Die Sechs-Millionen-Dollar-Familie

I loved this cartoon. It had the best animation and some great stories. The series had a sort of animated take off the "Six Million Dollar Man" in which Jack Bennett, a bionic secret agent in the future helps fight the criminal mastermind known as Dr. Scarab. To defeat his enemy, Scarab endows five lackeys with bionic/mutant powers, but then Bennett's family with two children and two adopted sons is nearly killed in his absence in an avalanche while on a skiing trip. They are also given bionic powers and secret identities to help him against his increased gallery of rogues. My favorite character was Rock-One; a sort of adolescent Madonna with an exuberant and vivacious personality who acted as if she had seen too many "Jem" cartoons. The animation was top of the art with computerized special effects - almost a predecessor of the style seen today. This would be great done live action with Kevin Costner and Markie Post as the parents !

Like most of the cartoons in the 80's Bionic Six had a great pilot episode and a memorable theme song, who could forget that, with great animation. Bionic Six was about a family of super charged individuals fighting Scarab and his hench men. Prof. Sharp gave the Benett's their powers and his brother Scarab was their arch enemy. The animation when they said "Bionics onnnnnnn" and put their rings to their wrist bands was always a treat to watch. You had a family fighting crime and evil while balancing their own family and their outside normal life, while you had a brother fighting his brother with super humans. Man what writing. Young and old can enjoy this at so many levels, too bad Cartoon Network doesn't run anything else but Scooby Doo. If you ever have a chance to watch Bionic Six don't hesitate.

For some reason, everyone remembers the theme song!

A great family show that reinforced all the good things--family, unity, diversity, and acting when you know you have a just cause.

Subplots included a discussion of family tension, viz. Wilbur and Amadeus Sharpe, which was a retelling of the story of Jacob and Esau in the Bible.

Why isn't this on DVD?

What a wonderful opening theme song. In the 80's just about all the cartoons had catchy memorable theme songs, I wonder what happened. Bionic Six like anything from the 80's had a beautifully animated pilot episode. Bionic 1 was the first and then he took his family on a ski trip, while on the trip aliens landed and the family got caught in an avalanche. Bionic 1 brought his family to Prof. Sharp, and the only way to save the family was to give them Bionics. Prof. Sharp had a brother and his brother was the arch villain of the series, named Scarab. Wonderful writing, brother against brother, family fighting together side by side. Enjoyable for anyone young or old, you can enjoy it at many different levels.

Yeah, I didn't buy that Scarab didn't recognize them either. It would be different if he never met them in their civilian identities, but he did and should recognize them easily. I mean, they are a fairly distinctive group.

And while we're on the subject, how come none of the classmates recognized them either? They were international celebrities, after all. And to cap it all off (before the remaining five get their superpowers), Bionic One's kids look at him on the telly and DON'T recognize him!!! I wish they would put this out on DVD soon. But there's hope, lots of those old shows are coming out now. I just got the final Transformers episodes where I live (on DVD), after buying every prior episode.