Going from “Barney & Friends” in preschool to “Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers” in kindergarten was quite the improvement for me as a 5-year-old.

All of a sudden the emphasis changed from educational songs to kicking ass. Half the kids in school weren’t even allowed to watch it, making the show even more awesome.

It didn’t matter that every episode was essentially the same; the change of pace from “Barney” was incredible.

Long story short, in every episode the Rangers would run into a new bad guy who couldn’t handle the Rangers and would always wind up becoming the size of a skyscraper. It wasn’t ever a big deal though, because each Ranger had their own animal-shaped-vehicle-thing that could morph into a part of the Ranger’s own gigantic robot called Megazord!

After what always seemed to be a slow start, the Rangers would end up destroying the bad guy, thanks to great leadership from the Red Ranger.

Joining the Red Ranger in the journey were two other guy rangers — black and blue — and the pink and yellow girl rangers.

One of the huge reasons for the show’s success (other than the violence) was the Power Ranger-themed action figures that every cool kid had. You could buy the animal-shaped-vehicle-thing for each ranger and literally morph them into your own Megazord. It was like Transformers on steroids.

I can still recall the one and only time I saw all of them together in the form of Megazord at a friend’s house. It was something I never thought I’d see, which made it the coolest thing ever. Just take my word for it.

The original version of “Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers” aired from 1993-1995 and has existed every year since in some form of a spin-off. There have been 16 total spin-offs, and the current version is called “Power Rangers Samurai.” There have also been two movies, a play, four video games and a card game based off the series.

All of this goes to show just how much success the franchise has achieved, but in my opinion, nothing can ever replace the original Mighty Morphin’ version.