Each episode cost an estimated US$1 million.
Captain Power was the first TV series to integrate live action, CGI and digital effects. All digital effects were created in an edit suite prior to digital compositing tools being invented. The entire series and all VFX layers used 1" video tape and a lot of "shoot from the hip" visual effects treatments. When green screens were forgotten on set, manual rotoscoping was done in the online edit suite using a B&W graphics camera, bits of white paper and whiteout to create the necessary masks. Average time for one effect = 3.5 hours.
The live action elements were shot over a six month period between June and December of 1987. Apart from one week of location work, all of the footage was shot in one big old building in western Toronto that used to be a bus depot. Not only were the sets build right there, but also the miniature work. According to the actors, it was unbearably hot during summer (crewmembers had to stand by with buckets of ice and wet towels) and freezing cold in winter.
The series was part of a Toy-Tie in created by Mattel. The toys consisted of action figures of all the major characters and Captain Power and Lord Dread's ships. The ships had the ability to pick up infra-red signals from glowing panels on enemy characters and thus score hits, as well as receive damage hits from enemy fire. When a players ship sustained enough simulated damage the canopy would fly open ejecting the action figure contained within. There were also crossover animated episodes that were packaged with the electronic fighter ships that had the same ability. Despite the interactivity of the toys, the series was too expensive to continue production and with dropping sales of Captain Power toys the series and toys were scrapped.
The "pulses" used to add or delete points from the interactive toys were created by blending various frequency black to white pulsing into backgrounds, clouds, flames, explosions and general mayhem. You could blend in point gain pulses until the moment something distracting was about to begin, then switch to point loss pulses to suck points back out of the toys. This was done in the online suite as one of the final layers of the VFX compositing process.