In movies, TV, and comics, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles have more adaptations than they could count on their three-fingered hands, but it’s the long-neglected Street Sharks series that perhaps most deserves a reboot. The popular Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles franchise has been long-running and began a trend of anthropomorphic superheroes in the ‘90s. However, while similar series, like Biker Mice from Mars, Earthworm Jim, and SWAT Kats: The Radical Squadron, saw revivals, the turtles’ spiritual spinoffs, Street Sharks, never got their second chance.
Street Sharks was the story of the Bolton boys: four brothers mutated into superhuman shark hybrids Ripster, Streex, Jab, and Big Slammu by their father’s evil colleague. With a conspiracy to reshape humanity at hand, the Street Sharks battled their fishy foes, Dr. Piranoid and the Seaviants. Promoted at a 1994 toy fair by Vin Diesel, Street Sharks toys rode the popularity created by NYC’s sewer-surfing superheroes and had a cartoon series to it. Having lasted for three seasons and produced a spinoff, Extreme Dinosaurs, Street Sharks became a cult classic of the ‘90s.
Having expanded to toys, video games, cartoons, and almost everything else, TMNT is a series that keeps rebooting itself when it doesn’t need to. The turtles’ 1987 cartoon had its heyday and became defined by it, to the point where it can still sell merchandise and invoke nostalgia after being canceled for almost three decades. Meanwhile, Street Sharks is neither gone nor forgotten, with merchandise still produced, but without a new TV series or movie reboot, the sharks doomed themselves to obscurity.
Today, Nickelodeon is still pushing the ‘80s animated series more than any other of their TMNT projects. Despite a Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Cowabunga Collection. The turtles are so rooted in the zeitgeist that their legacy alone can carry them without the need to remind people who they are. While the mutant ninjas had multiple movies and cartoons, Street Sharks more or less had a single TV series and a spinoff to their name.
With delightfully grotesque toy designs and campy cartoons, the Street Sharks was an enjoyably over-the-top IP. Including a redesign of Ripster and two new villains in Clambo and Karkass, the fact that Mattel released new figures in August 2021 demonstrates that there’s still nostalgia for this series. M.U.S.C.L.E.’s 2019 G.I. Joe. If the Bolton Brothers were to return with more adventures and characters, a reboot for modern audiences would help them once again become pop culture playthings.
Although the Street Sharks cartoon was better off concluding when it did, it doesn’t mean there wasn’t still fun to be had with these characters or at playtime. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles made their mark in the ‘80s and created a legacy that needs no introduction. However, if the “jawsome” foursome wants to rise from the bottom of the toybox, they’ll need a nostalgia-style reboot to make it happen.