The 90’s was the year where cartoons ruled the television network during our childhoods. Shows like Dexter’s Laboratory, Johnny Bravo, Powerpuff Girls, Samurai Jack, Duck Tales, The Tick, Darkwing Duck, Animaniacs, Freakazooid!, Ren and Stimpy, Tiny Toons Adventures, Chip and Dale: Rescue Rangers, Tale Spin, X-Men, The Incredible Hulk, Batman The Animated Series and Gargoyles used to be cool and fresh before the new age of the late 2000’s (2008-2013) turned the cartoon medium into hip-teen trash like ICarly and Phineas and Ferb, which were nominated for BEST CHILDREN’S SHOW during some award show (facepalm). Don’t get me wrong, I don’t hate all modern cartoons as I grew up in the ear;y era of good modern cartoons like Megas XLR, Motorcity, Regular Show, MLP: Friendship is Magic and so forth but I’m talking about the cartoons that want to be hip and cool while pretending to be “good” cartoons are the ones that are bothering me (AKA: Uncle Grandpa, Annoying Orange and so on). However, there’s one show that no one remembers about and people mostly have forgotten about it. Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you Swat Kats: The Radical Squadron. Originally aired on TBS on the block “The Funtastic World Of Hanna-Barbera” and later aired on Cartoon Network, Swat Kats was an incredibly popular show that won the hearts of many cartoon fans, myself included, and the show was just an action-packed thrill to sit through. Unfortunately, it was cancelled and “The Funtastic World Of Hanna-Barbera” block was closed for good. Why? Well, we’ll get into that later but first, I have to review this radical baby.
Swat Kats takes place in Megakat City, a sprawling urban futuristic metropolis where humanoid cats rule the city. However, crimes are ranking up very fast and super-villains from unknown places are starting popping up to try take over the city. The Reinforcements, led by Commander Feral, try to stop crime but they always fail (as all other military characters in cartoons) and only one team of vigilantes can stop these bad guys and protect the city at all costs.
Bruce Cambell? Nope.
Chuck Norris? Not even close.
Arnold Schwarzanegger? Nah!
Batman? Sorry, he’s busy sleeping with Catwoman.
Superman? Bitch please, he’s too busy having marriage problems with Lois Lane.
It’s the Swat Kats of course! Two vigilantes fighter pilots with their wide range of gadgets and their jet called the “Turbokat” to take down enemies from long or short range. These two vigilantes are Chance “T-Bone” Furlong, the pilot driver and the one with yellow fur with stripes, and Jake “Razor” Clawson, the smart cat that makes the gadgets and an expert to hand to hand combat. Together, they take on the meanest and weirdest bad guys that dares to threaten the peace of Megakat City.
As you can see, this is pretty much the story for the show and my biggest problem is that it doesn’t have any development on the story or characters. I know that this is how cartoons were in the 90’s but this show had a really cool cast of characters and each with their unique personalities but they never expand or improve on later episodes and I really wished that the writers made stories that talked about their origins on how did T-Bone or Razor even met, how did they became friends or how did they knew each other. Overall, the story and character developments are my biggest complaints but the rest is freaking cool. The characters in the show, while not developed enough, they’re are still fun and they all have their unique charm. T-Bone and Razor are just a badass duo and you do feel a sense of comradery in them, like they were destined to be vigilantes and want their friendship to never be broken. I also like Miss Briggs and yes, she is kinda like a damsel in distress, but Briggs knows that and she would even risk her life to save the Swat Kats from certain doom and Felina is a pretty smart and strong supporting character, able to survive on her own and even surviving an impossible alien invasion. The rest of the characters are crap like Mayor Manx, who’s a complete coward, uses Briggs as his human shield to protect himself and always plays golf to avoid his problems that the city is dealing with. Yep, he’s a good mayor all right *wink* *wink*. Commander Feral is, especially, a complete *sshole in the series. He constantly blames everything on the Swat Kats, he makes constant mistakes that turns to disaster and he always wastes chopper back-up throughout the entire series. Seriously, this guy wastes more back-up than General Ross from the Hulk comics and I think they’re related to each other. As for the villains, they are extremely fun. Dr.VIper, Mac and Molly, Dark Kat, The Pastmaster, MadKat, Zed, Rex Shard, Red Lynx, Turmoil and so forth, Swat Kats had a range of creative villains in each episode like The Pastmaster, which he is a bad guy that can summon creatures through time, Turmoil, who has a giant ship with a laser that can make pilots go on some sort of acid trip and fall to their deaths, and Zed, who’s a machine that grows bigger and bigger the more he eats metal, and when I’m mean big, I mean really big. He grows so damn tall that not even Godzilla can kick his ass.
The animation on Swat Kats is still good to look at. While the animation is ver dated and containing a lot of animation errors, it holds up with it’s unique anime inspired style on the character designs and some very detailed visuals on the buildings. The action scenes on Swat Kats are the real deal here. Explosions go boom, monsters unleashing chaos in the city, jets go full speed ahead, Swat Kats has it all and it makes Michael Bay look bad in comparison. The music is also excellent containing the best opening theme to any cartoon show in the 90’s and it gets your blood pumping for more. The voice acting is also great with Charlie Adler and Barry Gordon doing a fine job as T-Bone and Razor, nailing the cool attitude of the characters, Gary Owens doing a decent job as Feral and Frank Welker just oozing with evil as Dr.Viper. Overall, it’s a solid cast and everyone does a great job on their roles.
Now on the beginning of my review, I mentioned that the show was cancelled and you wanted to know why it was cancelled? Well, fans who grew up with this show already knew about it but for those who didn’t, here’s what happened:
After the success of the second season of Swat Kats (which gained ratings that ranged from 9’s to 10’s), Hanna-Barbera went quickly to work on the third and fourth season with stories that range from Feral getting seduced by some succubus and with a story that tells the full origins of T-Bone and Razor but all those plans went to sh*t when Hanna-Barbera were forced by none other than Ted Turner to cancel Swat Kats and close “The Funtastic World Of Hanna-Barbera” for good but why? Oh, wait till you hear this. The reason for canceling Swat Kats is because the show was “too violent” for children and didn’t made enough merchandise and what’s worst is that this is the EXACT SAME reason that Sym-Bionic-Titan was cancelled by Cartoon Network. So the show was pinned down and died for a long time. What annoys me the most about this is that this statement makes no sense at all. Yes, a lot of cartoons had violence but it was never that violent and plus as kids, we knew that the violence that they showed on cartoons were fake because we have parents that teaches us that the things that we see on cartoons or TV are not real. In the end, when we started to grow up and go to school, we realized that the stuff that we see on TV was, in fact, not like we imagined to be. It was different but in the end, that’s the entire point of growing-up and for teachers to help us educate ourselves better to live our own lives as smart grown adults. It’s called the process of learning after all. And one other thing Mr. Ted…. CARTOONS DON”T TURN KIDS INTO VIOLENT PEOPLE! BAD PARENTING DOES!
Swat Kats deserves another chance and needs to be rebooted into a new series that improves on everything while maintaining the spirit of the original show. Thundercats did it and look how that turned out (It kicked ass!). If anyone loves Swat Kats like I do, I suggest you find the website called “The Swat Kats Revival” and you can simply find it on DeviantART or just google it to find the site faster or make petitions to give Swat Kats a proper reboot. Give as much support for this show as you can in order for this show to see the light of day cause it earns the right to. As for those who haven’t seen this show, You can find all the episodes on Youtube and the Complete Series on DVD, although it’s not worth buying considering it has no Special Features to begin with and there are plans to re-release the whole series on Blu-Ray + DVD combo pack with 6 hours of Bonus Features. Swat Kats is a cool, fun and energetic series that needs to be revived and I will keep on fighting these bashing, negative and ignorant people until I waste my last dying breath. The show needs to live again.
SWAT KATS: THE RADICAL SQUADRON: 4/5
Mr.K Reviews 