The Super Putties, introduced in the Season 1 episode “Gung Ho,” were nearly indestructible and required the Rangers to use specialized weapons to defeat. If these had become the standard foot soldiers, the daily battles in Angel Grove would have become exhausting and brutal for the teens. The margin for error would have dropped to zero.

The show’s pacing would have suffered. Every minor skirmish would have required the Rangers to call upon their individual weapons, perform their special attacks, and then clean up the remains. The quick, punchy fight scenes that filled out the middle of episodes would have become repetitive, grueling slogs that ate up screen time.

Zordon would have been forced to constantly upgrade the Rangers’ arsenal just to keep them alive. We might have seen the introduction of the Power Cannon or other heavy weaponry much earlier in the series. The Rangers would have felt less like agile martial artists and more like heavily armed soldiers fighting a war of attrition.

Rita would have seemed vastly more competent. While the regular Putties were a joke, an army of Super Putties would have actually posed a threat to the city’s infrastructure. The police and military would have been entirely useless, making the Rangers the absolute last line of defense. The stakes of every single invasion would have felt real.

As a kid, I loved seeing the Rangers use their individual weapons, but even I knew the Super Putties were a bit of a chore to watch. Part of the fun of Power Rangers was the effortless martial arts choreography. Making every fight a desperate struggle for survival would have burned the audience out by Season 2. Sometimes, cannon fodder is necessary.