort. We donât just want to preserve raw dailies, for example. We want to be able to take what we find and team up with talented fans who can help realize that footage the way it was meant to be seen, in-context. So when we released the raw footage of original Princess Shayla Natasha Allasâ beauty shot, meant for the Wild Force opening credits, it was important to us to try and go a step further and work with a talented fan like Kadamâs Edits to see what that footage would look like with the styled text credit over the footage, dropped into the Wild Force opening credits for context.
In honor of [Guardians of the] Earth Day, weâre upcycling unseen footage of Original âPrincess Shaylaâ Natasha Allas from Wild Force!
While the role was ultimately recast with Ann Marie Crouch as Princess Shayla, the character was also entirely redesigned â swapping out the⌠pic.twitter.com/95LL6B2dt2â The Morphin âĄď¸ Museum (@morphinmuseum) April 22, 2024
For some of the other raw dailies in the pipeline, we donât just want to present the raw scenes â we aim to try and edit them into something cohesive so that they can be enjoyed as they were originally intended. Lost morph footage? Letâs try and find a fan who might want to spend some time working with that footage to see if they can create VFX tests of what that could have looked like! Itâs not a perfect science, as VHS transfers are rarely lossless â but itâs better than disappearing into the ether completely, never having been seen by the fans that love the show so much.
You've been tipping some Ark of the Covenant-level finds, like the Bio-Man pilot, things that fans aren't even 100% sure are out there to find. Without giving away too much about sources and methods, so to speak, how do you do it? Is there something you find that surprises even you?
Thus far, it really has boiled down to timing, luck, and relationships. Our philosophy and value proposition have gone a long way.
What is your white whale?
Hard to say, as this is a pretty subjective question. There are plenty of personal preferences, which wouldnât necessarily align with the general consensus of what the fandom at large would deem worthy of a âgrailâ label.
In terms of footage, anything unseen at this point is truly a treasure. The unexpected, especially. Lost Footage of Patricia Ja Lee / Cassie and the other Rangers in the original Power of Pink Ending would be fantastic. Countdown to Destruction Deleted Scenes â if they even exist. Even just scenes in general that were cut for time without having ever seen the light of day.
In terms of physical pieces, hero props and costumes are obviously the ideal there. Hero Suits (Rangers, Zords, Villains, etc.) are extremely rare and hard to come by, as theyâve historically been fiercely guarded by production for a variety of reasons. Custom costumes like the Lightspeed Jackets or Time Force Officer Uniforms, SPD Cadet Uniforms, or Nina Storm Training Uniforms would be incredible. Anything related to US originals like the Titanium Ranger or the Spirit Rangers. Miniatures are great too â weâd love to uncover the Lightspeed Aquabase miniature from the PRLR finale. But again, with a 30-year span of entry points for fans of all ages, the answers to this question are infinite. Weâre ultimately grateful for anything and everything that comes our way!
Your work involves a lot of analog materials. VHS tape degrades, foam rubber decays, paper yellows. How much of your work is a race against time?
Time is the biggest enemy of a project like ours; not necessarily due to degradation per se, although that is a very real constant concern. Arguably more concerning is that with each passing day, the likelihood increases that artifacts will be forgotten about, sold off into private collections, or even tossed out. Storage units and closets get emptied. Things people held onto for 10, 20, 30 years with no proper outlet to share lose their appeal. People pass away without ever sharing or possibly even knowing what they had, or leaving those items to people who donât care. Nobody lives forever; and keeping pieces secret and private â though understandable â is the easiest way to ensure those pieces are inevitably lost to time.
How much access have you been able to get to archival material from the show's 20 years in New Zealand?
More than youâd think, but not as much as youâd hope â especially when it comes to physical items like props and costumes. Not only is material from NZ harder to come by in the physical sense due to the overseas distance between NZ and the states; but the more recent the project, the more difficult it is to acquire content as people are more reluctant to âbreakâ and rules or contracts. So much time has passed since the first decade of the show that most of those folks look back with nostalgia and arenât concerned about any ramifications of releasing [formerly] confidential materials. On the flip side, Disney was and is notoriously litigious, and many NDAs signed within the last decade or two may still stand to some degree; so people on more recent iterations arenât as forthcoming with NZ era materials. As more time passes, however, more of that content continues to be unlocked.
To date, most of the things Morphin Museum has shared have been posted on X and Instagram. Are there plans to move all those photos and videos to a centralized website? Has there been any thought given to a physical exhibition like the ones Greg Aronowitz, Ron Kenan and even Hasbro have had at Power Morphicon?
Moving to an interactive website is absolutely among our longer-term goals; itâs just a massive undertaking that requires a huge amount of time and sufficient funding to do it properly. Instagram was originally created as our primary platform as it was the path of least resistance and most readily accessible. A website requires more work and more budget of course; neither of which are out of the realm of possibility, but harder to realize in the short-term when we donât have the funding to exclusively dedicate resources. Being able to tag exhibits and make them searchable is a function that social media isnât really built for; so yes, a hub is in the ideal futurecast!
As far as physical pop-ups â that too is something weâd like to realize at some point, in some form. A permanent museum/installation will never be monetarily sustainable as is evidenced by Toei Hero World, for example; so pop-ups like PMC are really the only feasible execution at present. We donât have the budget to exhibit, however, and would rather allocate funds to developing exhibits that can be experienced by everyone rather than a limited audience. Regardless, we have not been approached by any conventions to exhibit! Weâre primarily based in Los Angeles however, so PMC would be the most likely future pop-up.
That said, another consideration would be that the majority of our exhibits are photos, videos, and scans â not as dynamic as a physical presence like Hasbroâs PMC 2018 Mini-Museum, for example. So even given the opportunity, thereâs not necessarily a guarantee that at least at this present moment, a physical experience would properly represent the museum. But weâre open to the concept.
Hasbro had their exhibition at PMC in 2018 but they've done little with that material since and, judging by their recent announcement, might never do anything with it again. How worried are you about the fate of all the suits, props and other items former showrunner Simon Bennett said were sent back to the States?
To our understanding, warehouses leveraged during the first Saban Era continued to be rented throughout the duration of production in New Zealand rather than shipping over a decadeâs worth of archives, which is supposedly where Hasbro sourced several of its exhibits for PMC 2018 from â and presumably, where they might have stored the props and costumes sent back to the US after Cosmic Fury wrapped. How long that warehouse is safe for without a show in production is anyoneâs guess â but as you said, itâs worrying that by the time we find out what happens to it all, it will already have been tossed in the literal woodchipper like the rest of US and NZ production.
We were crushed to read of the mass trashing of sets and costumes from New Zealand though â particularly because we have local folks in our network who could have saved some items on our behalf that instead were destroyed forever. And of course, because the same fate befell MMPR Productions 20-plus years ago when we lost irreplaceable history in bulk for the first time. We wouldâve done anything to save any amount of artifacts from that horrible fate.
What kind of costs go into acquiring exhibits?
The short answer is â it depends. Many items acquired in the founding collection were perhaps considered expensive back in the day, but are a steal compared to what those same items would sell for now. Unfortunately, most items up for public sale at this point come at astronomical and irrational price points, putting a hard limit on how much can be responsibly acquired.
That said, as the Museum continues to grow, weâve been extremely fortunate to leverage both private relationships built over the past three decades, in addition to the reputation weâve built for ourselves, to become the go-to archival resource for cast and crew; either drastically lowering the price point for certain acquisitions, or eliminating costs entirely in favor of donating those materials to our mission out of love for the franchise and its following.
Fans over the years have come into a number of things either at auctions or at conventions or through random encounters. What sorts of items is Morphin Museum looking for and how can fans help?
This probably isnât a helpful answer, but itâs true â anything! Broadly speaking, we really are interested in everything. Random artifacts from production like scripts, props, and costumes, to the more random â studio ID cards, contact lists, dressing room signage; you name it, weâll take it. Of course, the rarer the better; especially when it comes to hero pieces like full costumes.
Of course, we realize collectors are largely in the game for collecting for themselves and being able to publicly claim ownership of iconic pieces of history; which goes back to what we said about being realistic about the Morphin Museum never being able to own everything, and therefor prioritizing more regular work with sponsors and collaborators interested in being able to showcase their pieces through the museum and our platform instead. Some collectors wish to remain anonymous, and weâre happy to keep them that way! But as part of the museum, we do require all exhibits to be photographed or recorded by us first-hand; in other words, you wonât find us reposting photos repurposed from auctions or listings. All of our media is produced in-house in order to validate provenance unless specifically noted.
So going back to how fans can help â if they have material[s] theyâre interested in us showcasing and archiving, they should get in touch to discuss how we can document those pieces for the museum. And if they see a piece of history become publicly available through auctions or other sales, weâd appreciate them direct messaging links and information our way in the event weâre able to acquire!
You recently launched a Patreon. Talk about what that will support and allow you to do.
In terms of production and operations, the best explanation comes from looking at the Priority Triangle of Speed, Cost, and Quality. Typically speaking, youâre going to sacrifice one of those three tiers in favor of the other two â we might be able to produce content like the Power Rangers Preservation Project at low cost and a high-quality yield, but at the expense of speed. It took a year and a half to get as far as we have on our current batches of content, for example. By launching a Patreon, we hope to maintain or exceed our level of quality with a higher rate of output made possible by that additional funding.
The content will continue to be produced regardless of course; but without outside funding at this particular point, speed will continue to be sacrificed in favor of prioritizing those other tiers. To be completely transparent, we have full-time jobs and lives outside of the museum; so more regular outside funding affords us the resource of time to dedicate to developing exhibits that weâve acquired that are currently in an extensive backlog of content. Weâd love for the Morphin Museum to be our full-time job; and while that will never be the case -- again, save for a mysterious benefactor -- Patreon tiers add up and will make it easier for us to continue making that time.
In terms of priority costs, those primarily relate to the Power Rangers Preservation Project and making sure PR Media Info has everything she needs to do her work without needing to self-fund materials like DVDs, shipping, and hard drives as our content catalog continues to grow. Beyond that, funds raised will ultimately be reinvested back into the Museum in some capacity â be that going toward acquisitions directly, developing infrastructure like our future goal of having a comprehensively navigable website, or covering costs incurred by hosting channels on different platforms.
Is there anything else you want fans to know?
We said before that it takes a village to do what we do, and weâd be remiss to not make a point to acknowledge that we include our followers and supporters in that assessment. We may have begun as a means to share the founding collection, but the reality is that the Morphin Museum is all of ours. It belongs to the Power Rangers Community â past, present, and future â and we couldnât do what we do without the support and goodwill of each and every person who has engaged with us. So thank you for reaching out to help us share our mission and our message, and thank you to everyone reading who has ever shared, liked, or viewed our content. Together, we are more!
This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.
