SWAT Kats: The Radical Squadron
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| ♥ | This article is dedicated to Gary Owens (May 10, 1934-February 12, 2015, at age 80 from Type 1 Diabetes). |
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 Let's Kick Some Tail! Roger!
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SWAT Kats: The Radical Squadron is a 1993–1994 American animated television series created by Christian and Yvon Tremblay and produced by Hanna-Barbera Cartoons. The series takes place in the fictional metropolis of Megakat City, which is populated by anthropomorphic felines, known as "kats". The SWAT Kats of the title are two vigilante pilots who possess a state-of-the-art fighter jet with an array of weaponry. Throughout the series, they face various villains as well as competition from Megakat City's militarized police force called the Enforcers.
The show originally premiered and ran on the syndication block The Funtastic World of Hanna-Barbera, as well as TBS Superstation (as a part of the Sunday Morning in Front of the TV block) from 1993 to 1995. Every episode of the series was directed by Robert Alvarez. The bulk of the series was written by Glenn Leopold (15 episodes) or Lance Falk (9 episodes). Jim Stenstrum contributed two episodes, while David Ehrman, Von Williams, Eric Clark (with Lance Falk), Mark Saraceni, and Jim Katz all contributed one episode each.
A revival series, titled SWAT Kats: Revolution, is under development, with both the Tremblay brothers and the Toonz Media Group at the helm.
Why It Kicks Some Tail
- To start off, the theme song! Both seasons had their unique theme music, which boosts the pleasing aesthetic of the series. In addition to that, the extra guitar riffs kick off pretty awesome.
- Season 1's theme song has an exciting way to start the show in its intro.
- Season 2's theme song gets even better and kicked ass.
- Additionally, the soundtrack is again, kickass.
- Amazing and colorful art style calling a mind to many of the Silver Age of comic books.
- The animation is very smooth and fluid even for a H-B cartoon, since they were notable for their stiff and limited animation techniques. It gets even better starting in Season 2 with its iconic anime style aesthetic that was greatly done by Mook Animation Inc.
- An interesting concept. Razor and T-Bone work as mechanics in a salvage yard but are secretly military allies.
- Razor and T-Bone themselves are fully likable, to say the least.
- Callie Briggs is very lovable, and she is considered to be the best part of the show.
- Unique and even terrifying villains like Dr. Viper, Dark Kat, The Pastmaster, Hard Drive, The Metallikats: Mac and Molly, Madkat, Morbulus/Bacteria Monster, and Turmoil.
- Magnificent voice acting, such as Barry Gordon, Charlie Adler, Tress MacNeille, Jim Cummings, Mark Hamil, Candi Milo, and the late Gary Owens.
- Lots of great episodes, such as:
- The Pastmaster Always Rings Twice
- The Giant Bacteria
- The Wrath of Dark Kat
- Destructive Nature
- The Metallikats
- Bride of the Pastmaster
- Night of the Dark Kat
- Chaos in Crystal
- The Ghost Pilot
- Metal Urgency
- Mutation City
- A Bright and Shiny Future
- When Strikes Mutilor
- SWAT Kats Unplugged
- The Deadly Pyramid
- The Origin of Dr. Viper
- The Dark Side of the SWAT Kats (arguably the best episode of the show)
- The sound effects are very authentic and accurately depict the noises of real-life vehicles, which is something not most H-B shows do at the time.
- It spawned a tie-in video game for the SNES which is neat.
Bad Qualities
- The series does have some pretty mean-spirited moments at times, especially from Commander Ulysses Feral.
- The only 4 characters can be unlikable sometimes.
- Mayor Max is a greedy, cowardly, and stupid laziest mayor and preferring to spend all his free time playing golf.
- Commander Ulysses Feral while not too bad for a character, can be a pretty greedy jerk to Razor, T-Bone, and Callie sometimes.
- Ann Gora can be a bland & dull character to some viewers.
- Burke and Murray are completely unlikable jerks to Razor and T-Bone.
- Sometimes the animation can be quite stilted, even betwixt the fluid movements.
- "Unlikely Alloys" while nothing wrong with this episode, doesn't really feel like a perfect finale to end season 2.
- CEO Ted Turner, who produced the series via Turner Entertainment then, strongly opposed the level of violence in the series, which enticed the merchandise to be reportedly delayed and the series to promptly end after 2 seasons and left 3 unproduced episodes (that would have ended Season 2 on a decent note). after that, we have a very boring clip show "The SWAT Kats: A Special Report".
- After that, Christian & Yvon Tremblay the show's creators would later develop the three most infamous atrocious generic unrecognizable horrible & uncreative shows like Mega Babies (the most infamous out of the 3), Edward, and Loonatics Unleashed (the least infamous out of the 3), and they're all giant stinky middle fingers.
- Thankfully, they're all universally panned and got cancelled.
Reception
SWAT Kats: The Radical Squadron received an 8.4 on IMDb.
Trivia
- The video game based on the series of the same name, developed by AIM, was released by Hudson Soft on August 21, 1995, in North America for the Super NES. A Sega Mega Drive port was in development by Traveller's Tales, but it was cancelled before being completed.
- Christian & Yvon Tremblay the creators of the show would later develop the 3 infamous atrocious generic unrecognizable & horrible shows like Mega Babies, Edward, Loonatics Unleashed, the latter of which were universally panned and temperately killed the SWAT Kats franchise until the rise of "SWAT Kats: Revolution".
- They had projects centered around 2 characters of Activision's video game franchise, Spyro, but they never edged past production. Concept art can be found on their website here.
- They collaborated with the Kids WB's infamous show "Coconut Fred's Fruit Salad Island" co-creator Don Oriolo to develop an attempted reboot of Felix the Cat, but the project failed.
- As mentioned below, a reboot called SWAT Kats: Revolution is in pre-production.
- In 1994, Remco produced action figures of some of the characters, and White Castle and Carl's Jr. offered toys of the show in their kids' meals in the 90s.
- The show has its own video game of the same name on August 21, 1995, on the SNES. It was also going to have a Sega Mega Drive, but it got cancelled before completion during development.
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