CENTURIONS Is the Action Figure Line and Cartoon Series That Needs a Wild Film Adaptation
In 1986 a sci-fi action figure toy line launched with a cartoon series titled Centurions. This was actually a great property! The animated show was fun to watch and they were some of the coolest toys to come out of the 80s!
There were only half a dozen individual action figures to buy, but the coolest thing about them were all the crazy and wild accessories that you could buy for them to make them even more badass! It was kinda like G.I. Joe mixed with LEGOs.
The Centurions were a team of men who wore specially created exo-frames that allowed them to fuse with a variety of sweet assault weapon systems. The characters would have to shout "PowerXtreme" for these assault weapon systems to attach. One of the taglines for the property was “Man and Machine, Power Xtreme!”
The main Centurion military-like characters initially included Ace McCloud, “daring air operations expert,” Jake Rockwell, “rugged land operations specialist,” and Max Ray, “brilliant sea operations commander.” There was also a female character in the series named Crystal Kane, who worked on an orbiting space station called Sky Vault, which is the headquarters for the Centerions. She used a transporter to send the Centurions, and the requested weapon systems, to where they are needed. They also had a hidden base in New York City called “Centrum.”
The story for the series was set in the 21st century, and the Centurions found themselves fighting against the cyborg mad scientist Doc Terror, who was on a mission to conquer the Earth and turn its inhabitants into robot slaves. This villain was assisted by his cyborg companion Hacker and an army of robots.
The show was produced by Ruby-Spears and was animated in Japan by Sunrise's Studio 7 division. Comic book writers Jack Kirby and Gil Kane also contributed to the design and concepts of the show. The character designs came from Norio Shioyama. The series launched as a five-part miniseries and was followed with a 60 episode series.
I loved this property when I was growing up! This is one thing that I wouldn’t mind seeing get a live-action or animated feature film adaptation. I bet it’d be pretty freakin’ rad. I can only imagine how epic the visuals would look with today’s technology. The story is fairly simple to adapt, just put a little more focus and depth on the character development and you could really have something special. I could see Michael Bay doing something completely insane with this visually.
Do you remember this show or action figure line? Did you own any of the toys?