Remember that one day when you could wake up without an alarm? When you would get your favorite bowl of cereal and sit between the hours of 8 and 12? This is a blog dedicated to the greatest time of our childhood: Saturday mornings. The television programs you watched, the memories attached to them, and maybe introducing you to something you didn't realize existed. Updated every weekend.
In the late 90s, Mattel was looking to
create a new action figure line inspired by the adventures of James Bond,
but aimed towards young kids. Ultimately, the new figure line ended up being a
retooled version of Mattel’s Big
Jim action
figure from the 1970s. Big Jim was
inspired by the original G.I. Joe action figure,
standing a full two inches shorter in comparison and featuring a karate chop
action and a variety of outfits and vehicles for sports, space exploration,
hunting and other situations. Big Jim was
marketed in Latin America as Kid
Acero (or
“Kid Steel”) and in Europe as Mark
Strong. In the 1980s, Big
Jim was converted to James
Bond, Agent 007 until
the line ultimately ended.
Mattel’s new line was called Max
Steel,
which
centered around teenaged Josh McGrath whose body was infused with super
Nano-Technology, or N-TEK, which gave him superhuman physical attributes and
turned him into the super-agent Max
Steel. He worked for a secret global security force and
protected the world from a variety of threats. As with Big Jim, Max was released with a variety of outfits and vehicles
inspired by extreme sports, such as mountain
climbing, surfing
or skiing,
but also came with various military
or combat-related
attire. Amongst the line’s villains were Psycho,
a fiend with a dangerous bionic arm and face that could be hidden by a
flesh-like mask; the snake-man Bio-Constrictor;
and Vitriol,
who had light-up energy attack arms. The toys launched in 1999 with a 16-page
introductory mini-comic published by Mattel that discussed Max’s abilities from
the perspective of both the good guys and the villains.
 |
| Max in Turbo mode. |
To help promote the toys, Mattel partnered
with Sony/TriStar
television’s Adelaide
Productions to produce an animated series featuring
the characters. The series was developed by Greg Weisman
and Jeff
Kline, which centered on 19-year-old extreme sports star
Josh McGrath (Christian Campbell, Matthew Kaminsky for two episodes). Josh was
an orphan who was adopted by his father’s best friend and partner, Jefferson
Smith (Chi McBride), who secretly worked for a counter-intelligence agency
known as N-Tek. N-Tek created sports equipment as a public front. When Psycho
(Keith Szarabaika) attacked the facility while Josh was visiting, Josh was
injured and exposed to a swarm of microscopic nanomachines called Nano-Tech Max.
The nanites began breaking down and killing Josh, until he was given a dose of
transphasic energy, or T-Juice, which the nanites needed to function. The
nanites bonded with Josh, making him able to turn invisible or alter his
appearance, and allowed him to “Go
Turbo” with the aid of a wrist device giving him super
strength, speed and agility. With these new abilities, Josh joined N-Tek and
adopted the code name Max Steel.
 |
| Jefferson addressing Max and Roberto. |
Along with Jefferson, Max’s team was
composed of Dr. Roberto Martinez (Jacob Vargas), a teenaged genius who provided
equipment and technical support from the base; Rachel Leeds (Shannon Kenny),
Max’s partner who worked with him in the field while also training him to be an
N-Tek agent; Jean Mariot (Szarabajka using a French accent), second-in-command
under Jefferson who was the head of operations and showed faith in Max’s
abilities even when Max didn’t; and Charles Marshak (Ed Asner), a division
chief who was in charge of the flying fortress Behemoth that served as Max’s mobile base. Outside of N-Tek, Josh
had his girlfriend, Laura Chen (Lauren Tom), and his best friend, Pete Costas
(Thomas F. Wilson). Josh’s relationship with both of them became strained as
Max’s exploits gradually began taking over more of his life, although Pete was
eventually let in on the secret and joined in on several missions.
 |
| Max vs. Psycho. |
N-Tek’s primary enemy was DREAD, an
evil organization led by the calculating and brilliant John Dread (Martin
Jarvis). Along with Psycho and Vitriol (August Paro), DREAD employed the likes
of L’Etranger (John de Lancie),
a mercenary terrorist who was essentially an electrical weapon, and Dragonelle
(Mia Korf),
who could mimic the actions and appearance of anyone she encountered. Other
foes included Woody Barkowski (Jeff Bennett),
who believed N-Tek sold him a faulty bike that caused him to break his leg and end
his sports career, and considered himself Max’s arch-nemesis (Max disagreed);
his sister, Annabelle (Susan
Eisenberg), who was mutated by a lab accident into the energy
vampire Elextrix; Bio-Constrictor (René
Auberjonois), a scientist who was injected with
electrified snake venom that turned him into a half-reptile mutant; Lance
Breamer, the self-proclaimed “King of the sky” who became an air pirate; and
several jilted inventors and people with connections to the sports world who
turned to illegal activities for various selfish reasons.
Max
Steel debuted on the Kids’ WB!
programming block on February 26, 2000, becoming the first fully computer
animated program on the block and lasting three seasons. The series was written
by Weisman with Lydia
Marano, Jon
Weisman, Michael
Reaves, Kevin
Hopps, Mike
Ryan,
Katherine Fugate,
Cary Bates,
Gary Sperling,
Tom Pugsley,
Greg Klein,
Steven Melching,
Tony Schillaci,
David Slack,
Dan
Perry, Marsha
F. Griffin and Andrew Robinson.
The music was composed by Jim
Latham and Nathan Furst,
with Latham also composing the theme. Initially, the series was animated by Netter Digital Animation
utilizing motion capture actors. After producing the first season, Netter went
bankrupt and production moved over to Foundation Imaging
for the second season. However, Foundation also went bankrupt and production
was moved once again to Mainframe Entertainment,
makers of the first fully computer animated program, ReBoot.
 |
| Roberto, Jefferson, Max and Kat. |
Because
of the similarities to the Big Jim line,
it was worked into the show that Jim was actually Max’s father, and that
Jefferson was based on the Big Jeff variant.
After the first season, Charles Marshak and Jean Mariot no longer appeared.
Mariot was revealed to have been an agent of DREAD and was seemingly killed in
an explosion in the season finale. Weisman planned to bring Mariot back as a
triple agent, but those plans were abandoned with his departure from the show.
Rachel was promoted at the start of season 2 and replaced by Kat Ryan (Debi Mae
West) as Max’s new partner. The cast was further streamlined in season 3 with
Laura and Pete being written out and Vitriol replacing Dread as the main
villain. The third season also saw N-Tek shut down after events of the prior
season and the characters becoming extreme sports stars. In keeping with the
theme, several real-life sports stars had guest appearances on the show: pro
skateboarder Tony Hawk,
BMX rider Mat Hoffman,
hockey player Luc
Robitaille, basketball player-turned-actor Rick Fox, and
Motocross/Supercross champion Jeremy
McGrath. After the September
11 terrorist attacks, the word “terrorist” was filtered out of
some episodes and figure packaging in the “Urban Siege” series were revamped to
remove “Secret Mission” Cards that contained stories about terrorist attacks on
American soil.
 |
| Max vs. the four Elementors. |
Despite the initial success of the
toyline, sales in the North American market slumped while Latin America
continued to thrive. Mattel decided to end the show and focus their efforts on
those markets with a series of direct-to-video movies. Mattel and Mainframe began
producing them in 2004 and they were available as bonus gifts with the purchase
of other products, as well as a showcase of the products themselves. The first,
Endangered Species, was the only one
to maintain continuity with the show. While each additional film built on the
first’s story, facts established about Max’s creation and N-Tek differed; such
as the inclusion of an isotope called Elementium being embedded in Max to help
his survival of the nanites. Elementium would become a driving force behind the
films’ new primary foe, Elementor
(Scott McNeil). Max’s alter ego was also phased out, leaving him as Max 24/7. To
help keep Max in the public consciousness and to provide background to the new
continuity, a series of 1-minute mini clips called Max Steel’s Turbo Missions ran from 2008-11. While Campbell
continued on as Max, McBride was replaced by McNeil, Vargas by Alessandro
Juliani, and West by first Meghan Black and then Leisa Ann Beley.
The episodes “Strangers”,
“Snowblind”, “Sphinxes” and “Old Friend, New Enemy” were released onto VHS
tapes that were included with various action figures. The
complete first season was released to DVD across two
volumes and a collected edition by Sony Pictures Home
Entertainment. In 2001, Treyarch
developed a Max Steel video game
released by Mattel
Interactive for the Sega Dreamcast.
Max Steel: Covert Missions saw Max
having to stop DREAD’s new bio-weapon from ravaging the world. The game
utilized the series’ opening titles, however only Campbell returned to voice
his character. A version for the Game Boy Advance was planned, but ultimately
cancelled. While there was originally a visual disparity between the toys and
the show due to both being developed at the same time, the toys gradually fell
more in line to the style featured in the program. However, outside of
variations of Max and the main male villains, no other character was ever
released; most notably none of the very prominent female characters, as it was
a toyline marketed towards boys.
The movies and toyline wrapped-up in
2012 to make way for a reboot of the franchise. Mattel partnered with Playground Productions,
Nerd
Corps Entertainment, and FreemantleMedia
Kids & Entertainment to create a new Max
Steel cartoon to usher in the new toyline. Airing on Cartoon Network
and Disney
XD,
the series saw Maxwell “Max” McGrath (Andrew Francis),
a Tachyon-Human Hybrid able to generate TURBO energy, join N-Tek and merge with
a friendly technology-based alien named Steel (Sam Vincent)
that helped him control his powers. A live-action film version
of the reboot written by Christopher
L. Yost and directed by Stewart Hendler
was released by Open
Road Films on October 14, 2016, and was a critical and
commercial failure.
2005 saw the release of the fifth in
a series of direct-to-video computer-animated Barbie films, Barbie: Fairytopia. Barbie,
as a wingless flower fairy named Elina (Kelly
Sheridan), had to save Fairytopia from an evil fairy named Laverna (Kathleen Barr). It was the
first Barbie movie to feature a completely original story written by Elise Allen and Diane Duane, and directed by Walter P. Martishius and William Lau.
As with the other Barbie movies, Mattel released a wave
of merchandise that tied into its setting and themes. They also licensed Barbie out to Kellogg’s to produce
a limited-edition cereal based on the film. It was the first cereal for the
doll since 1989’s Breakfast
with Barbie Cereal. The cereal contained berry-flavored pieces in pink and
purple heart shapes and marshmallows in the shape of a mirror, a jewel, a
flower, a purse and a butterfly. The back of the box featured a maze game with
characters from the film.
However, that wasn’t the end of the
cereal. In 2007, the eighth computer-animated film, Barbie as the Island Princess, was released to video. This was the
second musical in the series, and the first produced under Mainframe Entertainment’s
new name of Rainmaker Animation. Barbie
was Ro (Sheridan), who was shipwrecked on an island as a young girl and raised by
the animals there. After she rescued handsome prince Antonio (Alessandro Juliani) when he
ended up on her island, he brought her back to his kingdom so that she could
try to discover who she was. They fell in love along the way, but the evil
Queen Ariana (Andrea Martin) had her
sights set on acquiring the throne from Antonio’s parents—by any means
necessary. The movie was written by Cliff Ruby and Elana Lesser
and directed by Greg Richardson
and Jesyca C. Durchin.
 |
| The Fairytopia and Island Princess boxes. |
Rather than create an entirely new cereal, Kellogg’s simply renamed
theirs Barbie as the Island Princess Cereal and
changed the box to feature her likeness from the film. Each box featured 5 out
of 10 collectible cards depicting various characters and scenes.
 |
| Three of the four Multi-Grain boxes. |
The cereal sold well-enough that in
2008 Kellogg’s continued to produce it, but didn’t tie it into the latest Barbie movie. Instead, they renamed it Barbie Multi-Grain
Cereal and the artwork featured 2D animated versions of either Barbie, Barbie
with a tennis racquet, or Barbie with her best friend, Teresa. The backs of the boxes
featured more Barbie-themed
games, collectible cut-out trading cards and keepsakes, or a cut-out picture
frame.
 |
| Back of the Multi-Grain box. |
