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.

"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.

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.

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.