SWAT Kats: The Radical Squadron
Two disgraced fighter pilots, a jet built from scrapyard parts and a city of cats under attack from an undead sorcerer and a pair of robot gangsters. Hanna-Barbera's SWAT Kats was the top-rated syndicated cartoon of 1994 and then simply stopped, three episodes unfinished, which is why its fans have been trying to bring it back ever since.
SWAT Kats: The Radical Squadron was created by the brothers Christian and Yvon Tremblay and produced by Hanna-Barbera, premiering on September 11, 1993, on TBS and the syndicated Funtastic World of Hanna-Barbera block. Its 26 episodes were all directed by Robert Alvarez, with most of the scripts by Glenn Leopold and Lance Falk. The premise is a kids'-cartoon Top Gun: in Megakat City, a metropolis of anthropomorphic "kats," the pilots Jake "Razor" Clawson and Chance "T-Bone" Furlong are thrown out of the paramilitary Enforcers after defying Commander Feral, who clips their wing mid-chase and sends their jet crashing into his own new headquarters. Banished to the military salvage yard to work off the damage, they build the three-engine Turbokat out of discarded parts and fight crime as masked vigilantes from a secret hangar under the junkyard.
The rogues' gallery was the draw: the shadowy Dark Kat, the undead sorcerer Pastmaster, the mutant scientist Dr. Viper and the Metallikats, a married pair of robot gangsters named Mac and Molly Mange. Deputy Mayor Callie Briggs was their ally and the golf-obsessed Mayor Manx mostly absent, and the voice cast included Barry Gordon and Charlie Adler as the Kats, Gary Owens as Feral, Brock Peters as Dark Kat and Frank Welker as Viper. Remco made action figures in 1994, White Castle and Carl's Jr. put the characters in kids' meals, and Hudson Soft published a Super NES game in August 1995.
By Nielsen's count it was the number one syndicated animated show of 1994, and Hanna-Barbera planned new episodes and merchandise for 1995. Instead the series ended on January 6, 1995, with three episodes unfinished. The fan account blames Ted Turner, whose Turner Broadcasting owned the studio and who was reportedly unhappy with the violence in his cartoons; in early 1995 he said publicly that his cartoons were nonviolent and that "we don't have to worry that we're encouraging kids to kill each other, like some of the other cartoon programs do." That displeasure is credited with delaying the merchandising, though the Tremblays have said the remark was aimed at adult shows like Beavis and Butt-Head, and no published account names who pulled the plug.
The afterlife has been long. Warner Archive released the complete series on DVD in December 2010, the Tremblays raised $141,500 on Kickstarter in 2015 toward a revival, announced a partnership with Toonz Media Group in 2022 for a series called SWAT Kats: Revolution, and in late 2025 a comic-book Kickstarter raised over $730,000.
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