“Toxic Crusaders” Created by Lloyd Kaufman and Michael Herz; Based on characters from “The Toxic Avenger”; Directed by Bill Huton and Tony Love; Starring Rodger Bumpass, Paul Eiding, Ed Gilbert, Susan Blu, John Mariano, Hal Rayle, Michael J. Pollard, Gregg Berger, Patric Zimmerman, Susan Silo, and Hath Soucie; Originally aired 1990; Run time 22 minutes.
“Toxic Crusaders” is an American animated series based on the 1980’s Troma Entertainment “The Toxic Avenger” movie series. It takes the concept of the movies, a hideously mutated superhero fighting pollution extreme prejudice, and waters it down to be palatable for children. While the series maintained the core of the films, they are considerably more family friendly.
Melvin Junko (previously Melvin Ferd), a janitor and the fated protagonist of “Toxic Crusaders,” is the victim of bullying that results in his exposure to toxic chemicals. As a result, Melvin is transformed, along with his mop, into a hideously deformed creature of superhuman size and strength and a sentient mop respectively.
Melvin uses his strength and transformative self-aware mop to stop crime, fight pollution, and save kittens. Toxie, as he becomes known, is paired against an anthropomorphized cockroach from the planet Smogula called Dr. Killemoff.
Killemoff has come to Earth with one purpose, to corrupt and destroy the ecosystem to make the planet more suitable for himself and his species. The Smogulans can’t stand Earth’s relatively clean environment and as a result, Killemoff wears a mask that pumps in pollution in order to survive. Each episode features Killemoff, along with an array of other aliens, cyborgs, mutated creatures, and anonymous henchmen, hatching some nefarious but flawed plan to convert and take over first Tromaville and then the world.
Toxie is tasked, along with his sidekicks and fellow mutants. Toxie’s accomplices include:
Nose-Zone, a test pilot who flew through a hole in the ozone layer and crashed his plane into a load of pepper. As a result, Nose-Zone has a gigantic nose and a mechanized wheel for a leg, turning him into some sort of gray-toned generously olfactorally endowed Gizmo Duck.
Major Disaster, a soldier who fell into a toxic swamp. As a result, he became some sort of plant creature with an army helmet fused to his head, and can control plants. You can think of him as G.I. Swamp Thing.
Junkyard, created when a vagrant and a dog took shelter in a kennel covered in toxic sludge and struck by lightning. As a result, they transformed into a single sentient dog wearing overalls. Think Al Borland but if he was a werewolf who’s also a surf bum.
The disgustingly mutated team rounds out with Headbanger, created when a singing telegram employee visits the laboratory of Dr. Bender and they both fall into an atom smasher. As a result, they are fused together with two heads on a single patched together Frankenstein body. They originally work with Dr. Killemoff but swap sides to get the ladies.
“Toxic Crusaders,” like many films and television shows of the era, had an overtly environmental theme. It’s clear throughout the series that polluting and negatively impacting the environment is the real enemy here and, despite their polluted origins, Toxie and his friends are ultimately fighting against the encroachment of invasive technologies.
It isn’t quite as on the nose as “Captain Planet and the Planeteers” without the overt environmental PSAs and power is yours message, but it did provide another role model for conservationism for kids of the 90s and could be argued to be equally as important as it also appealed to adults and pulled in a completely different kind of kid as might be enticed by the Planeteers.
Despite only producing thirteen episodes, the series maintains a cult following due to its living more on the fringes of popular animation and the film series that preceded.
Several years after the cancellation of the animated series, the first three episodes were mashed together and released as “Toxic Crusaders: The Movie” the entire series was eventually released as a box set on DVD.