SWAT KATS: The Radical Squadron

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

Johnny Test Review

I am a huge fan and sucker for cartoons. I know that there is also live-action shows but strangely, I didn’t really care for them and that’s because it didn’t catch my interest despite that it looked cool at best. When I grew up in the 90’s through the 2000’s cartoons were like a gateway for fun and how incredibly bizarre, strange and wonderful they were. Samurai Jack, Dexter’s Laboratory, Powerpuff Girls, Tom and Jerry, Megas XLR, Regular Show, Adventure Time, American Dragon Jake Long, Sym-Bionic Titan, the original Spongebob Squarepants series that used to be funny before it became sh*t and The Amazing World Of Gumball are all cartoons that are not only fun to watch but can be enjoyed for both kids and adults. However, times for cartoons have changed for the worst with cartoon companies like Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network, Disney Channel and Toon Disney (oh sorry, i mean that dumbass name “Disney XD”) canceling good shows and replacing them with either a cartoon show that relies on poop jokes or a live-action show that relies on yelling all the time like The Suite Life of Zack and Cody, Victorious, Lab Rats, Pair of Kings, Hannah Montana, Kickin It! and The Suite Life on Deck. The only good cartoons that are worth watching in this new generation of cartoons are Regular Show, Adventure Time, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, The Amazing World of Gumball, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and why? Because these cartoons don’t pander on the audience and gives them what they want: Fun, imaginative and engaging cartoons with smart and clever writing, fun characters that we actually like and care about and engaging stories that range from simple to very adult themes that we barely see in cartoons.

However, there is one animated series that puts the nail in the coffin of good cartoons forever and therefore, having an audience that will defend this piece of horsesh*t no matter how much we argue on this show’s insult to good cartoons. Gentlemen, what we have here is the death of creativity and originality in cartoons and this is that show. This is the show of Johnny Test, a show that is still going with 236 episodes made and being the first cartoon in Cartoon Network to ever surpass the 100 episode mark. Yes… You heard me correctly. This piece of unfunny and unoriginal filth is the ONLY cartoon show in Cartoon Network to surpass the 100 episode mark in cartoon history. This stands as the saddest fact for cartoons because the good cartoons get the middle finger from both the audiences and networks executive, and what happens when a show is not popular? It gets canceled and give the unforgivable excuse for canceling a show: Because of lack of merchandise. I wanna rip these bastards into bloody pieces whenever I hear this so-called excuse.

What’s the plot of this show? Basically nothing. It’s always about this kid Johnny Test, a loud, obnoxious dude with a “rad” attitude, that has nothing to do but whine and bitch on how boring his life is and how “miserable” he is. He’s like a teenage girl that whines a lot because she doesn’t get what she wanted for her 16th birthday. When he is bored, he goes to his 2 smart sisters, Susan and Mary, to do some experiments on him but the sisters always refused because of how much of an idiot the kid is but Johnny always gets what he wants when he always makes a deal to give Johnny what he wants in exchange for the girls to go on a date with this douchebag named Gill and he’s just as bland as a dead tomato that’s lying on your kitchen floor just now. When Johnny uses his powers, inventions or whatever, he causes big problems to not only his family but to the whole town that always have to deal with Johnny’s stupidity throughout the entire series but in the end, he fixes it and throws another unfunny joke that the show expect us to laugh when clearly, it’s not even funny.

I hate everything about this show. Not only are the stories overused and done better in other cartoons but it rips off every single cartoon with no sense of dignity or respect. The family is a shameful rip-off of Dexter’s family from Dexter’s Laboratory, the anchor-news reporter is an obvious rip-off of the funnier anchor-news reporter from Powerpuff Girls and much more. Hell, everytime there’s an episode of this show, the title always have to be based on Johnny’s name. I’m not kidding, look at these awful titles:

Johnnyitis

Johnny X

Coming To a Johnny Near You!

Johnny Holidays

Johnny Applesauce

Return of Johnny’mon

Johnny Fu

Johnny Mustache

And the list keeps going and going because the show is 236 episodes long. Speaking of episodes, why is this abomination of Hell has 236 episodes?! This show has no substance, no quality, no value and no purpose of existence in the cartoon medium. That is until I researched about this show and the information that I gather will blow your mind in a very bad way. Johnny Test was originally released during a Fall 2005 schedule on the channel block “Kids WB!” alongside other cartoons like Xiolin Showdown and Loonatics Unleashed. During the Fall TV programming, the only show to gain more praise was Johnny Test and it became so popular that Kids WB! cancelled both Xiolin Showdown and Loonatics Unleashed in order to air more episodes of the show. However, the show got less ratings than before and therefore, the show got cancelled after it’s 3rd season if I remember correctly. We all thought that we were saved from that obnoxious asshole forever but sadly, the pain has just begun as the show was later revived with a 4th season because the channel block “TheCWKids!” picked up the rights and therefore, making the show a success again. Later on, Cartoon Network CEO Stuart “asshole” Snyder and Teletoon brought the rights to Johnny Test by making a 5th and 6th season for the show and guess what? People loved it. They loved it so much that it took the number 1 spot in every single programming block while Regular Show and Adventure Time fall on the 4th or 3rd spot of the ratings board.

You know what? It is pointless reviewing this show because we all know why we hate this stinker. The plots are beyond pathetic, the characters are one of the worst I ever seen because they never develop and learn from their actions, animation that’s so bad that it puts a bad name for flash animation in general and overall, it is a waste of money, animation and quality. It’s incredible how people will eat all the bullsh*t that this show throws at them and still defend this garbage because how “non-violent” the show is when it truth, cartoons always had violence but it didn’t matter because we know that the violence is not realistic and it is not supposed to be. Also, don’t get me started on the so-called TV critics praising this show cause those people were paid by CN to write positive things about Johnny Test and how do I know this? Because in their reviews, they will always find a way to lie to the readers by telling them on how awesome and amazing this show can be without ever watching the show (best examples are the insulting positive reviews for the awful Spongebob Specials cash-ins). Johnny Test should simply not exist and if you want a good cartoon that offers quality, imagination, creativity and fun, go watch Regular Show, Adventure Time, Motorcity, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic or better yet, go watch some of the videos by animation company WolfSmoke, an animation studio in China that utilizes both hand-drawn and flash animation with precise detail on the fluid motion of the character movements and gorgeous art designs that will put this piece of sh*t into shame.

Simply put, f*ck Johnny Test and f*ck Stuart Snyder for canceling Sym-Bionic Titan and firing Tartakovsky from the company. The man should be fired for burning Cartoon Network to the ground ever since he was announce as the new CEO of Cartoon Network. He constantly puts money on shows that only are popular and that can sell lots of toy merchandise rather than spending money on the shows that are actually good like Regular Show or Adventure Time, he constantly has no idea on how to promote a cartoon right and he has also no idea on how to celebrate a 20th anniversary for Cartoon Network in which, while the promos were creative and beautiful, Stuart Snyder instead gives us pointless marathon re-runs of Cartoon Network’s worst shows Johnny Test and Annoying Orange (which the viral videos of that overrated crap became famous, so Stuart funded a series about it kinda like how Nickelodeon did with Fred having his own show after being famous on Youtube) rather than, i don’t know, announce some kind of special project for Cartoon Network like announcing a Regular Show or Adventure Time movie in theaters or some new show. Simply put, Johnny Test is a mark of death for this generations of cartoons and no parent should ever let their kids watch this disgusting waste of a cartoon.

Ahh…… Not gonna work on me, Johnny.

JOHNNY TEST: 0/5