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We start off at the Rangers' school, where we meet a new minor character, Ms. Appleby. And she is very minor. We'll only see her a couple of times and she doesn't really serve any sort of purpose in terms of story. She's just there to show that these kids are actually going to school and they do have a teacher. Anyway, it's Hobby Week and Trini is going to start the class off. She shows off her collection of antique dolls from around the world, particularly one called Mr. Ticklesneezer, which belonged to her mother when she was a child. Apparently, Ticklesneezer was able to capture whatever he wanted in a magic bottle. Keep that in mind, it's important for later.
We move to the moon where Rita is watching. She's apparently jealous of Trini because she got to play with dolls as a kid while Rita had to learn how to use magic and be evil. So I guess we're getting the petty Rita today. That's never a good sign.
We head back to school (I'm going to regret this by September...) where we see the other Rangers' hobbies. Jason displays some martial arts tricks, Zack is apparently into surfing, Kimberly shows off her gymnastic skills, and Billy comes in with a homemade volcano, all with mocking commentary from Bulk and Skull. Billy's is the last one for the day as class is soon dismissed. We get a dumb segment with Bulk and Skull playing keep-away with Ticklesneezer that ends with Bulk getting fake lava in the face. Not one of their better comedy segments, so we'll just move along.
We move to Trini's house at night, where Trini is talking to her dolls. That raises a few questions that are probably better off unanswered. She says goodnight to Ticklesneezer and goes to bed. And I'm sure nothing will happen while she's asleep, right?
Well, I'm wrong, as Rita orders Squat to go and capture the doll. He heads to Trini's place and uses some device to turn Ticklesneezer into a monster. And I just have to wonder, how is Trini NOT waking up while all this is going on?! Seriously, the device is pretty damn loud, and Squat's hardly making an effort to keep quiet. How could she not hear that? Then again, if she did, we wouldn't have much of an episode. Moving along...
We arrive at the moon where Ticklesneezer is getting something akin to a job interview by Rita. He explains what he can do and Rita orders him to head to Earth and wait for further instructions. Notice Ticklesneezer's timid personality when he's standing in front of Rita. That'll also be important later.
We cut to outside the Juice Bar at daytime where Trini and Billy are looking for Ticklesneezer. Billy suggests that she may have dropped it at school, so they decide to go there and retrace Trini's steps. Meanwhile, Ticklesneezer arrives and starts capturing various objects, starting with a motorcycle. Apparently he just grabs whatever looks nice to him via his magic bottle. Must be nice to be that simple. He then captures TOKYO TOWER. I'd think people would notice that a) a giant freaking tower is gone, and b) that Ticklesneezer went from Tokyo and Angel Grove in a matter of seconds. He then sees Trini and Billy approaching in Trini's car. Billy suggests that someone may have stolen Ticklesneezer, but then they see the doll right in front of them. He captures them while they're in the car, and they're worried he's going to crush them. Ticklesneezer quickly explains that he just wants to add them to his collection of various objects. This is important as it explains that Ticklesneezer is NOT an evil monster, just a little naive and simple.
We head back to the moon for a moment as Rita orders Goldar to head down and ensure that Ticklesneezer keeps doing what he's doing. Because there's no way this plan could actually fail, right?
We then move back to the Juice Bar, where Jason and Zack are sparring. They do the traditional board breaking bit, and Bulk claims that anyone can do that. He demonstrates by attempting the same thing on a cake, but hurts his hand on the glass plate underneath it. Jason, Zack, and Kimberly get a call from Zordon and head to the Command Center.
Zordon fills the three in while showing Sentai footage that won't be used this episode of Ticklesneezer capturing a plane and a train. The three morph and go after him, beating up a bunch of Putties while also dealing with Goldar. Since he's not a fighter, Ticklesneezer tries to escape, but he trips and throws the bottle with Trini and Billy in it by mistake. Kimberly manages to grab it, but Goldar knocks it out of her hand, sending it onto some train tracks. And wouldn't you know it, a train is heading their way. Kimberly rescues them just in the nick of time and frees them. The two morph (out of order, I might add), and join the fight. And for the first time in a while, we get a decent-length fight scene with the Rangers kicking Putty ass left and right. Just awesome. Rita then appears and forces Ticklesneezer to grow. Goldar knocks all the Rangers aside in one blow, helping establish him as a serious threat, and then vanishes with Squat and Baboo. The Rangers see Ticklesneezer as a giant and summon the DinoZords.
They soon form the MegaZord and start to devise a plan to get the bottle away from Ticklesneezer. Before they can, though, Ticklesneezer manages to capture the MegaZord in said bottle, calling it his "best goody ever". And can you blame him? The original MegaZord is freakin' awesome, even today. It's no wonder he'd want it for himself. The Rangers summon the MegaSword though and use it to free themselves, before taking the bottle themselves. They then try to use the bottle to capture Rita, but she manages to escape before that happens. The Rangers tell Ticklesneezer to return what he stole, and he does so, saying that he didn't actually want to hurt anyone. For some odd reason, Trini is doing a voiceover, encouraging Ticklesneezer to give everything back.
And we learn why. Turns out the whole thing was Trini's dream. Laaaaaaaaaaaame. She turns on the light and finds that Ticklesneezer isn't on her dresser. She panics for a moment before seeing that he just fell on the floor. She picks him up and goes back to sleep. I'll address the dream ending a little further at the end.
We head to the school the next day where Bulk and Skull give their hobby presentation. It's here that we learn their full names for the first time: Farkas Bulkmeier and Eugene Skullovitch. Wow. Just...wow. What cruel parents. No wonder they're bullies. Anyway, they head up to the front and reveal their hobby: a flea circus. However, they quickly notice that said fleas are missing. And, as usual in these situations, the fleas have jumped to someone else, this time being Ms. Appleby. Everyone laughs, save for Bulk, and the episode ends.
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This one is very hard to pin down for me. On the one hand, the inclusion of Mr. Ticklesneezer was very unique. For the first time, we had a monster that wasn't totally evil. Just someone who was sort of forced into his job. We'd see this concept further elaborated on in later seasons, but it's nice that they were at least experimenting with the idea this early on. Plus we got a nice long fight scene this time. On the other hand, the dream ending was very underwhelming. I get that it would be hard to find a way to keep Ticklesneezer around, and just having him alive but not on-screen wouldn't be very satisfying, but a dream ending is just lame in execution. Especially when you take into account that we have the very first GOOD monster in the series. Overall, this episode isn't one of the worst, but not one of the best either. It's somewhere in the middle.
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You can tell just by looking at Mr. Ticklesneezer that he's not like the other monsters of the series.
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