Once something gets published, it never really goes away, and if it gets published online – well, chances are it’ll pop back up one day, usually without warning.
Cracked is one of the internet’s most popular comedy sites, famous for its “listicles” (articles in the form of easy-to-read lists, usually peppered with potty humour) about trivial knowledge that only the hardcore websurfer has any inclination to look out for, collate, and write about.
So it was merely a matter of time until an article titled The 6 Stupidest National Outrages About Fictional Characters, and wouldn’t you know it, starting off the list at #6 was none other than Malaysia. Banning the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers TV show. In 1995. With documented proof.
For those either too young or too old to remember that particular cultural phenomenon, the Power Rangers TV show was a monumentally popular “super sentai” team hero show based on several existing Japanese series and spliced together by an American production team, and featured lots of cheap bright spandex, men in monster and robot costumes, and really bad dialogue. It was a magical time to be a kid, we’re sure.
The main point of contention for Malaysia’s Ministry of Information, however, was the show’s name – the “morphin” in Mighty Morphin Power Rangers sounded too similar to “morphine”, every eight-year old Malaysian child’s narcotic of choice. Radio Televisyen Malaysia (RTM) announced in December of 1995 that it would refuse to air any Power Rangers episodes until the word “morphin” was removed from the title, lest impressionable Malaysian children were influenced to try becoming superheroes though the power of drugs. It didn’t matter that “morphin” was hip street slang for “metamorphosising”.
To his credit, Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak (who was Education Minister in 1995) was sad that the show’s cancellation would upset his son, who was a fan. Najib even went to a live Power Rangers show in KL.
And you thought Ultraman getting banned for using the word “Allah” was weird.
The Cracked article, by Pat Carnell, keeps Malaysia in rather good company as far as silly pop culture outrage is concerned: also on the list are that time the US state of Mississippi got mad at Sesame Street for showing that black people exist, and a British town banning all storybooks with pigs as characters from its schools because Muslim children might get offended. Good times.
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