How About That Thing?

Yep, we’re talking Power Rangers again. But this time, I figured I’d take somewhat of a different direction. Instead of talking about a monster I liked, or I remembered for one thing or another for better or for worse, let’s talk about a monster the show creators seemed to like. The monster in question, of course, being Pudgy Pig.

FUN FACT: this episode of Power Rangers was actually the very first episode I ever saw. According to Another blog that covers Power Rangers episodes, and is probably a lot funnier than I am, there was apparently some sort of scheduling error, because this was supposed to be episode 6, but ended up being episode 2. For a series that basically coined the term “monster of the day”, though, all that really means is the power weapons show up without much of an explanation. I probably just assumed they were explained in the episodes I didn’t see, and made note of it.

The episode in question is known simply as “Food Fight”. It begins with our heroes working various booths at a food festival . All the profits go towards new equipment at a playground somewhere, so of course they’re volunteering. After all, they’re the ultimate goody-goods who every human being should aspire to be. Unlike those other two idiots who keep falling into cakes or tripping over themselves at comically inappropriate times.

The five split up into smaller groups, and serve food at various booths throughout the festival..

Trini and Billy are serving “Asian food” at their booth. What part of Asia, you ask? Dude, it was the 90s. Mix a bunch of vegies with some rice, maybe throw in a little pork, and it’s good enough for us. The 90s were not a very politically correct time, as you might have guessed, but at least they’re trying.

SIDE NOTE: I’ve never been much of a shipper or anything, but I always liked the pairing of Billy and Trini. It totally has that “gal pal and her gay besty” sort of vibe. Kind of like the teenagers from Bless the Hearts, but the girl is Asian, and neither of them are obsessed with being ironic.

I’m guessing Zack and company are going the more “actually from Africa” route… Though good luck selling goat head stew to the whitest kids in the country. Considering it’s the 90s, and what I mentioned earlier about political correctness, just be glad he isn’t selling fried chicken and watermelon at his booth. or worse than that, whatever the hell is going on over at Jason and Kimberly’s booth.

Now I like a good old fashioned American burger as much as the next guy. Preferably grilled using charcoal, because propane grilling is fucking dumb, and you might as well just make stove top burgers if you’re going to go that route. However, this booth right here is a bit much. Kimberly and Jason look less like they’re selling burgers, and a lot more like they’re campaigning to make America great again. Even if MAGA didn’t mean anything back in 1990-whatever.

Yes sir, everybody’s pitching in to help. And then these guys show up.

Thanks to Tweedle Derp and Tweedle Derpier, a food fight ensues. A food fight that takes up a ridiculous amount of episode time.

FUN FACT: at one point during the food fight, Bulk is putting together a cream pie, cackling like a madman as he goes. Suddenly, for a split second, he breaks character, and says “whoops”, only to then slip back into character, and throw the pie. What was the whoops? Did he botch the pie? It’s a weird little easter egg, and you don’t even have to listen all that hard for it, either.

While the food fight is going on, Rita unleashes her latest plot. And it’s probably this episode here that cemented Finster as my favorite character of the bad guys. I definitely related to this guy, both as a kid who loved making things out of clay, and as an adult who works hard on his art, only to watch assembly line caliber bullshit fill the shelves instead. In my case, it’s young adult dystopian love triangle bullshit like Nevernight, or Shadow and Bone polluting the bookshelves. Meanwhile, Finster is gloating about how great his art is, and how he can get something specially made… But Rita wants Pudgy Pig: a monster so lame that even Finster is amazed she even wants to bother with it. But Rita’s signing his paycheck at the end of the day, and a man’s got to eat and provide for his family. Plus, it’s probably better than anything those losers Squat and Baboo could make. So he reaches into his reject bin, pulls Pudgy Pig out, and brings him to life with his magic clay oven thingy.

Pudgy Pig may not be a turtle with a traffic light stuck in his head, or a royalty-free Frankenstein’s monster, but he’s definitely one of the sillier looking monsters this show had to offer. So much so, in fact, it’s amazing I kept up with this show after this first impression was made. He has a voice that reminds me of Billy West voicing the characters that represent, but are legally distinct from The Lollipop Guild from Futurama, if you know what I mean. He also shows up with a fork and knife weapon set that, spoiler, he never uses at any point. Whether that’s a good thing or not is probably up for debate.

And, of course, there’s the Pudgy Pig’s ultimate superpower: His endless appetite. Which, if you stop and think about it long enough, leads me to believe that this creature’s existence is a never-ending hell. Think about it, man! The thing gorges himself on an entire planet’s food supply, and it’s still not full! All it knows is that it’s hungry, and that it must eat. Yet, no matter how much it crams into its mouth hole, it’s never enough to satisfy him for any amount of time. This is pretty much what I imagine fat people hell looks like: wasting away to nothing, even though all the food is being shoved into your face.

They send this gluttonous abomination down to Earth. And you’d think that they’d send it to a food processing plant, or a corn field, or even a Chipotle. Literally anywhere else would probably make sense… But nope, they send him here.

Near as I can tell, they just dropped him off in the middle of nowhere, and the first thing he does is eat straight out of the trash can. I mean I GUESS there’s food in there, and I GUESS we’re dealing with a monster with literally no standards, but what a random place to begin.

He does attack some other places in due course, though. Like a random picnic that happens to be within reach. But that first stop was definitely an interesting place to start.

Zordon calls the rangers to the command center, and Alpha offers to give them some sandwiches he made for the festival. And if I learned nothing else from Futurama, you never let a robot do the cooking. Wow, I’m referencing Futurama a lot.

Anyway, Zordon tells the rangers that Pudgy Pig will eat the entire world’s food supply in forty-eight hours. Yeah, as the kids say nowadays, I’m pressing X to doubt. Like, maybe THE TOWN’S food supply, or maybe even the tri-state area’s food supply if he doesn’t need to sleep, but the entire planet? Like, even if all he does is teleport to the most vital parts of the planet where food is stored and/or processed, and eat, I doubt highly one single pig person could do that much damage in forty-eight hours. Forty-eight DAYS, maybe…

But maybe I’m overthinking this. It’s a fucking kid’s show, after all.

The rangers morph into action, and one of the worst battles I’ve seen this show put on takes place. Compared to earlier, and even future episodes, there’s an awful lot of cartoon sound effects in here that really didn’t need to be here.

Then, the creature reveals it’s ultimate power. And believe me, when I said he’d eat ANYTHING earlier, I meant ANYTHING.

Yes sir, Pudgy Pig possesses the power to eat the power rangers’ weapons. Either he grabs them when they’re close and munches on them like they’re made of potato chips, or he sucks them into his mouth using a newly unveiled mastery over the wind element. It’s a little silly, but it’s not the worst.

Also, I’m just glad this one didn’t end up being the voreraphile’s wet dream come true like Terror Toad ended up becoming, and eat the rangers along with the weapons.

With the rangers disarmed, it uses the power of wind to blow them away, and… Somehow, it unmorphs the rangers. And while the rangers are trapped in a multicolor vortex, the pig decides to invade the food festival.

Frankly, after the eight minutes of food fighting, I’m surprised there’s anything left at any given booth. But the pig finds a way to stuff his face.

The rangers get there too late, and comment on the mess the pig made. As opposed to the mess dumbass and dumbasser ended up creating? If nothing else, it’s a draw, from where I’m standing.

Trini discovers something that everybody else missed. And rather than just come out and say it, she insists on taking an approach akin to Dora the Explorer.

“Hey guys, do you see what I see? Take a look. Notice something? Well? Do you?”

JUST FUCKING SAY IT ALREADY!

Turns out that The Pudgy Pig and I have two things in common: we both are capable of destroying booths at a food festival, and we both absolutely can’t stand spicy food. Before we get to Trini the Explorer hinting at it, it’s actually hinted at in Pudgy Pig’s rampage that he doesn’t like spicy food when he picks up a radish, and proclaims “YUCK!” as he tosses it aside. Kind of a downer when something that’ll literally eat garbage, plastic, and the aftermath of a food fight without so much as a second glance won’t even touch your radish dish.

The rangers use this knowledge to their advantage, hide the spicy stuff in a sandwich, and trick Pudgy Pig into eating it. The spice results in the pig puking up literally everything it ate, and the rangers regain their weapons. And… I don’t mean to be that guy, but EEEEW! Those things have been soaking in stomach juice and… God only knows what else. I don’t know if I’d be as eager to hug my power weapon to me so eagerly.

The rangers summon the power blaster, the pig goes kablooy, Rita throws a fit while Finster gives her an “I told you so” in response to her criticism of his reject bin caliber work, the end.

And normally, I’d be giving my final thoughts… But this isn’t where the Pudgy Pig saga ends.

For reasons that defy logic and reason, the creators of the show brought Pudgy Pig back for a second episode. Either they had some sort of in-house focus group name their favorite monster during the first half of the first season, or they were just banking on the possibility that ol’ Pudge would be as note-worty as he was. Or maybe he was the creaters’ favorite monstor, and they wanted him to have one last ride before we got to Lord Zedd in season 2. Frankly, I’ll believe anything at this point.

The second episode, titled “A Pig Surprise”…

Yeah, I know. Trust me, that’s not even the worst pun in this entire episode.

Anyway, in “A Pig Surprise”, the rangers are helping out with a pet festival. Boy, there’s a lot of festivals in this town. This time around, they’re helping pets get adopted… And suddenly, I’m reminded of how much easier the adoption process was in 1990-whatever. Granted, it wasn’t as simple as it was in The Great Gatsby, where a guy was literally selling puppies on a street corner for ten bucks a pup, but I still remember what it was like adopting our old family dog back in 98. There weren’t NEARLY as many contracts to sign like there are now, there weren’t all these promises you had to make about feeding it a very specific diet, or returning it to this exact shelter, or taking it to this exact vet… Hell, we didn’t even have to get him neutered first! Suffice to say, if this festival were being held in 2024, there’d be a LOT more bureaucracy involved. But I digress.

After the rangers exposition dump what’s going on, complete with Billy looking right into the camera and dropping a line about being a responsible pet owner with all the subtlety of a guy running up to you and hitting you in the face with a ping pong paddle with the word “EDUCATIONAL!” written on both sides, We get this…

Yip, that’s a woman walking a pig. And believe it or not, that’s not even all that strange to me. Well, the pet pig part, anyway.

No joke, when this episode was considered brand new and fresh off the press back in the 90s, my family and I had a next door neighbor with a pet pig just like this. She never walked it on a leash or anything, but it DID get out of her back yard once or twice and demolish my mom’s tomato plants. Suffice to say, we weren’t friends. Ah, life in rural Kansas, I guess. People keeping pigs as pets, and elementary schools including lessons on how to hatch and raise chickens in the 4th grade curriculum.

Anyway, the rangers agree to take the pig off her hands, and promise to give it a good home. And by good home, they mean giving it to none other than…

Yip, Moron and Moronner end up with a pet pig. And… If I’m being entirely honest… It’s actually kind of charming. Seriously, Bulk is like a proud papa, showing everybody his pig, and giving him praise for doing every terrible trainer’s favorite dog trick “stand there and ignore me”. Meanwhile, Skull is actually reading a book on pigs in order to help his best friend take better care of his pig in the process.

Bulk even gets his pig pal a bowl to eat his kibble from!

Where on Earth you actually GET pig kibble, I’m not entirely sure. I’m sure it exists, and I’m willing to give Bulk the benefit of a doubt on this one. I mean yeah, he and Skull are the cosmos’ punching bag, even when they DON’T deserve it, but the rate Bulk has been going with this pet pig angle, I genuinely believe that he’s going above and beyond the call of duty here. It’s actually kind of heart-warming in a way.

Then it turns into Pudgy Pig. And it ruins everything. But I’m remembering that I need to backtrack a little.

See, before all the stuff with the pig kibble and the “stand there and ignore me” and what not, Zack was late to the pet festival. He fought off some putties, one of which was dressed like the old lady who dropped off the pig Bulk ended up with. And in their haste to escape, they dropped… This thing.

The bad news is I have no idea what this is supposed to be. The good news is neither does Zack. Or Billy, after Zack takes it to him. But Billy does assure them that there’s a timing mechanism in it that’s counting down to zero. At which point, THROW THAT FUCKING THING AWAY!

Call me paranoid if you must, but usually, when I see a weird looking piece of tech like that, and it’s counting down to zero (regardless of if it’s an alien language or not), my initial instinct is that you don’t want to be in the room when it hits zero. Most likely, it’s a time bomb, or some sort of containment unit that sprays out some sort of nerve gas, or deadly virus… Hell, Squat and Baboo probably farted in it, and the moment the countdown reaches zero, Billy’s lab ends up full of moon creature farts!

Okay, maybe that last one isn’t as likely, but still!

But nope. Billy just sits there like a dope, and lets the thing reach zero. And… Nothing happens.

It turns out that thing was supposed to tell Rita when she needed to cast the spell to turn Bulk’s pet pig into Pudgy Pig. This is literally the dumbest thing I’ve seen in this series. And this is coming from a guy who theorized that the thing counting down was full of moon creature farts a paragraph or two ago. Seriously, dumb as that was, it would’ve at least been a better payoff.

But whatever. The spell has been cast, Pudgy Pig is on the loose, and the rangers have to catch him. They recycle about 99% of the fight scene from the first episode they encountered him in, and it’s very obvious they had to get creative with the editing to keep the rangers from losing their weapons again. The chase continues, and after looking all over the place for him, they find him here.

Yip, Pudgy Pig found love on a random farm in the middle of nowhere. No doubt, Ol’ pudgy wants to be the pig in her blanket. Oh yeah, he wants to pork it for sure. He’s really hamming it up with his dancing.

Okay, fine! I’ll quit with the puns. Sue me: I got to find SOME way to amuse myself, because this episode has been pretty terrible so far.

And just in case it wasn’t already dumb enough, it turns out Pudgy Pig was supposed to be a distraction. Pudgy Pig sends the rangers on a wild goose chase, while Goldar of all people trashes the city unopposed.

On paper, it’s honestly not the WORST plan I’ve ever heard. Hell, I know it’s a monster of the day show, but I feel like they ought to have tried this a lot sooner.

But on the other hand, why the hell are you picking Goldar and Pudgy Pig? In his defense, Goldar wouldn’t become a monumental wuss until season 2, but he really wouldn’t be my first choice for anything, considering how often he’s gotten his ass kicked by the Megazord at this point. And Pudgy Pig? What, was Pumpkin Rapper too busy uploading his latest demo to Soundcloud or something?

Ugh, whatever. The rangers catch on, Goldar gets beaten up in a choppy rehash of a zord battle, and Zordon gives the rangers a ray gun or something that turns Pudgy Pig back to Bulk’s pet pig. Except for some reason, Bulk doesn’t want his pet pig that he was so proud of earlier in the episode anymore, because… I don’t know, the pig was probably too expensive to rent for more than one episode.

Food Fight was silly, but it wasn’t without charm. Pig Surprise, upon retrospect, was awful. I mean I don’t go into these campy 90s shows expecting Shakespear, or Faulkner, or Bruce Tim, or anything like that, but this? Yikes.

And this STILL wasn’t the last time we’d see Pudgy Pig, either.

In season 2 of Power Rangers, the rangers appeared on a talk show to promote an education program of some sort. And when I say the rangers, I mean the actual rangers, morphed up and everything. They talk about what it’s like to be heroes fighting monsters, and they begin talking about fighting Pudgy Pig. And they recycle THE EXACT SAME FIGHT SCENE from Food Fight ALL FUCKING OVER yet again! Except this time, I think they rerecorded some things, because the sound effects seem a bit less cartoony than they did in the actual episode. But it’s still the exact same fight, shot for shot, move for move, recycled in order to hide the fact the monster of the day gets killed off by season 2’s ugly-as-sin version of the megazord in, like, two moves tops.

So, after three episodes, it becomes evident that SOMEONE back there really liked this monster. And… Well… I can’t say I agree.

From where I’m sitting, Pudgy Pig was the first monster I ever saw. So in my case, it definitely left an impression on me. Despite how silly it was, I must have seen some good in this series, because I kept on watching long afterward. Dare I say, I became a fan right after seeing it.

But one episode was plenty. We didn’t really need two, or three if you count the previously mentioned season 2 episode as an appearance.

And it’s right here I remembered how time consuming and tedious a lot of these multi-episode-spanning articles are. Next week, I’ll spare your brains this sort of overload, and give you something simpler, I swear.