Fans campaign for Stephen Lunsford to be the next Spider-Man

I don't think it's official yet but JustJared has put Stephen Lunsford (Kamen Rider Dragon Knight) in the running to be the lead in the upcoming Spider-Man reboot.

Facebook campaign

Face Ice Cream

You know those Ice Cream bars with the bubble gum eyes of popular characters you always see on Ice Cream trucks? Well, I was wondering how many have been Power Rangers. Companies owning their cartoon characters sell the license to Ice Cream companies (like Blue Bunny, Popsicle, and Good Humor-Beyers) to manufacture these ice creams. Many popular characters like Tweety Bird, Spider-Man, Ninja Turtles and Pink Panther switch companies through years.

"Saban Entertainment partnered with Pillsbury two years ago to create cut-and-cook cookies that featured the image of a Power Ranger in chocolate. The campaign ran for just a few weeks but helped draw attention to the Power Rangers' all-reaching promotion, said Rand Bremer, vp, licensing, food and beverage products at Saban. Since then, Saban has maintained a long-running Power Rangers frozen novelty license agreement with Good Humor-Breyers." " New products include Marvel Comics' Incredible Hulk Ice Bars and a set of Power Rangers Turbo Ice Bars."
- Robert Scally 1997 for Discount Store News



Pink Panther Ice Cream Bar has been around since the 70's but it's look hasn't really changed. Maybe slightly, but because its made by a different company.

Blue Bunny even manufactured a Sailor Moon Face Ice Cream Bar, but it was just the wand, it was a generic wand with a flower shape in the center. I was told it tasted bad. This wand was recycled for Sabrina the Teenage Witch Ice Cream I saw a couple of years later after Sailor Moon was canceled in 1996, a year after it started in the US by DiC.

Here is this weird Super Legends one. This is not American, it is Armenian. Click the link, they have three pics of different flavors. Weird thing is that it is the Operation Overdrive team on the logo and Pink is clearly Red re-colored.


I remember seeing In Space bars once, and they only made Red and Blue. And for Time Force, I read somewhere online they had Red and Blue. And for Wild Force, we know they made Blue and Black. And I know they made Turbo but I can't remember what colors. I know they only made two. For Lost Galaxy and Lightspeed Rescue, they only had Red and Blue. I know they never made girl ones.



The pictures seen are the only Ice Cream Face Bar I could find, you have any pictures, please send them to me!

And this Mystic Force product was accidentally called Power Rangers Star Force on this UK Site.

Six Degrees of Marvel

In 1939, Timely Publications began, and by the 1950s, it had generally become known as Atlas Comics. It adapted the name Marvel in 1961, and with the success of Spider-Man (who first appeared in Amazing Fantasy in 1962), it lead to a team-up with Toei Company Limited of Japan in 1978. Spider-Man was adapted into a tokusatsu with a robot and new origin, he would transformed with a brace. It only lasted one year. The second co-production between Marvel and Toei was Battle Fever J, which originally was going to be based on Captain America. It became a group series instead, taking a hint from Goranger and JAKQ, Battle Fever J started the Super Sentai franchise. Until 1994, Goranger and JAKQ were not counted as part of Super Sentai. Anyway, Marvel and Toei never collaborated again, Super Sentai continued but only under Toei's reign. Haim Saban found Sentai and decided to adapt it in the early 90's and made the Power Rangers franchise. In 2002, Disney bought Saban's share of Fox Kids and Fox Family, including the Power Rangers.

Disney started shooting the Power Rangers in New Zealand. In corporation with Disney, Toei shot footage for Mahou Sentai Magiranger (2005) and Jyuken Sentai Gekiranger (2007) in New Zealand. In 2006, Disney teamed up with Toei Animation to Robodiez, an action-adventure series that will combine live-action and CG animation. In 2008 it was announced Disney would make a short children’s animation series to be aired in April in Japan called Fireball. And recently it was announced that Disney bought Marvel. I think it is an interesting cycle. I think only some Spider-Man fans know about the tokustasu and mainstream people are unaware of this connection.

I also forgot to mention that Marvel produced Power Ranger comic book issues, they did it in 1995-1996, did six issues, featuring the Ninja Rangers, and VR Troopers (Season 2). VR Troopers had their own separate comic on the other side. Marvel started doing Power Ranger comics with the adaption of the MMPR Movie, PR comics had already existed before then.

Disney buying Marvel perhaps effecting its relationship with Toei has been discussed in the forum Rangercrew.

Related Topic: How Does Disney owning Marvel have to do with the Power Rangers?

What does Disney Owning Marvel have to do with Power Rangers?

What does Disney Owning Marvel have to do with Power Rangers?

In the opinion of this blogger that has been a Power Ranger fan since 1993 and have been in the internet fandom for ten years, I believe Disney wanted to a lock on the boys' market. Marvel is house of go-to boys franchise, the number one being Spider-Man. Many in the media believe Disney is weak in the boys' market and they want to tackle it. Well, they had one powerful pawn in the boys' market which was/is the Power Rangers. Unfortunately, they did not know how to wield it or/and they really couldn't wield it anywhere else. As I have mentioned before, the reason Disney has stop production on Power Rangers is because they no longer wanted to share profits with Toei and Bandai and wanted to do everything on their own and get all the revenue. Now, with Marvel, they have more avenues.

They still have to share with Marvel but it is just not one property. They have Spider-Man, the Hulk, Iron Man, the Avengers, Captain America, Thor, X-Men, The Avengers, and the list goes on and on. They can do animated series, TV movies, big movie features, etc. One non-Power Ranger fan can say Marvel is a bigger fish for Disney to tackle, a more of a sure thing. But Disney hasn't completely given up on Power Rangers, because they still have Super Legends merchandise and still have the copyright.

UPDATED 2/6/11
Now that Disney has returned Power Rangers to Saban and Saban has done a lot of promotion for the new season (Samurai), Disney has said that the reason they dropped PR was because mothers complained about the violence. But I am scratching my head in bewilderment at such a statement because the Marvel heroes are much more violent. I've seen Iron Man merchandise in Disney Store and Iron Man the movies are rated PG-13 and show lots of violence, much more than the play violence of Power Rangers. So again, I'm scratching my head as to why Disney spokespeople would say an obvious and weak excuse for dropping Power Rangers. Like Saban said, they didn't know what to do with it.

Spider-Manno's Leopard Robot

Previously Posted on March 4, 2007

In December, I mentioned that one Japanese blog mentioned my post about the Japanese produced Spider-Man Tokustasu (Children Live-Action Adventure Series) in the 70's. Now I found another blog talking about it and shows the toy of his Leopard robot. Here is her blog. It is in Japanese and you need to install the characters in your computer if you haven't yet. On the bottom comment, she mentions how she was surprised a person from Miami found a photo (it was a video!) of the show and wondered if it was popular in the States.

Well it is not popular per say but it is known throughout Spider-Man fans.

Here is a message for her [Formulated by Japanese Translator friend Danny]:
こんにちは！
私のウエブサイトについてのブログの作成を読んで、びっくりしました！
どうやって日本の東映スパイダマンの事を知ってるのかと思ってるんですね。
実は昔から「スーパー戦隊シリーズ」という特撮番組に凄く興味を持ってるので、それで日本の特撮物は詳しいですよ！

Related Post: My Blog on a Blog

Previously Posted on March 4, 2007
on Spanengrish Ramblings

Spider-Manno!

Previously Posted on September 2, 2006
Wanna see weird? Well, this is the famous Japanese Spider-Man , the tokusatsu. This version of was part of a deal that Marvel made with Toei, namely that for a four-year period, Toei could use Marvel's characters in any way they saw fit. So in 1978 a Spider-Man tokusatsu series was produced for Japanese television by Toei Company Ltd. While Spider-Man's costume was certainly based on the original, the storyline had little to do with the Marvel character. The series had a major impact on Japanese animation by popularizing the trend to use huge robots to defeat other giants despite being controlled by a human, a convention begun with shows like Jumborg Ace. This is the opening, yes the weirdest is his Leopard robot.

Previously Posted on September 2, 2006
on Spanengrish Ramblings