‘The Toxic Crusaders’ Are Back In High Definition [Blu-ray Review]

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What do Robocop, Police Academy, Rambo, and The Toxic Avenger have in common? If you answered that these were all rated R movie franchises turned into children’s cartoons, then you’re absolutely correct. It was a strange phenomenon, but the 80s (and into the early 90s, when The Toxic Crusaders was released) were a weird time for children’s programming. Hell, it’s not as though we weren’t watching this stuff anyway, right? I was six or seven when I saw First Blood, and I was 10 when I saw The Toxic Avenger, for better or worse. But, I mean, why not base a cartoon on a comedy-horror movie wherein a kid’s head gets graphically run over and explodes like the piece of fruit they used for the effect? At least The Toxic Crusaders, which was just remastered and released on Blu-ray, taught kids about protecting the environment!

The Toxic Crusaders looks better than it has any right to be. For the Blu-ray release, the picture was upscaled to the point where it looks even better than its original release. Personally, I liked the way the series looked when I watched a few episodes on Tubi. It was like watching it on an old TV back in the early 90’s. This transfer is a little too pristine for my liking. But you can certainly see every detail. That’s nice in its way because it does have a unique style. Often backgrounds look like ink pen on construction paper, giving the show an almost impressionistic vibe at times.

As for the cartoon itself, it’s all pretty basic. Bad guys have names like Dr. Killemoff, Psycho, and Bonehead. Toxie is the leader of the good guys, and he’s accompanied by Major Disaster, Nozone, Headbanger, and Junkyard. Aside from Toxie, the good guys have basically one gimmick that they rely on. Major Disaster, for instance, controls plants. Nozone has a giant nose with which he is able to blow objects around. Hey, no one accused this show of being subtle.

The team is charged with defending the city of Tromaville against Dr. Killemoff and his various schemes to pollute the city. Why is he trying to do this? Because he’s actually a four-armed alien from the planet Smogula. The aliens from Smogula thrive on pollution, and they’re waiting for Tromaville to be terraformed so that they can move in.

Toxie’s cartoon origin is similar to the movie if you can believe that. It’s 99.9999% less raunchy, of course, and it doesn’t involve a sheep in lipstick. Soon he ends up in his familiar shack in a toxic waste dump, with his familiar blonde girlfriend who can break glass with her singing voice. Speaking of voices, it was a good call to give Toxie a kid-like voice instead of the deep faux-superhero voice he has in the movies. It makes him more of a relatable fellow for the young ones.

There’s one thing about the show that definitely has to be discussed: the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles’ influence. First, the Crusaders are mutants by another name (Hideously Deformed Creatures of Superhuman Size and Strength), and they’re sometimes even referred to as mutants. If you’re at all familiar with the plot of the Turtles, you’ll know that the Shredder is supposed to get Earth ready for an invasion from Dimension-X, a bizarro place with all sorts of weird creatures. In The Toxic Crusaders, Killemoff is a soldier of the planet Smogula, who’s planning an invasion of Tromaville. Hell, the toys were even manufactured by the same company that made the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles figures. The toys were so similar that you could easily mix them with your turtle figures, which I did myself as a young lad.

This all makes sense when you realize that TMNT was still massively popular in 1991. But despite the influence, Toxic Crusaders isn’t a ripoff. For one thing, TMNT is an adventure series with comedy elements, while The Toxic Crusaders puts humor at the forefront. It’s a comedy series first and an adventure series second. 

The humor is…interesting. It’s mostly pun-based, stuff that might make an older person groan, but it’s humor that a kid would understand, for the most part. And there’s plenty of gross-out humor, too. Nothing over the top, characters like Mayor Grody and locations like Burp-O-Burger can be found throughout. 

Believe it or not, the show is even slightly subversive. You have the completely corrupt Mayor Grody who, hopefully, taught at least some kids to question authority. That was certainly the point, anyway. This is one of the things taken directly from the movie. And, of course, it makes kids think about the dangers of pollution, as vague and fantastical as the concept is presented in the cartoon. Hell, in the 21st Century, even acknowledging that pollution exists is subversive.

There are 13 episodes of The Toxic Crusaders. After watching all 13 in a row, everything started to blend together, and I started having a weird children’s cartoon nightmare vision. So I wouldn’t recommend watching them all in one sitting. One or two at a time, and try to get into the mindset of a kid. This is so crucial. You have to forget you’re an adult and reconnect with your inner child. You can either roll your eyes at the punny humor or you can accept it as part of the world-building. I chose the latter and had a damn good time doing it. 

This new Blu-ray is packed with special features divided pretty equally between the two discs. There’s no commentary, unfortunately. If you like toy commercials, though, there’s a ton of them here, as well as quirky featurettes like Toxie and Nozone in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. One of the weirder things on the first disc is the inclusion of three short Christmas cartoons from back in the 40s or 50s. I have no idea why they were included. 

This is definitely a collection geared toward the adult collector ready to get their nostalgia on. Whether you like these cartoons or not will probably have a lot to do with how old you were in 1991. But it’s also good old-fashioned children’s entertainment. So we forty-somethings can show it to our children or other small humans in our lives, and they’ll probably get a kick out of it.

SPECIAL FEATURES:

• New introduction by Lloyd Kaufman
• Original Toxic Crusaders toy commercials and TV spots
• Feature-length documentary about the making of The Toxic Crusaders video game from Retroware
• Long lost archival footage of your favorite mop-wielding mutant
• Bonus cartoons

Tags: Toxic Crusaders

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