Ranger Teams You Never Knew
Team 4: Crimebusters
(This team is based on JAKQ Dengekitai)
Not all Power Rangers teams have the words "Power Rangers" as part of their name. However, this doesn't entirely stop them from being considered Rangers. Consider how the Solaris Knight is still a Power Ranger, yet the Phantom Ranger isn't. In the same way, one of the earliest known team of Earth made Power Rangers weren't even called "Power Rangers" at all; they were known as the Crimebusters.
The Crimebusters are unique among Ranger teams in that they were recruited by a former Power Ranger: Ken Song, of the Ranger team that was later called the "Power Rangers of the New Frontier," but who at the time were known only as the Power Rangers. In the year 1977, Ken Song, who lived in New York at the time, was absolutely sickened by the astronomically high crime rate that had plagued the city. He considered donning his old Yellow Ranger suit, but he decided against it, as he did not wish to sully the legacy of the Power Rangers any further. Instead, he recruited five citizens to fight crime.
Unlike the previous team, whose identities were publicly known from Day 1, the identity of the Crimebusters was kept a secret both from the public as well as the government. To this day, no one knows who they were. Even Ken Song's involvement with the Crimebusters was unknown to the world until his memoirs were posthumously published in the year 1997.
There were five members in all, with Song acting as Mission Control. The first member was given the code name "Joker's Wild," and his suit was mostly White with a rainbow motif of Red, Yellow, Green and Blue. Joker's Wild served as field leader of the Crimebusters. The second member was known as "Ace of Spades," and his suit was Red. Third was "King of Clubs," whose suit was colored Green. Next is "Queen of Hearts", donning Pink. Finally, there's "Jack of Diamonds," wearing Blue.
A playing card motif was chosen for this team for several reasons. First off, Song was paying tribute to his friend, the late John Hill, Red Ranger to the team Song belonged to. John Hill loved superheroes, and in fact a youth reading comic books is what helped him be the inspiring leader he was. The second reason was that Song wanted his heroes to have easy to remember code names. Song himself used the code name "All-Ten" when communicating with his team.
Although the Crimebusters started off fighting crime in New York, eventually Earth was besieged by a new threat: rogue robots created by the US military. These machines were designed, created, and controlled by a man known only as Doctor H. No one at the time knew who this man was, but recently declassified material establishes that he came from a different dimension. Evidence suggests he came from the same dimension as the RPM Rangers, as one of his few folders that have survived his last battle with the Crimebusters has the name "Alphabet Soup" on it. As to the reason why the USAF employed him, it's due to the fact that he impersonated an American scientist employed by the USAF named Jack Henderson.
There are many reasons why this team is obscure, most of them having to do with politics. First, the United States government was embarrassed that not only did a threat slip by their radar unnoticed, but that an outside force dealt with it, humiliating America's armed forces. Further, the fact of the matter is that the machines Doctor H used were still, legally, property of the USAF; their defeat was a further humiliation to the US government. Furthermore, the Crimebusters always worked "in the shadows" in a manner of speaking, seldomly appearing in public, always driving the machine threats away from populated areas. For this reason, barely anyone knows about, much less remembers, the Crimebusters.