Before I knew what Anime was, before I knew what noir was, what frontier Sci Fi was all about... before there were shows like Firefly, Star Trek: DS9, and now my beloved Cowboy Bebop, there were the Galaxy Rangers.
Growing up as a youngster of the 80s, I'd been force fed 30 minute cartoon-mercials such as Care Bears, Transformers, GI Joe and anything else that had toys or figures to buy. Much like today's kids have the seemingly infinite derivation of card game or toy tie-ins, there seemed no respite for quality writing with good moral lessons wrapped in an innovative setting with three-dimensional characters.
Voice casting was purely genius for this rough and tumble collection of humans and aliens trying to live on frontier worlds. While I look back now at the animation and see how primitive it was in certain episodes, there were still flairs of brilliance in some of the motion sequences. There was even a flavor in the Galaxy Rangers that would wind itself into graphic novels with neo-horriffic characters like Scarecrow, The Queen, even the cyber-steeds our heroes found themselves on were an innovative graphic design. The transformation sequences cued by a hero touching his or her badge "implant" were creative and ushered in a new way of showing a "power up" through animated sequences. The writing for most of the episodes was tight, the storylines mature. If this were to have been created in the past 5 years, it most surely would have found itself on Adult Swim on the Cartoon Network.
Why no brave organization has sought to run this in syndication, I honestly do not know. It would most certainly draw a certain cult crowd to an otherwise dead time slot. Having been one of the loyal few who woke up Sundays at 6AM to watch it here locally, I can certainly attest to that.
