The Street Sharks were made to cash-in on the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles craze by being cooler and badder by them and I absolutely loved the toys they released. For whatever reason I never actually caught the cartoon and bad reviews made me not want to check it out later in life. But I think it’s one of those things that needed to be seen and I’m glad I did. Street Sharks isn’t going to be one of the top animated shows in the 90s but it definitely something to check out if you’re into 90s cartoons, since it feels and reeks of the 90s.
If you asked me about a Street Sharks revival, I think it could be done but in a way they also feel as they are that they could only ever exist in the 90s. I mean that in a good way, it’s where they belong. You have some anthropomorphic Sharks and well it’s awesome. The origin story is super simple and they really don’t explain much. The whole concept is so cool that you don’t mind at least at first. But trust me their origin makes no sense. It isn’t like TMNT that actually does make sense since it is based of a comic or some other idea. Here they have nothing and it shows with a villain that is just going to do bad things for no real reason.
The first episode is pretty rad, very 90s, reeks of awesomeness despite this and that none of the looming questions will ever be addressed, it’s all saved purely by style. I mean why did Dr. piranha / Paradigm want to use the sons of his colleague? Is he working for the government? Where is he getting his resources like tanks? Why was this act his final act that got people to turn on him? He surely was working on similar stuff before right? Why do the Street Shark allies just become so friendly with them and also just happened to have vehicles and a secret lair for them to hang out in? They never had the decency to actually give an explanation anything of the sort, not even a handwaved comment; They just designed cool toys and half assed their origin.
The first season is 13 episodes but it’s the first 3 episodes are their origins but in reality it’s really only the first one that shows any “origins” but with the small continuity I guess it can work edited as a VHS “Movie” origin of the street sharks. The Street Sharks never see their dad again in the show but he’s there helping on the background, it isn’t too bad but…more could’ve been done with the little lore they built but they never bothered. The concept is just overall cool but no groundwork of story is ever set up.
The show is very cartoony. not very logical in the rules of why bad guys are bad or street sharks are not liked by the public. They don’t dwell into it much like most shows at the time like say X-men or Savage Dragon. How exactly do the sharks “swim” through concrete? makes no sense but I’ll be the first to admit that it’s cool. The show doesn’t waste time in adding more bad guy grunts which is good and bad since the others barely had any time to do anything.
The writers pull a bunch of stuff out of nowhere like have have shark alert spider sense type of super power that’s used only a once or twice. This show just doesn’t care, it had the laziest writers that just feels like a little kid wrote it with new powers and somewhat resemblance of plots in other 90s cartoon happening here but without substance. This might seem like something bad but in a way it really isn’t, I believe it’s a strong point.
We don’t have to wait long before we get a new shark mutant ally. This is what people think the original TMNT Cartoon think it was with all the random toy additions every episode. The universe makes no sense and we’ve had no time to get to know the characters either. None of the sharks have any real personalities either, they all blend, sure one is the leader, Slammu the strong one, Streex the cool one and…Jab who knows the techie? at least his toys seemed to be none of this really shows in the cartoon. All are about equaly strong, none are shown as smart weird or anything. they were very lazy. Hell, their lair is a sewer basically.
What’s Dr Piranoids plan anyway? The first season doesn’t do much but constantly introduce characters (toys). And that’s waht this is an unapologetic toy cartoon, but it’s cool for it since it isn’t embarrassed by it, despite having less story and making less sense than the average 80s cartoon made to sell toys cartoon. We get another episode we quickly get another toy with Moby Lick and plots still make no sense. why does Dr Piranoid wear that robe over his bad guy suit, no one questions it.
In one episode the Street Sharks literally ate a Ferris wheel and then pushed a roller coaster down without any effort. Does that make them have super strength? They don’t give a fudge. They literally swim through concrete and can eat metal or rock. The show continues showing us new toy vehicles and yet some we never got toys for like random motorcycles and jet packs. The animation in general is cheap, lots of corners are cut. We eventually get introduced to a new threat, a new bad guy but he isn’t the big threat in the episode either, not really, so we have 4 seaviates and none nhave any personality and arne’t really much of a threat either.. What’s the point? street sharks walk out in the open and it’s inconsistent if they’re enemies or being looked after police or not such a weird show where they ignore their own rules or established lore since you guessed it. They don’t care. were do they get the money or how they get the resources both good and bad guys. Why did people just know they exist an act normal about it, you’re not meant to think about it.
Random Steel shark bot we see is cool, the lizard season finale of Season 1 seems almost like a proto extreme dinosaurs episode with the shark like mutants lizards. It works as a decent S1 finale with the sharks father appearing. But yeah, I guess maybe they wanted figures of the reptiles here and they were made into and those evolved into extreme dinsoaurs, sadly no dino lizards. We get to see mutant piranoid without armor here and he looks cool.
Season 2 begins with Jurassic Shark, they go to the past, we get a new bad guy without origin who becomes a new minion for Dr. Piranoid and two of the other ones randomly stop appearing. Now there’s time travel, nothing matters. It definitely feels like something happened in between with the changes in evil minions. I guess they wanted to make it more interesting but the tech in the show makes no sense and no one cares. I haven’t talked about it but the theme song is pretty good, feels nostalgic in a way as if from n older time like a scary movie trying to be cool I dunno. They really try to make hamburgers to be their pizza with the humongo burgers.
I should mention that every episode title has shark in the name at least some consistency since their own universe has no rules. Dr piranoid is in almost every episode which is why he suffered villain deecay since the fourth episode but in season 2 they try to make a new recurring character with a mobster Maximilian Greco and Andan the ecovillain that has Malcolm Medusa III and Clammando who has an origin in a future episode even if he first appears in the future along tentakill and future Dr. Piranoid because the street sharks universe has no rules.
Oh, did you know they meet the president? He pretends the sharks are bad but he knows they’re good for their safety. Eventually after a few episodes they do become heroes to the US and then go on space missions and do the presidents biddings once Piranoid is found to be a bad guy by the public. Moby lick comes back but in general the new sharks allies were never used much. All episodes feature Pirnoid.. too many so it became lame. They do try to use the toy variants in the show from time to time especially Jab and his jet pack as well as Ripster with his mechanical jaw, and some of the vehicles. One time villain dictator from eastern Europe that somehow they know the street sharks. Mantaman alien DNA gets about 3 episodes in the series. Ripster goes bad, makes no sense for one episode about drugs. Pirnaoid wants to gene-slam everyone its like mutagen. In fact everything is like mutagen regarding genes. We get a new ally with el Swordo, not the best origin either but hey, at least its different. Yet again like other allies relatively useless.
Future Piranoid comes to the present to fight the street sharks, he feels more of a threat of his former self, but defeated also. we meet another Paxel of the G.E.C.O.s dinosaur extreme type inspiration character lizard shark if that makes any sense. We talk about the father again who at this point we know works in the shadows. In one episode piranoid near the end of the season is captured, seen as the bad guy and sent to jail, of course it shows that he is trying to escape but counting the show changed direction it works as an ending for how they defeated their main bad guy. We get a sea monster an alien to fight the sharks, in general crazy stuff happens.
In season 2 they used Scooby doo like music segments, sometimes all new footage, sometimes some archive footage, but with a random song instead of dialog for the action scenes in the second half of the episode. This is always weird when it’s done, perhaps a song was cheaper than dialog? I dunno, sometimes it’s ok sometimes its weird.
Dino Vengers Featuring Street Sharks
Third season has Dr piranoid show up only to job to Bad Rap a Velociraptor and then we meet the extreme dinosaurs but here they’re called the dinovengers. They are just street sharks but dinosaurs and now they share the same show. they come from space nd it feels weird. Dr piranod comes back to be transformed into an iguana, now you have two teams of heroes and screen time isn’t shared very well, it never was and now its worse. All dinosaurs have the same personality like the sharks, no distinction between any of them, the raptors don’t seem as big of a threat even if they try to sell them as one.
It definitely feels like a team up show of two teams, wonder if it could take place between extreme dinosaur episodes. Dr piranoid is made useless. transformed into an iguana. the Dinovengers and Dynomite are a bit pointless, the raptors suffer villain decay super fast, the episodes really aren’t that interesting but its a short season so who cares. As a last street shark season it’s alright, but if they had continued not sure where they could’ve continued from weird show, I liked it.
Dr Piranoid gets a bit more respect in the last episode at least. The final episode is great works as series finale for both Stree Sharks and Extreme dinosaurs. Piranoid as Iguanoid gets revenge against the raptors, releases the aliens of season 2 to conquer the world and both the Street Sharks and Dinovengers team up to defeat him. The Street Sharks are still the heroes through out this whole season even if they shared screen time with the Dinovengers. Dr. Piranoid is stopped and the raptors leave earth, good show overall, well bad but good if you like 90s extreme, you could do worse, it has a certain charm.