Max Steel
What?
- A toyline created by Mattel, Inc.
- A half-hour action/adventure CG (computer-generated) cartoon.
When?
- Max Steel aired on Fox Network and Kids'WB! for three seasons
(35 episodes total) from 2000 - 2001.
- Aired (in reruns) on Cartoon Network.
Who?
- Produced by Sony via Tristar/Columbia. Animated by Netter Digital,
Foundation Imaging, and Mainframe Entertainment.
- Netter created the first few episodes of Season 1.
- Foundation finished off Season 1 and created all of Season 2.
- Mainframe created all of Season 3.
- Notable actors include: Christian Campbell, Jacob Vargas, Chi McBride,
Shannon Kenny, Debi Mae West, David Kaye, and John DeLancie.
Famous for:
- Somehow managing to be entertaining despite being passed around to
three completely different companies, the latter two of which
were forced to work under unbelievable time and budget constraints.
- "Going turbo!"
Cartoon Network, being a network of schmucks, has taken Max off their schedule
for the foreseeable future. Schmucks.
Max Links
- Maxsteel.com
- the official Mattel site. Toys and nothing but. Yeah. Not
too much to say about this one.
- www.maxsteelTV.com
- the official Sony site. The information presented hasn't been updated
since the second season, but this is pretty much the only cartoon-based site
out there.
- www.rowsby.com/max_steel.html
- this guy actually worked on the show while it was at Foundation. Read
and learn much; if you're like me, snicker at the waves of bitterness sent
in Mainframe's direction. The word "jealous" springs to mind...
Random Trivia
- Every single episode from Season 1 begins with the letter "s".
- Christian Campbell, who voiced Max himself, is Neve Campbell's brother.
- Kat was originally going to be named "Jet."
- Netter Digital, the FIRST company to animate Max Steel, went
bankrupt shortly after Sony handed the show to Foundation. (Not to
get nasty or anything, but based on the quality of their animation, this
may have been a mercy killing.)
- Foundation Imaging has also effectively gone under.
Why did I start watching this show? Several reasons. For one,
my burning, fanatical adulation of ReBoot led me to be interested
in other CGI shows. For another, it came on right after The Real
Adventures of Jonny Quest for a while there, and setting the VCR to tape
two shows was just as easy as setting it to tape one.
Oh, and I liked making fun of it.
This is a thirty-minute toy commercial in the grand tradition of Mattel
toy cartoons, and just like all of those before it, Priority Number One is:
to sell toys. Plot often takes a backseat to the villain, the vehicle,
the gadget. (And it's not only Mattel - Sony wrangled airtime for
two Aibo lookalikes.) I suspect the reason it became as ratings-friendly
as it did had less to do with its own merits and more to do with its timeslot
- right in between two showings of Pokemon. This is born out
by the overwhelming dearth of Max Steel fan sites. How many
are there? N-O-N-E.
And when I started watching it on CN, my most frequent comment was, "This
is the dumbest cartoon in the world," often accompanied by a hearty chuckle.
But you know what? It grows on you. Well, it grew on
me, anyway.
I'll admit, for a while there, I thought Foundation's animation just
sucked . But then I noticed that their later episodes were actually
very well done - which makes sense, as they finally had a chance to create,
as opposed to rush around and rebuild everything from scratch. Still,
the transition to Mainframe is extremely obvious, most notably in the color
choices, more cinematic direction, and facial expressions; while the main
characters remained essentially the same, the guest stars and bit characters
took on a more stylized, cartoon-like appearance. Not to mention that
MF ditched the strange haziness, for lack of a better word, that Foundation
used. (Watch a Foundation ep, then a MF ep. Note the crystal clarity
and sharp edges in the latter.)
This is not to say that one style is better than the other - just that
they're different. And on that cheerfully diverse note, I believe
I'll stop talking.