Awesome Cartoons rides hard with the Biker Mice from Mars!!

Hey J1 fans!! It’s almost time for the most awesome anime event in Philly—the J1 Con Anime Convention where you can meet voice actors and hang out with cosplayers! And this is Awesome Cartoons where Devildriver1313 (That’s a-me) brings you the cartoons that made our childhoods great! Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were super popular in the days of hip hop and MC Hammer’s parachute pants. This led to imitators coming out of the woodworks to challenge the Turtles for supremacy. Of all of those, there were a few shows that were just as entertaining though their airtime was shorter than Eastman and Laird’s creation. This is one of them. Let’s ride free with the Biker Mice from Mars.

Biker Mice from Mars follows three anthropomorphic mice motorcyclists named Throttle, Modo, and Vinnie who escape a war on their home planet Mars before arriving to defend the Earth from the evil Plutarkians that destroyed their homeland and to one day return to Mars. The mice’s signature weapons consist of a cestus and a laser (Throttle), a bionic arm (Modo), and flares (Vinnie). While on Earth, the mice meet Charlene Davidson who is (ironically) a motorcycle mechanic in Chicago. She helps out the Mice with repairs and upgrades to their equipment and bikes. She is the Cid to their main character in any Final Fantasy game. The Biker Mice are led by Throttle who is the most logical, level-headed, rational and calculating of the three. Vinnie is definitely the wildest, most fun-loving and egotistical of the group even though all three are adrenaline junkies. Despite his “hypermasculinity”, Vinnie is actually a very loving and caring individual. He flirts endlessly with Charley. The gentle giant Modo is by far the strongest of the three mice, but despite outwardly looking the most threatening and aggressive, he is the most empathetic and sensitive of the group, frequently referencing what his grayfurred mama used to say.

The Biker Mice fight against the Plutarkians, an alien race of obese, foul-smelling, worm-eating, fish-like humanoids who plunder other planets’ natural resources because they have wasted all of their own. The Plutarkians are led by Laurence Limburger, who disguises himself a human, in a plot to ransack Earth’s resources to send to his own dying planet. Limburger enlists two henchmen, mad scientist Dr. Karbunkle and the idiotic Greasepit to help him steal Earth’s natural resources and send them to Plutark.

AWESOMENESS!! Really?! It’s a cartoon about freaking biker mice with the coolest names ever! Modo, Vinnie and Throttle, like many characters in the series, have names that are references to biker terms and euphemisms. Their gal pal Charlene Davidson goes by “Charley” making her name a pun on Harley-Davidson. Heck, Vinnie even accidentally called Charley by his old flame back on Mars named Harley, thus making this reference more obvious. Other characters who follow this pattern include the de facto leader of the Freedom Fighters and Throttle’s lover Carbine, Modo’s nephew Rimfire, the mad scientist Carbunkle and bungling bad guy sidekick Greasepit. Though they were mice, they were more manly than anyone. Riding around on their bikes, beating up bad guys and saving the day while doing it with a cool attitude. And rock and roll intro truly set the mood for the show and rock music was also incorporated into the episodes. Like many cartoons of the 90s, action spoke louder than words and Biker Mice was no exception! The show was chock full of butt kicking, laser blasts and explosions! And yet, this was for kids. Plus, the setting for the series wasn’t in some big Metropolitan city, it was in a crumbling ghetto in Chicago of all places. Now, let’s talk about the mice themselves. What you might not remember is the injuries they received due to Carbunkle’s experiments performed on them. Throttle lost his eyes and were replaced with malfunctioning bionic eyes in captivity: as a result, he wears green sunglasses with field spec capabilities, and on his right hand he wears a powered glove which increases the strength of his blows with that fist. He also carries a holstered laser pistol and sports a leather biker vest, making him the only one of the trio to carry a weapon or wear clothes instead of armor. Modo has a robotic arm which was lost thanks to the same incident and the right side of Vinnie’s face was burned in which he wears a plate to cover the injury. Still, like true bikers, the Mice continue to ride in the name of freedom.

Biker Mice from Mars rode the airwaves for three seasons from September 1993 to February 1996. The series was revived in 2006 and began airing on the UK network “Toonattik”. However, productions problems in the Philippine studios held the series back until 2007, thus delaying premieres in the US and other countries until 2008. The new Biker Mice series was picked up by FOX’s 4Kids TV in 2009 before it went on an indefinite hiatus. Currently, there is no word on the series’ return. But should that day come, Throttle, Vinnie and Modo will be ready to ride again.

Biker Mice from Mars gets an AWESOME rating of 4.5 out of 5.