Centurions

You're not going to find "Centurions" on many "Great Cartoons of the 80s" lists. Or any lists, good or bad, for that matter. It is a repetitive toy commercial show, atypical for it's time. Despite being cancelled after 1 season, it still managed to go 65 episodes.

So, imagine if you will, three elite soldiers. Each specializing in land, sea, and air combat. Each with unique suits capable of being equipped with certain levels of weaponry, depending on the threat level. It gets beamed down from an orbiting space station where their support operator (and her pet chimpanzee) keeps an eye on the evil plots of one "Dr. Terror" and his sidekick "Hacker" who are more cyborg than men with evil doing gadgets.

Dr. Terror and Hacker try to do bad guy stuff for world domination or some such, or sometimes a one-off villain of the week, the good guys show up, struggle a bit, and win the day with firepower and one-liners (while never killing anybody) Makes for a great commercial. As a kid, I remember getting very thrilled when they'd break out their heavy stuff. Had their been action figures available to me, I'd have bought them.

The main characters share the spotlight rather well. Each get developed well enough. Later on, more Centurion members are added with their own specialties to go with newer bad guys. Meet the new plot, same as the old plot. I could see this show getting a reboot somewhere. Michael Bay would have fun with this, I think. It's by no means deep subject matter, but you can tell some genuine effort was put into it. Worth a look for some retro, cheesy fun.

Wow a great and wonderful hero cartoon. Teaches heroism. This was made in the early 80's, but got extended run in the early 90's from the cartoon network. This show was introduced to the 90's kids and it was epic. Ace, Jake and Max were POWER EXTREME.

Good plots, likable characters. Jake was the tough guys, Max was the leader with the 70's pornstache and Ace was the ladies man always trying to score with Crystal, who was their....hmmmm....their secretary of sorts but with a brain.

Fantastic stuff...kids of today miss.

I rate this a 10 but around season 2, they introduced 2 more members...I forgot their names, but the quality did suffer as they had too many characters and not enough time to dedicate to two more guys.

Awesome, must watch.....

I had such high hopes for Teletoon Retro to air this but instead of having shows such as this, ones that don't get the treatment that they deserve, they air things that I may have seen dozens of times before.

The Centurions was the highlight of my pre-teen years. I know that may seem a little bit clichéd but it's true. After Duke from G.I. Joe, Jake Rockewell is another one of those cartoon characters that I really had a crush on.

It's too bad that Teletoon Retro doesn't see it the same way people of my generation do. Otherwise Teletoon Retro would be a lot better than it is.

"The Centurions" is one of the best adventure cartoons ever. Sure, its nothing deep, but the paper-thin stories where gorged with high-flying action that never let up. This was an exhilarating show.

There's not much to the story. Four or five special soldiers are equipped with ultra-cool armor, sent from a beam projected from a large spacecraft hovering over Earth, to fight international crime. In these sequences, we would see this mysterious ship and meet the under-developed ally who had a purple monkey named Jane used for comic relief (!)

Anyway, this was one entertaining show. The villains were always cool and the action was a whole lot of fun. There is signaturely campy wit, a surplus of explosions and awesome gunplay. The unrelenting fun make this one better than "G.I. Joe" and comparable to the "Spiderman" cartoon (but "Batman the Animated Series" would be a stretch). Any fans should look up "Cowboy Bebop", a show no action lover should miss.

This cartoon shaped my childhood. I looked at the episode titles and can still remember them. Wish I could find it dreaming somewhere. I would also give it more stars if that were possible.