Tattooed Teenage Alien Fighters from Beverly Hills

I loved this show which contained the campy youthful humor of shows like Saved By The Bell and California Dreams and mixed it up with action to capitalize on the Power Rangers / Superhuman Samurai / VR Troopers / Beetleborgs craze of the 90s! Four teens were given the power to turn into giants to fight equally gigantic monsters, and strangely enough, always in the same city set! The monster suits were cheesy even by campy Godzilla standards and when necessary, the teens joined together to form...not a giant robot, but a cheesy knight in shining armor! By not taking itself seriously, it was actually more entertaining to me than the higher budgeted shows aforementioned. I'd love to see them collected on DVD but am equally sure they never will be. From the USA Network!

But, yes bad. The writer-producers were initially promised they'd have either A: Japanese monster footage from Tsuburaya,or B: A reasonable American alternative. They got C: crap. When you get crap, you make the best of it, which they did. Was it a parody? Mr. Fisher and Mr. Staahl came from Chicago's Second City, so you make the judgment. Made the judgment yet? It was a joke. It would have been a more successful joke if the shows had more than a ten cent budget, but everyone did the best they could. And if it hadn't been at least a slightly memorable joke, you wouldn't be reading this now, would you? Personally, I think David Lander's portrayal of Lechner totally rocks. Well, rocks a bit.

When I first saw this in Dragon Ball Abridged I thought nothing as horrible as this could exist. It was worse than expectations but not manos bad. Don't Watch it.

Wow. I can't believe how relieved I am that this show actually exists.

You see, I clearly remember it from way back when I was a little kid. Four teenagers with strange magical tattoos would tel-port into this black room with a pedestal. On the pedestal was a blob of slime called Nimbar that gave the teens missions. They would then transform into laughably bad costumes and fight villains. The whole thing was like an incredibly low budget power rangers. I honestly don't remember much of what went on, but for years I've remembered this show but have never seen anything else about it until now. It just vanished like the vapor it was.

I only remember one episode, in which a monster sprayed the teens with a gas, then all sorts of bad things happened, including the death of Nimbar. Finally the token African girl said that everything bad had happened since they got sprayed. Then they will themselves to wake up. They had been sharing a dream, or something for 18 minutes since they'd been sprayed, and THE MONSTER FREAKIN' DID NOTHING the whole time they were asleep. Even at seven I wondered what the Kessel was with that.

That is how dumb this show's plots were.

The only reason I even sat thru this horrendous excuse for a TV show was because it came on USA Network around 4PM right before Knight Rider (watching an automated black Trans Am and a guy with the same leather jacket in every episode was choice entertainment for me :P) So anyways yes, I had the un-pleasure of watching T.T.A.F.F.B.H. It was a wierd and nonsensical show that seemed like an even less palatable version of Power Rangers (which I hated more than Barney, Masked Rider was okay, talking cars RAWK!)

I always wondered about those similarities, like the Tatoo's seem to have the same function as the Ranger's communicator watches. And what the heck was that thing that they always called upon in some Captain Planet-esque fashion to vanquish the bad guy? It looked like a 2 dimensional cardboard cut-out. Old Godzilla flicks had better costumes and special effects. Zodiac signs? Elements.. sure. Animal totems..Why not? But Zodiac signs? WTF? Maybe they should fight the bad guys with mood rings too?

This show was good for laughs and thats about all it was good for. Welp, I'm gunna go watch Knight Rider on the SF channel. Skareeew you 1990's and your damned 70's flashback bell-bottom hippy crap. Long live the 80's! Witness the re-birth of MY decade! Behold, clueless trend-mongers! It is coming!

*insert maniacle laughter*

-BFK