At the beginning of the 1990s, there was no franchise bigger than the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. They had a hit animated series, a blockbuster film and a toyline that was making millions in action figures. Naturally, that kind of success would attract imitators, and thus a whole parade of TMNT ripoffs starring anthropomorphized animals began hitting toy store shelves and the programming blocks of Saturday morning cartoons. There was Biker Mice from Mars, Swat Kats, Battletoads, and many others. And while many of these properties don’t deserve revivals — though some, like Swat Kats, are already getting them — one Turtles imitator is especially primed for a comeback, and that is Street Sharks.
Created at Mattel toys by David Siegel and Joe Galliani, Street Sharks began as a toyline, while the cartoon was merely a way to promote action figure sales. This was common practice at the time, and the same had even been true of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles; the cartoon only existed to sell the toys. The difference was that the Ninja Turtles had existed as a comic book first for a few years, then a toy company got its hands on them, whereas Street Sharks started, and ended, with the toys. Why sharks? As Galliani told Mental Floss back in 2016, “Boys love sharks.” That’s about all Mattel needed to know at the time to launch a successful toyline.
The toys were spectacular, too. They consisted of a handful of slightly soft plastic sharks with big open mouths and human-like arms and legs. They had tons of personality and their big faces jumped off of store shelves to make Mattel $40 million in 1995, beating out the Power Rangers in some markets (by this time, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was well in decline). The toys were loud and played perfectly into 1990s tropes; one shark wore rollerblades, another carried an electric guitar.
The cartoon, which also arrived in 1995, gave the Street Sharks an origin story: Two university scientists create a device called the “Gene-Slammer,” which allows them to manipulate the DNA of animals, particularly aquatic ones. While Dr. Robert Bolton is responsible with his research, his insane partner Dr. Luther Paradigm wants to use it to “perfect” nature. After Paradigm experiments on Dr. Bolton, turning him into a mysterious, unseen monster, Paradigm then turns to Bolton’s four young adult sons and experiments on them as well. At first, the experiment seems to kill the brothers, so Paradigm has his henchmen dump them in the river (really), but soon the brothers transform into humanoid shark creatures who quickly exact revenge on Paradigm… and begin fighting crime in the city.
What’s distinct about Street Sharks as opposed to those other TMNT ripoffs is that it’s the one property which didn’t overthink the assignment. Battletoads had a complex, Star Wars-like lore to it. For Biker Mice from Mars, being motorcycle-riding mice wasn’t enough, as they also had to be Martians. Street Sharks, in contrast, is refreshingly shallow. It was just about four musclebound meathead brothers whose personalities were barely distinguishable from each other. Once they get transformed into hideous shark creatures, the brothers seem to immediately accept this without a thought about how it will affect their lives. They just begin fighting crime and eating everything in sight, food or not. They also seem to have shark-themed vehicles ready to go, and catchphrases too — their substitute for the Ninja Turtles’ “Cowabunga” was the shark-themed “Jawesome!”
The show’s developers, Phil Harnage and Martha Moran, also seemed unbothered by the fact that it was a blatant ripoff of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. In just the first few episodes, there are several jokes that point it out, like when the Street Sharks all groan with disgust when one of their human friends suggest they all go get some pizza. When Dr. Paradigm captures the Street Sharks, he plans to further splice their DNA and rattles through several different animals as possibilities. One of the computer’s suggestions is a turtle, which Paradigm dismisses as “too slow.” Best of all, when Street Sharks was presented to retailers at Toy Fair back in 1994, their promotional video featured an actor playing with the first wave of action figures by beating up a Ninja Turtle toy. That actor, by the way, was Vin Diesel, then unknown and still in his 20s, wearing a leather vest without a shirt — rarely does a toy line have such an utterly perfect spokesperson.
The cartoon ended in 1997, as the toy sales had faded by then, but while Street Sharks fell short of the 65 episodes all cartoons aimed for at the time — the number networks deemed necessary to rerun a show Monday through Friday — it lasted a respectable 40 episodes, spanning three seasons. The cartoon and toyline were so successful for a time they warranted a spinoff called Extreme Dinosaurs, which applied the same loud aesthetic to dinosaur toys and had a cartoon that lasted 52 episodes.
But Street Sharks has more going for it than just past success. In 2024, Mattel released a new wave of Street Sharks for the toyline’s 30th anniversary. While these toys had some updated articulation, they had the same look, feel, and diving cave-like packaging of the original toys. On top of that, in September 2025, comics publisher IDW launched a new five-issue comic book miniseries of Street Sharks, which wraps up in February 2026. While I’m sure the sales numbers on both of those products would inform an animated series relaunch, they both got things right by embracing the loud, “extreme” and, frankly, dumb charm of the original.
And dumb is precisely what a reboot cartoon should be. The original succeeded because it was eye-catching and didn’t take itself too seriously. These are sharks that wear pants, eat everything, and shout juvenile catchphrases. If a relaunch happens, the worst thing they could do would be to figure out how to “legitimize” Street Sharks to a more respectable property with a more complex lore. Instead, they should make it funny, like Teen Titans Go!, Batman: The Brave and the Bold or even Thundercats Roar. While the last of those was a serious failure, where it went wrong was taking a serious property and making it silly, but if you take a hard look at Street Sharks, none of it was ever serious.
