If you are a child of the 1990s, you'll recall the smash hit Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, adapted from the Japanese
Kyoryu Sentai Zyuranger.
Zyuranger was not the first attempt to localize Japanese sentai shows for American audiences. Its predecessor
Choujin Sentai Jetman almost became Power Rangers; both the 1984 series
Choudenshi Bioman and 1989 series
Kousoku Sentai Turboranger were also considered to be adapted for Western audiences.
Believe it or not, the late Stan Lee almost brought sentai to America in the 1980s!
This is an image from the 1981 Super Sentai show
Taiyou Sentai Sun Vulcan. This is notable as the team here was all-male and had three members instead of the usual five. Anyway, Stan Lee got the jump on Haim Saban by proposing this series be exported to the USA; Marvel did hold copyrights to the show as they had co-produced it with Toei. What Lee wanted to do was the same with Power Rangers -new footage would be filmed with a cast of American actors as the character and then English dubbed footage from the original Japanese production of the suited heroes, monsters, mecha, etc would be spliced in. Lee shopped this idea around to networks including HBO which had little original programming in the 1980s.
Let's say as a POD that Stan Lee succeeds and a localized dub of Sun Vulcan hits the USA:
1. How would Sun Vulcan fare on cable television like HBO? How would Sun Vulcan fare in syndication?
2. How would Sun Vulcan perform overall? In the 1980s, there would have been significant competition from other children's programming, especially the now cult favorites like Masters of the Universe, GI Joe, Transformers, Thundercats, Ninja Turtles, etc.
3. Does the success or failure of Sun Vulcan butterfly away Saban's Power Rangers in the 1990s?