All this week I’ve been reviewing the Street Sharks comics, based on the toyline and adapting the three-part pilot. That means I’ve had to watch the intro to the show all three times. And all three times I didn’t care for it. The show was produced by DIC and if you’ve seen the intro to their GI Joe cartoons you know their intro quality dropped pretty hard in the 90s. Sadly, Street Sharks was no exception, and they had three tries to do it!
The original miniseries was the most lackluster of the three intro the series had.
The only think I remotely like about this one is a (rather lazy) attempt at making it seem like a battle was happening. The first verse has them trying “to win” while the second goes “they won”. Otherwise, there’s no life in this , and remember this was a toyline and TV show trying to be part of the 90s “EXTREEEEEMEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!11111” movement. You wouldn’t know it by how laid back this intro is. The Bolton brothers, who were mutated into the Street Sharks, were all extreme sports guys (Streexs wore his n-line skates so often you’d think they were part of his mutation). This intro fails to capture that.
When the full series was launched a new intro was produced. There’s a bit more effort here.
There’s a little more life in this one, but it still doesn’t wow me. They kept the original’s attempt to put a “beach song” beat to it and it fits the tone of the show a bit more but it still feels like something they had to do. I don’t sense the love, if you will, that I have in intros that hit my favorite ranks. Still, it’s better than the first one. So I think these same people were brought in for the third intro.
Yes, there was a third intro, when the Sharks were used to spinoff another toyline and cartoon, Extreme Dinosaurs. I don’t know a lot about this one, but from what I’ve heard they’re about two groups of alien dinosaurs that come to Earth as part of their ongoing feud. So basically the 90’s version of Dinosaucers with a smaller cast. Dino Vengers featuring the Street Sharks….I just realized. The Sharks got second billing on their own show. That’s kind of hurtful. Was the toyline doing badly so they were hoping to shift over? Anyway, they created a new intro to show off both groups.
While still better than the first one it’s somehow lost some of the life of the second one. There’s no interest in this. I’ve seen shows whose theme song has a full-length version but I would be surprised to see any of these having one. I haven’t see this iteration of the show but this intro doesn’t draw me into it. It’s just short, random shots of things blowing up. While the first two intros had a lot of that, there were one or two moments when you saw the Street Sharks do something other than fight. I think there was one scene of the Dinos riding with Bends and one with the heroes standing around a pool table for a half-second. The rest is blow stuff up broken up with throwing things around. It’s not very impressive.
Still, there was a strong enough fanbase that I stumbled across a Street Sharks wiki. This show and the toys might have some nostalgic memories but I was out of high school when this came out and I can’t say I was impressed with anything I saw. Tomorrow we start looking at the second miniseries Archie Comics published with an original story. I’m not holding my breath (no pun intended) on enjoying that either. This series just didn’t do anything for me, right down to the show intros.
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