Return of the Swat Kats
If you were a fan of cartoons in the early and late 90's there is a good chance that you may have come across a certain action packed cartoon called, Swat Kats: The Radical Squadron. Set in world of anthropomorphic cats where the series titular protagonists, two former law enforcer pilots, take to the skies as a vigilante duo to protect Mega Kat City from a multitude of different monsters and baddies. Created by Christian and Yvon Tremblay and produced by Hanna-Barbara Productions, Swat Kats aired 25 episodes in it's original run on TBS exclusive Hanna-Barbara block. In spite of it's subsequent popularity however, the series was cancelled and later syndicated on Cartoon Network's Boomerang block. Despite it's short run however, it garnered a very large fan base and became one of the most popular cartoons on the channel. The same subsequent popularity which prompted home video releases, toys, a video game and a complete series DVD box set.
Now, after twenty years of waiting, fans of the series may get to see the Swat Kat cartoon brought back to life. On July 23 of 2015, both of the show's creators announced they were starting a Kickstarter page in order to revive the show. Not long after creating the page, it surpassed it's original goal initial goal of $50,000 before surpassing their second benchmark goal of $100,000 reaching a total $141,500 with just a little over 2,000 backers on August 22nd. With this funding, the Tremblays plan on creating a new series bible, concept art, episode scripts and two minute animated teaser as a series pitch.
While fulfilment of the pledges made to the page's backers has taken priority since the project was funded, there is still a lot of excitement surrounding the project. Due to the fact that some of the series main cast, Charlie Adler (T-Bone), Barry Gordon (Razor) and Tress MacNeille (Callie Briggs) have expressed their support and enthusiasm for show's return. Even one of the series original writers, Glenn Leopold, voiced his interest in coming back to write episodes for a new series. How far the project will go from here remains to be seen, but it is inspiring to see creators, writers, actors and fans band together to start a revolution.
For more information, check out the kickstarter page that started it all.
