When you think of Max Steel, do you think of a kid with a sentient robot backpack who fights alien threats? I haven’t really looked into that take because that’s not the concept I remember. The original concept for the series and toyline was much different.
Josh McGrath is an extreme sports star, sponsored by his adoptive father’s company N-Tek. Except N-Tek also delves into advanced technologies to use in their superspy organization. One day, Josh is exposed to one of those experiments, a nanite project that ends up giving superhuman strength, the ability to alter his appearance, and other bionic type powers, but must recharge his “transphasic” energy to remain among the living. To keep his identity secret, Josh takes on the identity of Max Steel…but being a 19 year old kid his personality can be as much a hinderance as an asset.
In the first episode, Max deals with their usual opponent, DREAD, and the man responsible for Max’s condition, the cybernetic terrorist Psycho. The animation was done by Netter Digital and Foundation Imaging, who also gave us Voltron: The Third Dimension and Roughnecks: Starship Troopers Chronicles. In other words, you’re watching this for the story, not the character models. Enjoy for what it is.
The animation studio would go under after the second season. The third and last season, not currently available at the Throwback Toons YouTube channel, would be taken over by Mainframe Entertainment, who for some reason changed the whole concept of the show. N-Tek is shut down, leaving Josh/Max, Berto, and Rachel’s season two replacement, Kat, to travel around the world going to take part in extreme sports events with twists only possible in a cartoon. The transphasic energy drain was less of an issue if memory serves, while they did still fight evil, only now they may end up hanging out with Tony Hawk. Apparently there were also some direct-to-video movies I haven’t seen.
Oddly, Mainframe would do the same alterations to Action Man. Originally, as discussed in a review of the DVD I did for The Clutter Reports, Action Man was the nickname of an amnesiac soldier who fought a terrorist organization whose leader had some kind of connection to him. As would happen to Max Steel recently, the brand got a complete replacement. Now it became…basically season three of classic Max Steel. Alex “Action” Mann was part of a team doing even crazier extreme sports than season three Max, but was also unknowingly part of an experiment that increasing his strategic skills with high level mathematics. There are even sequences where you see Alex playing the odds and calculations in his head, and this version of Dr. X was a mad scientist behind the project who wanted to recapture Alex as his one success in the project. Someone at Mainframe was really into extreme sports, but I guess they didn’t convince the audience. It only lasted one season, just as Max Steel would be canceled after changing from spy story to traveling crimefighter.
Mainframe may have had better quality animation and character models, but I prefer the story of the first two seasons better. Maybe I’ll post a season three episode when it shows up and let you compare.
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