How About That Thing?

Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers is a show that I absolutely adored as a kid. I don’t know if it was the badass opening theme, or the monsters, or the zord battles… Whatever it was that grabbed my attention, it held on to it, and didn’t let go for years to come. Then they went turbo, and… Well, let’s just say I might cover that another time if enough people show enough interest.

There are plenty of monsters that are remembered as the best, as the worst, as the source of your childhood trauma, the reason you can never take Frankenstein’s monster seriously ever again… That reminds me: I probably ought to cover that episode sometime. But when I think of memorable monsters, one name leaps to mind almost immediately. What name is that, you ask? Oh, just a little guy by the name of Terror Toad. Maybe you’ve heard of him.

By the way, ignore the pictures of the Power Ranger helmets on his belly. You’re not supposed to know that happens yet. Finding a blank-bellied Terror Toad pic that isn’t some dude’s drawing on Deviantart or wherever is pretty difficult, it turns out.

Huh, blank-bellied Terror Toad. Sounds like a colaboration between Dr. Sus and H.P. Lovecraft. I’d buy that for a dollar.

the episode of Power Rangers, known as Power Ranger Punks, is a standout episode for three reasons: the Terror Toad himself, the fetish affiliated with him (which we’ll get to later), and, of course, the invention of “punk potion.”

Punk potion, in core concept, was designed to be slipped into whatever drink the rangers happened to be drinking at that moment. Once consumed, the unsuspecting ranger turns evil. It’s simple, it’s devious… Based on Billy and Kimberly’s reactions in the episode, it apparently doesn’t taste very good, but considering some of the ingredients Baboo reads out loud in the scene where he’s brewing it up, I can’t say I’m shocked. And to put things into perspective, I’m a guy who’s literally mixed Doritos with Mountain Dew once. Long story.

What does surprise me, though, is that the rangers leave their drinks right out in the open, unsupervised, and uncovered. Baboo didn’t even have to leave the comfort of his idiotic flying bicycle thing to poison their drinks or anything. Boy, the 90s really were a more innocent time, I guess.

It’s also kind of impressive he was able to dump his potion into all five drinks at the exact same time without so much as a hint of spillage. I got to hand it to him, that takes talent.

Despite his plan, though, only two rangers end up drinking the punk potion infused… Sprite? Sports drink? Whatever the 90s equivalent of Liquid Death is? Either way, they drink the drink.

And the thing that makes me facepalm is the fact that it makes you into a literal punk. You think it’s just a clever name, or even a terrible name, but as it turns out, it turns you into an actual punk. Or rather, what the show considers a punk. IE, this.

Just look at these two! Kimberly looks like the kind of girl I’d probably crush on hard when I was a teenager. Billy, meanwhile, reminds me of a kid I used to know who went way out of his way to make sure everybody knew he was tough and totally not gay in any way shape or form. This isn’t evil. Criminy, this isn’t even punk! These guys make Bowling for Soup look like Band of Four, they’re so not punk! But to be fair, I came from a group of friends who loved Harley Davidson motorcycles, thought Slipknot was god’s gift to music, and giving the establishment the middle finger as they proudly vote third party. So maybe my perspective is a little different than most.

But of course, all of this is just setup for the big bad of the episode. The monster of the day. The myth, the legend, the hungriest creature in showbiz, The Terror Toad.

Since Billy and Kimberly are too punk rock to wear spandex and do adequate martial arts against a giant rubber toad monster to amuse the children for a few minutes out of the day, the others are sent out to fight on their own. And it goes about as well as you think.

Then, after making a terrible pun about making the yellow ranger “go for a spin”, he reveals his true power.

Yip, that’s right. The Terror Toad eats the yellow ranger. Eight-year-old me found this genuinely terrifying. Thirty-eight-year-old me makes note of the fact the Asian one got eaten first, and is resisting the urge to make a joke about how Terror Toad is just going to be hungry again in an hour. Yeah yeah, I’m going to hell. Moving on.

All joking aside, I don’t know what’s worse: the crunch noise it makes when the toad eats the little energy ball that used to be the yellow ranger, or how deadpan the red ranger sounds when he notices it. I mean geez, dude, you just watched your friend become dinner. If they aren’t dead from going crunch, they’ve probably got about five minutes of air in there tops. Two if they panic.

Oh, and the toad also eats the black ranger a few minutes later.

That one kind of pissed me off a little, because Zack, the black ranger, was my favorite power ranger. No seriously, I thought that dude was cool when I was eight. I bought the black ranger figure before I bought any other figure available, and it’d be a while before I had the money for other

While this is going on, Alpha 5 is looking for the cure to punk potion. Which is apparently something called “singing squash.” Alpha travels to the green screen dimension, where he finds the squash in question. But not without encountering some putties. The singing squash lets out a high note (don’t ask me how), and the putty patrol is sent running.

The singing squash is juiced, Billy and Kimberly drink, and return to normal. Kimberly comments on how disgusting her manicure looks, and Billy makes a headshake noise worthy of Looney Tunes that never ceases to make me laugh. Zordon gets them to look at the monster fight in progress, and tells them that they can reveal Terror Toad’s weak spot by chopping off its horn. Why he didn’t tell the other three this before sending them off to basically be the toad’s all you can eat buffet, I have no idea.

No, seriously, if you’re the all-knowing head in a jar who knows everything about every monster the bad guys send your way, you really should’ve told them about that horn. Some would make the argument he didn’t know about the horn and the weak spot till after rangers got munched, but I’m not entirely sure that’s the case.

Whatever.

The blue and pink rangers enter the fray, and chop the toad’s horn off. The toad is pissed, and declares, “Now you’ve made me hopping mad!”

Yeah, I know, I heard it too.

But hey, look on the bright side! Now that his horn’s been chopped off, he can’t use his power to eat any more of…

Oh. Right. Kinda forgot he was a toad for a moment there.

Okay, I take back what I said about being terrified when I saw the yellow ranger get eaten earlier. If you’re willing to use your imagination, this sequence right here is flat out GRUESOME! This, right here, was pure and unfiltered nightmare fuel for eight-year-old me. Even if you can kinda see the other guy operating the toad.

The remaining power rangers spot the weak point, and make it a point to attack it. Unfortunately, the blue ranger gets eaten in the process, and Baboo shows up.

With four rangers down, and Baboo showing up to give the bad guys the numbers advantage, you think it’s going to be brutal. It’s going to be the most one-sided ass kicking since Georges St. Pierre took on Jason “Mayhem” Miller. It’s… Over with almost instantly.

Yeah, Baboo showing up contributed fuck all to the fight, outside of distracting Kimberly for, like, two seconds. He basically just shoves her to the ground, gloats about how he’s helping, only for Kimberly to immediately get back up, and be all “Where was I? Oh yeah!”, and free her friends. In fact, I dare say if Baboo did anything, he actually distracted Terror Toad! After he shoved Kimberly out of the way, they just get to chatting about how there’s four down, and one to go. It makes a guy wonder if the battle would’ve turned out any differently if Baboo just stayed home and played grabass with Squat.

The rangers are freed, the toad goes kablooey, Rita Repulsa complains about having a headache, Bulk and Skull get humiliated on camera for the twentyeth time, the end.

Looking back on Terror Toad, I’ve discovered that there are two groups of people. There’s the group I belong to, who genuinely found Terror Toad intimidating, and had nightmares about him showing up somewhere and eating you. No joke, I remember having multiple nightmares about this guy and his insane appetite. The idea of being eaten alive is truly a scary concept when you think about it. The crunch noises it made while it was eating really didn’t help any, either.

And then there’s the other group: the group who were aroused by it. I’m so not joking about this, either.

A long time ago, I rediscovered this episode on YouTube. And as I browsed through the comment section (which is generally a bad idea anyway, but I digress), one thing led to another, and that’s how I learned about vorerephilia, or vore. In short, vore is the sexual attraction to the idea of being eaten by someone else. AKA, CANNIBALISM! Although 100% of the vore fiction, vore art, and even vore film generally portrayed fantastical elements to the scenarios that took place. IE, a giant woman swallowing a tiny woman, a woman shrinking a guy with shrinking potion and eating him, or a giant toad monster swallowing power rangers whole.

Look, I like to think I’m a pretty open-minded guy. I’m not really in to things like eating ass, or stomping on cupcakes, or wearing overalls, but that stuff is pretty harmless. Worst case scenario, you get a bout of pink eye, or you get frosting all over your favorite heels.

Also, I know we live in a day and age where no one is allowed to feel shame, and we’re supposed to tell everyone that they’re treasures, and that they should “live their truth”, and all that other rainbow flag stuff, but if I’m being honest, vore just leaves me at a loss for words. If nothing else, it definitely puts my thing for women in gymnast leotards into perspective, that’s for sure. I don’t know, maybe I’m the weirdo for watching a giant toad devouring people whole and my first instinct being to run away instead of whipping it out and jacking it.

Well, whichever group you belong to, it’s safe to say that Terror Toad is definitely one of the more memorable monsters the show had to offer. The episode he was featured in was goofy, but really, name a PR episode that wasn’t. The monster fight itself, in my opinion, was definitely one of the better ones the show had to offer. Even if it did fuel my nightmares for the better part of a week.