Dinosaurs?

Check.

Outer space aliens?

Check.

Transforming battle mecha?

Check.

Martial arts action?

Check.

Dazzling morphing sequences?

Check.

Over-the-top villains with way-out costumes?

Check.

Series catch phrase?

“Armor up.” Check.

Five misfit teens carefully selected to defend the Earth?

Check.

And they bond with the dinosaurs?

Check.

Tokusatsu/Super sentai-style pop music?

Check.

With themes extolling teamwork, diversity, and the pursuit of excellence?

Check, check, check.

If you like these tropes, Armorsaurs is for you.

Unlike the Power Rangers franchise, its roots come from South Korea. Daewon Media had developed the live action-animation hybrid as Armored Saurus, directed by Dae-Il Kang and released in 2021. MGA Entertainment remade it as Armorsaurs, which premiered on Disney XD on October 13, 2025. CAKE Entertainment handles the global distribution rights outside of China, Japan, and Korea, which are managed by Daewon Media.

“There are a few sequences from the original show that we reimagined and placed into a new world, into a new storyline,” says co-producer Kevin Yi. In this version, benevolent aliens bring dinosaurs to Earth. These creatures are trained to wear transforming armor which wrap around the body. Five select teens bond with the dinos and they all “armor up” to battle alien invaders with their own transforming mecha.

The series director is David Feiss —yes, the same David Feiss who created Cow and Chicken and I Am Weasel for Cartoon Network. In a career spanning over three decades, his numerous animation credits include ALF and ALF Tales, The Ren & Stimpy Show, Dumb and Dumber, Open Season and Open Season: Scared Silly, Penguins of Madagascar, Hotel Transylvania 2, 3 and 4, and many more.

But Armorsaurs is predominantly a live action show. Why leave animation?

“I haven’t left because there is so much animation in this,” he says. “Dinosaurs, sadly, are gone. But not in this show. They’re back and in a big way. There were two separate studios that we worked with. And so I worked pretty intimately with these guys. One was in Seoul [Storyberry], the other was in Australia [Pixel Zoo, Brisbane]. And I did a lot of boarding. All the new material needed to be storyboarded, and that’s what I ended up doing.

“To tell you the truth, there wasn’t a huge difference between working with voice actors, and working with actors on a soundstage. The only thing different is, I’m imagining in real time storyboards. ‘Cause, as an animator and as a storyboard artist, I would use that skill on set a lot of times, especially when we’re trying to imagine shooting a very large animal moving through an imaginary background. What is the camera supposed to do? What are the actors supposed to do? So I could do some quick sketches on set, show everybody, show the cinematographer. It really was quite a tool. So, yeah, there was a little bit of a learning curve, but not much. Working with actors is always a joy because they’re fun to work with,” Feiss says.

Avianna Mynhier, who plays Paloma Silva, partners with Blaze the velociraptor. She reciprocates Feiss’s sentiment. “David gave us a lot of creative freedom. He made it a fun place to work and encouraged our humor and integrating stuff that wasn’t in the script to begin with. So that was really fortunate.”

“Yeah, it was great talking through some of the scenes and some of our own thoughts on what our characters would do and figuring that out,” says Sade Louise. She plays Paloma’s younger sister Prisca, the partner of Pulse the velociraptor.

Says Kevin Yi, “David and I worked together on a couple other shows and other projects together for a number of years. His sense of humor is just part of my favorite parts of working with him. It felt like a natural decision, to work with him again on a show of this scale. 

They had earlier collaborated on a Korean show called YooHoo & Friends.

“It was this cute little furry creature,” Feiss explains. “Completely the antithesis of my style. The studio we were working at had acquired all of the footage for 52 11-minute episodes. I came up with an idea to reimagine what would happen if they were corporate executives that had got turned into cute animals because they’d been messing up the world. I had just met Flavor Flav, who’s my neighbor. And I got Flavor Flav to do the main character. Kevin and I were elbow-to-elbow working on that show, editing the whole thing together. It’s a completely different show than the Korean version. I did the beginning and the end with my characters. All of the stories were completely reimagined. Like What’s Up, Tiger Lily? [Woody Allen, 1966]. It’s a movie that existed and then we wrote new stories for the old action. It was a real challenge and we had a great time.

“It aired on Cartoon Network Latin America. There was a lawsuit and it won’t air in the US. It’s online; you can see it on YouTube. YooHoo & Friends with Flavor Flav.”

I often ask the following question of those I interview: What do you know now that you wish you had known when you began your career?

“I wish I had known that so much of working in this industry is about grit and perseverance and it is not glamorous,” Kevin Yi says. “There are lots and lots of days where it was super fun and exciting, but there’s also lots and lots of days where it’s a lot of hard work. And yeah, I wish I had known that before I got into the industry.”

David Feiss says, “I actually feel fortunate that I don’t think I would have changed anything, to tell you the truth. I started as a 19-year-old at Hanna-Barbera and it’s never felt like I’ve worked a day in my life. 

“I did Super 8 movies. That’s how I got hired at Hanna-Barbera.” He laughs. “I’d animated a Beatles song [“Maxwell’s Silver Hammer”] and they [Harry Love, Iwao Takamoto] said, ‘Okay, you can work here.’ I go, ‘Okay, great.’ But then I learned first day I was doing it wrong, so they taught me how to do it right.

“I worked for the first 15 years as an animator and I have no regrets about that. I got into story. After 15 years is when I created Cow and Chicken. Then I was doing my own show. I really feel fulfilled as an artist and I feel like I’ve really had a full career. And it was just a joy to be doing Armorsaurs because it was different, but it was also the same. It was just a complete joy. I’m really happy with the trajectory that I’ve had,” Feiss says.

Armorsaurs begins streaming on Disney Plus on February 18, 13 episodes. A second season has been commissioned, 13 more episodes, with filming to begin April 2026. 

“Beyond that,” Yi says, “I think as with anything these days, we hope for season three, four, five, six. Six seasons and a movie, right? The hashtag everyone’s aiming for. Just the potential of the show and the universe that we’ve built, we’re really excited about it. Can’t promise anything, but we are very, very hopeful. Yes.”

Trivia note: Michael Dorn, widely known as Worf from Star Trek, voiced Weasel in Feiss’s I Am Weasel. He is now the voice of the enemy alien leader, Karter Klay, in Armorsaurs.

Interviews conducted February 5, 2026 at MGA Entertainment.  Special thanks to Jamie Falkowitz-Tancredi and Melissa Hufjay of Falkowitz PR.