Nostalgia with a Twist: Street Sharks
After a minor break, your favorite Nerd is back to take you on a journey unlike any other. Yes ladies and gentlemen, its time once again to fill up your glass with Nostalgia with a Twist. This show was requested by Jory R on Facebook (and so and so on GameTavern). Street Sharks marks the first show on this segment that, 1) I’ve had prior knowledge of AND 2) Watched as a kid. I will try my best to make sure that doesn’t cloud this look at this cartoon.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ug5NdQ1zLHE[/youtube]
This show doesn’t waste ANY time. Right off the back we have some evil pearly whites staring at us. And the mouth opens to reveal… the title of the show! I believe that’s a record here, I mean it takes a second before our first mention of Street Sharks.
Just to make sure the audience understood that shark people aren’t common, the first line of the song is, “there’s a new breed in the neighborhood,” thank you song because for so long I’ve been afraid of shark men eating my children.
I should make a note as we see the appearance of the titular Street Sharks around the same time as the lyric is sung that this was a novel idea in the 1990s. I mean NEVER before did ANY company think of having animals with humanistic features fight crime! And in a group of 4 no less! I bet that marketing executive who came up with this idea is probably retired somewhere off the coast of Rome.
The song then goes on to explain that these Street Sharks are half man, half shark. You’ve got to wonder how high these kids were when they signed up for this experiment? Or do you get drafted for such an experiment? I mean at least with the Ninja Turtles, they had no say in the matter, but the intro shows 4 dudes undergoing an experiment to be turned into Sharks. Who knows maybe Sharks were in with the ladies at the time?
The song then announces, “Fighting evil, that’s the plan” now are we to assume that the plan can go wrong during the course of the show? Or is it announcing that this was like a federally funded experiment for better cops? I really don’t know yet, but such a weird premise at this point.
We get into the rocking part of the intro where they repeat the name of the show to make sure you don’t forget it because you wouldn’t want to get it confused with the OTHER show starring men who turned themselves into sharks to fight crime.
They also showed the transformation of these men into sharks, and boy did it look painful. I really need to know what type of people sign up for this procedure? Then again, people have plastic surgery all the time.
Now it shows the sharks creating massive property damage just to make an intro? Really? These are the guys you want fighting crime? And it appears they have a random hippie sidekick? Your guess is as good as mine.
And just because the ripoff wasn’t apparent enough the sharks also have vehicles including motorcycles and I assume what they call the Sharkmobile.
Okay, I won’t lie. I use JAWESOME in my every day conversation and yes its partly influenced by this show and a friend from college so I can’t hate on them for creating such an awesome… excuse me JAWESOME word.
“They bite, they fight” really does not make this sound really kid-friendly. I mean I can’t imagine shark bites being like someone nibbling on a donut or something. I imagine ripping through the flesh with blood gushing everywhere and limbs hanging loose, but they show none of that in the intro.
As a matter of fact, they show them jumping out of rubble (which is neither fighting nor biting) then they show em headbutting some villain, and then doing a ground pound and then slamming two foes together. And I would be disappointed if I didn’t mention the villains. One was a giant crab person? And the other had a drill for a nose? They REALLY stretched the imagination with those.
They finally are shown biting things, but its more environment things like a pipe and totems (I’m not sure why they are biting totems, I can’t make heads or tails of half of this intro)
Now we get to the random character shots because these people aren’t important enough to the show. We get random black female doctor, hippie sidekick singing in, random old lady taking something off of one of the Street Sharks (and I know I bagged on them earlier for being a Ninja Turtles rip-off, would it have been so difficult for them to include a part in the song that told me these characters names?)
The rest of the intro is finding various ways to say Street Sharks, showing them beating up things and people, looking so cool driving their vehicles and of course saying Street Sharks.
As a whole, the intro really doesn’t sell me on the show. I don’t know what’s going on really, and it just seems like they had a catchy song and decided to go with it. I would pass on the show passed on the intro.
