Saturday, January 21, 2017

Tooniversary: Saber Rider & The Star Sheriffs (1987)

Following the success of Voltron, Peter Keefe's World Events Productions imported the 1984 series, Star Musketeer Bismarck, from Japan, and repackaged it for US consumption as Saber Rider & the Star Sheriffs. Arriving as it did the same year as Filmation's final series, Bravestarr, some might think that, despite it being three years older, Saber Rider was a sort-of ripoff. It wasn't.

I never got to see the show, so there isn't going to be a rating. Following is the intro:



With the full face-covering helmets on the Star Sheriffs, I think you can see where the folks behind the Power Rangers got the idea for their costumes, and Saban, which imported the Rangers to the US, would duplicate it in mishandling Marvel's Avengers more than a decade later.

4 comments:

Goldstar said...

In the original Japanese version of Saber Rider and the Star Sheriffs, the team's leader was from Japan. When the series was imported over to the U.S., the American distributors tried to re-edit the series in order to make the token American character the team's leader.

hobbyfan said...

And the team's female member, according to research, was originally French. Go figure.

DragonKnightGX said...

>With the full face-covering helmets on the Star Sheriffs, I think you can see where the folks behind the Power Rangers got the idea for their costumes

Actually, Super Sentai (the Japanese series that Power Rangers comes from) predates Bismark. The first Super Sentai series, Himitsu Sentai Goranger, came out in 1975 while Bismark was from 1984.

hobbyfan said...

Bismark being the Japanese title of Saber Rider. Got it.