When I think about The Toxic Avenger, I can’t help but laugh at the fact it spawned a Saturday morning cartoon, The Toxic Crusaders. Considering the film’s content, it leads one to believe that miracles sometimes do happen. It only lasted one season, but it spun off into a toy line and a video game, so there must have been some success. Troma has released the complete Blu-ray series with some nifty extras, and there’s no better time to revisit this animated anomaly.
Melvin is a hopeless nerd who just wants to be liked. After being tricked by Bimbette into meeting her and wearing a tutu, he’s ridiculed and laughed at, leading him to trip and fall into a vat of toxic waste. He is transformed into Toxie, a hideously deformed creature of superhuman size and strength.
He teams up with other deformed superheroes, No-Zone, Major Disaster, Headbanger, and Junkyard, to form the Toxic Crusaders. They fight off the evil Dr. Killemoff and his Radiation Rangers, who are desperate to pollute the Earth.
When The Toxic Crusaders debuted, I was glued to the television. I was sixteen or seventeen and had already been exposed to (and obsessed with) the cult classic films. I enjoyed it then and enjoy it now. The series is just messed up enough to entertain fans while catering to audiences of all ages.
It’s heavy with the anti-pollution message, but they weren’t the only cartoon doing it at the time. The animation was pretty crude, which worked to its advantage. I don’t think I’m out of line calling the show a cult classic, and I’m probably not wrong in assuming the majority of its fans are the same ones who follow Troma and the film series.
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Having been animated on film and then transferred to video, one can’t expect the new transfer to set new trends. Still, it looks the best it ever has, far superior to what can currently be found on DVD or streaming platforms.
The packaging is pretty exceptional, and the special features are plentiful. There’s a new intro from Lloyd Kaufman as well as his classic intro from the DVD release, multiple toy commercials, a retail presentation, a feature with Lloyd discussing a meeting he had with New Line Cinema to do a live-action version of The Toxic Crusaders that ended in a lawsuit, a feature-length documentary on the making of the video game (it features no footage from the game, animated series, or films…weird) and much more.
I wouldn’t say the two-disc set is perfect. However, it’s vastly superior to what has been previously available to fans and a welcome addition to the growing pantheon of Troma titles on Blu-ray.
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