'MIGHTY MORPHIN' MADNESS

Forget Barney. The hottest toys of the Christmas season are the colorful, otherworldly action figures based on the mega-hit Fox kids' show Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. A cheesy, live-action cross between Godzilla and Beverly Hills, 90210, Morphin uses footage from a Japanese sci-fi series and splices it together with scenes featuring five American teenagers so clean-cut and ethnically diverse they could have stepped out of a Benetton ad. On the surface, the Rangers seem like an average cross section of America's youth: One's a nerd, one's a jock, one's Miss Popularity-you get the picture. They all like pop music and shopping malls, wear trendy threads, and hang out at a youth center called the Gym and Juice Bar. But when the evil empress Rita Repulsa and her mutant cohorts stir up trouble-in badly dubbed, made-in-Japan sequences-it's morphin' time. With a magical assist from the five Coins of Power (don't ask), Zack, Kimberly, Jason, Trini, and Billy transform themselves into the Day-Glo-costumed, karate-kicking Rangers. And when extra power is needed, the Rangers are able to summon up five Dino Zords (robotized dinosaurs), who can also interlock into a single, towering Mega-Zord that squares off in explosive battle with whatever ultravillains Rita conjures up. Got that? The Mighty Morphin exploits have generated a pop-culture rage that has millions of parents shaking their heads in disbelief-both at how tacky the show is and at how much their kids love it. Since its debut in September, Mighty Morphin has quickly taken shape as the top-rated TV show on weekdays and Saturday mornings among children ages 2 to 11. And Fox has just committed to 60 more episodes-following an initial first-season order of 40. But don't expect Mighty Morphin to limit its exposure to the small screen. ''Almost every studio in town is willing to make a (movie) production commitment,'' claims Haim Saban, 49, chairman of the eponymous American company that coproduces the series with Japan's Toei Company. As you'd probably expect, each member of the cast is young, cute, and still basically unknown. For the record, their names are Amy Jo Johnson (Kimberly), Walter Jones (Zack), Austin St. John (Jason), Thuy Trang (Trini), and David Yost (Billy). A Fox publicist laments that the series' tight production / schedule doesn't allow time for sending the neophyte performers on tour a la the Ninja Turtles or Tiffany: ''I know they could fill those shopping malls.'' It doesn't matter. Morphin merchandise has already done the same thing. The toys, in fact, have become the hands-down hit of the holiday season. A New York Times columnist recently recounted her unsuccessful three-week quest to track down the toys for her son. At the two Toys 'R' Us stores in Wichita, Kan., a sign reading ''We're sorry we're so hard to get'' has been posted over empty shelves where the toys were supposed to be. ''They're the Cabbage Patch dolls of 1993,'' says Jeff Kilian, toy collector and coauthor of Tomart's Price Guide to G.I. Joe Collectibles. Trish Stewart, marketing director of Bandai America, Inc., makers of the Morphin toys, says the U.S. headquarters of the Japanese company, in Cerritos, Calif., is fielding 400 to 500 calls daily from consumers desperately seeking the 17-item toy line (including figures of the five young heroes, four evil space aliens, and a deluxe Mega-Zord set). ''They want to know if we can sell them the toys,'' Stewart says. ''And we can't because we're sending them to the retailers we already promised them to. Boy, I wish I had a truckload of those toys in my back- yard right now.'' Bandai America declines to reveal sales figures. The toy industry didn't anticipate this kind of demand when the Morphin line debuted last February at Toy Fair, an annual trade show in New York City. ''So much for the experts,'' laughs Tom Tumbusch, publisher of Action Figure Digest, which surmised earlier this year that the items were too costly (the action figures run $10, compared with $4 to $5 for those from lines like Star Trek and Aliens) and too complicated for kids to operate. ''I expected a hit, but I didn't expect a phenomenon,'' admits Saban, who proposed the series to Margaret Loesch, president of Fox Children's Network, after he had supplied Fox with the highly rated animated series X-Men. Spaced- out sci-fi shows about kids and monsters have proliferated on Japanese TV for decades, and Saban had been trying to market the Morphin concept in the U.S. for years. Loesch recalls that she was ''in the market for something different and goofy and offbeat and colorful.'' Goofy it is. Take Rita Repulsa-who screams out everything she says, wears a metal spiral bra that could make Madonna envious, lives on the moon, and commands a gang of bizarre henchmen. Foremost among them: Squatt (''half warthog, half blueberry, with a brain the size of a peach pit''); the space simian Baboo; the winged warrior Goldar; and Finster, who has half a brain, making him the smartest of the squad. The villains' scenes are primarily filmed in Japan for that country's version of the series, Ju Rangers, which features its own quintet of teen do- gooders-four males and one female. The American version incorporates some footage of the Japanese heroes-including scenes of the teens in full, face- obscuring costume. Thus, the U.S. version is able to substitute a female for one of the males. And along with its rainbow-hued cast, Mighty Morphin always delivers a positive message about such issues as tolerance or self- confidence.