Centurions

"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.

The Centurions is about the battle between the cyborg Doctor Terror, who is aided by his assistant Hacker, and the United Nations. The force dispatched to stop them is the Centurions who can have assault systems beamed to them from space. This show is just as good as it was in the 80's and is still enjoyable today. Anyone who likes 80's cartoons will love the Centurions. The animation is a little primative but the story lines are great and the show, overall, is a real treat to watch.

For some reason cartoons made by Ruby Spears haven't done well outside of the 80s, mainly because they were truly a product of their time: fast and disposable fun for kids and young teenagers. Look at the line-up: Mr.T, Heathcliff, Rambo and Thundarr the Barbarian to name a few. None of these have survived outside the 80s and with good reason – they're not much better than the 15 second cartoons used to sell toys that were so popular back then. Centurions is basically that – a glorified ad for the toy line aimed squarely at boys under 16. Given to Sunbow or Lou Scheimer this would have done well but in the hands of Ruby Spears it's become something embarrassing after all these years.

Take He-Man, Transformers or G.I.Joe: what makes those cartoons so enjoyable after all these years is the time they took to distinguish the characters. Despite some huge casts they all managed to find a distinct, recognisable trait and voice for every star of the show. The late great Christopher Latta is instantly recognisable as Cobra Commander or Starscream and Alan Oppenheimer's Skeletor has the most marvellous villain's voice in cartoon history.

No-one ever took that kind of care with the Centurions. You'd imagine it would be easy to give the 3 leads some personality but they remain bland and lifeless, distinguished only by the colour of their suits. Every week their ineffective nemesis Doc Terror would hijack/brainwash/terrorise some research facility or city for some rare metal or source of energy and the Centurions would beam in, select an outfit and blast him back to Dominion. What made me laugh was that there was always a river or lake nearby for Max Ray to use his 'sea-weapons'. If you've seen the episode of the Simpsons where Bart dismisses 'Kinght Boat' you'll get the joke.

Time hasn't been kind to this show. I loved it as a kid because it worked as an ad for toys I wanted. I watch it now (I have all 65 episodes on VHS) after 20 years and I wind up fast-forwarding most of the episodes. For the sake of your childhood memories, don't try to watch this now as you'll find yourself floundering badly, wondering what on earth you saw in this show. Remember it as it was, part of that wild, glorious decade and leave it there.

This is absolutely the best 80s cartoon ever, maybe the best cartoon of all time. It had everything action, adventure, thrill, and much more...

I can't imagine how hard it was for Ruby-Spears company to make this great cartoon, there has been spent a lot of money for this masterpiece of work and it was worth it, for example just the beaming down scenes were hard because I wouldn't call the 1980s for a great technology year with computers like now in the world we live in so the beaming down scenes were excellent!

The cartoons will never be the same as they were before, that is why I hope that they all will be released on DVD specially The Centurions as it's my favorite. I have the whole complete set of 65 episodes on DVD-r but it's not the same because if they were released on DVD the people in the world would be able to buy it and see the DVD's in almost every store which means a lot to the fans. My good friend Ted made this petition to either get the show back on TV or better on DVD, that is if we get many requests to get them back on DVD.

So please help us by signing the petition at http://www.petitiononline.com/6600F/petition.html

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.