Pop-culture sharks of the ’90s

Comic Book Resources writers reaffirming their appreciation for Street Sharks has all but become as routine as Discovery’s Shark Week.

The series has received three prominent mentions in the last four years on CBR. Sergio Pereira gave it a regal ranking among the rash of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles imitations. Timothy Donohoo declared it the “most underrated” ’90s animated program, and capped that proclamation by predicting an “inevitable” live-action adaptation. And last month, the show’s comic-book offshoot got its own retrospective column, wherein author Devon Foster concluded, “Street Sharks remains a relic of the ’90s, untouched by the changing tides of time.”

The saga of four human turned shark brothers whose powers were brought on by a malicious science experiment before being channeled for good use ran September 7, 1994 through May 18, 1997, mustering 40 episodes over three seasons. Besides that and the comics, it generated a spread of Mattel merchandise and gave rise to Extreme Dinosaurs (nee Dino Vengers), which went on a 52-episode tear in the fall of 1997.

It was also in the literal and figurative middle of a prosperous pop-culture decade for the Selachii clade. Sure, Jaws and references thereto have sustained an impressive shelf life since the mid-’70s. But a generation later, younger and older children’s television, sports, and (once again) cinema all yielded new nods.

It is worth noting this was the first full calendar decade of Shark Week, whose humble beginnings date back to July 1988. The documentary buffet has obviously stuck and inspired such emulations as National Geographic’s SharkFest.

Fiction-wise, this century’s shark-based entertainment upstarts are chiefly Discovery Kids’ Kenny the Shark animated series (which had loose late-’90s roots via live-action interstitials), Syfy’s Sharknado franchise, and a host of other over-the-top made-for-TV movies inspired by Jaws.

But then there is the smattering of unchanged major- and minor-league teams with shark mascots, continuations of film franchises, and of course a yearning to get ’90s shark characters in on the rash of reboots.

In relative chronological succession and ascending order of target age groups, here is a rundown of this ’90s pop-culture frenzy.

Mysteries in the deep

Before there was Bikini Bottom, there was Seacago.

The decade that ended with the birth of soon-to-be sensation SpongeBob SquarePants began with the obscure French-Canadian project, Sharky & George, via CinéGroupe.

The first-billed figure in the title tandem established his species through his name, fin, size, and boldness. That said, his bulbous nose and pink complexion took away from a traditional shark persona. Nonetheless, as Seacago’s finest detectives, Sharky and George (a Flounder-from-Disney’s-The-Little-Mermaid lookalike) are tough on cartoonishly Caponesque organized crime.

Translated into multiple languages and syndicated around the Americas and Europe, the show mustered 52 episodes between 1990 and 1992. Going on three full decades later, its constant absence in the nostalgia vault has some fans in the way back clamoring for a reboot.

Muscles for morality

Besides the obvious species substitution on TMNT, Street Sharks could also be taken for an upgrade on TigerSharks.

In 1987, Rankin/Bass (of classic Christmas cartoon fame) produced a one-and-done, 26-episode series about a squad of vigilante humans who transform into assorted sea creatures. Their leader, Mako, takes the name and strengths of an aggressive shark. The gang’s collective moniker comes from one of the sea’s most fearsome predators.

Naturally, though, Street Sharks was more specialized with its title quartet consisting of a great white, hammerhead, tiger shark, and whale shark. It also accrued a fuller, lengthier run and spread its appeal and availability beyond the small screen.

Through that splash, CBR’s Pereira wrote last month, the show did the most to mitigate residual Jaws-induced perceptions of sharks “as monsters and the rotten apples of the ocean.” Again, the series is all about the Bolton brothers subverting the intentions of their scientist father’s evil colleague.

As humans channeling fearsome animal assets, the Street Sharks endeared viewers through their all-round athleticism, resolve, and generally rad personae. For select fan bases, the resulting habit of framing sharks in a heroic light concomitantly spread from scripts to sports.

Teeth in the game

At least nine past and present professional athletic teams took on a shark-related symbol in the ’90s. The NHL’s expansion San Jose franchise was the first example, and remains the most prominent stateside.

Restoring major-league hockey to the Bay Area in 1991, 15 years after the California Golden Seals’ exodus, the new club upgraded its mascot’s aggression. Per a 2016 nhl.com roundup of every team name’s origin, San Jose’s founding executive vice president of marketing and broadcast Matt Levine said, “Sharks are relentless, determined, swift, agile, bright and fearless.”

The front office went all-out with the franchise’s chosen persona. At a new arena fast affectionately dubbed “The Shark Tank”, the home team was one of the first whose pregame festivities culminated in the players emerging from a tunnel shaped like the mascot’s head.

That no-attitude-withheld trend has hardly receded anywhere, must less in San Jose. And as another testament to their ’90s roots, the NHL Sharks have stuck with teal as their lifelong predominant color.

On the opposite coast, and during the only decade where professional in-line puck was feasible, the Long Island Jawz strove to exude determination, agility, and fortitude in Roller Hockey International. With its choice of footwear, their logo could have been the long-lost fifth Street Shark with a stick. They only mustered one season at Nassau Coliseum in the summer of 1996, but attracted nightly average of 6,547 fans, good for fourth in the 18-team league.

To cap the ’90s Selachii hockey hat trick, the Tallahassee Tiger Sharks played in the Double-A East Coast League. They took the ice in 1994, and stuck until 2001 before moving to Macon, Georgia, and overhauling their brand. (By going for a “grownup joke” as the Whoopee, they missed an opportunity to change their symbol species to the Makos.) But while they had their team around, spectators around the Florida capital were known to brandish stuffed sharks where they might otherwise place a foam finger.

Nearly two decades later, The Fisheries Blog placed Tallahassee’s Frenzy among the honorable mentions on its ballot for an unofficial piscine mascot Hall of Fame. They singled out the costumed Tiger Shark as “one of the least generic shark mascots” around.

The same ballot ranked Hamilton R. Head of minor league baseball’s Jupiter Hammerheads No. 4. Fisheries declared Hamilton (aka Ham R. Head, aka Hammy) the best name on the list, and expressed hope that the club’s identity “might be able to help raise awareness about the critically endangered scalloped hammerhead.”

It is hard to say whether that secondary impact had materialized, but the team has seen no need to abandon its nickname for almost a quarter-century. Since they launched in 1998 (apparently four years after Hamilton was born) as a member of the Single-A Florida State League, little has changed for the Hammerheads except their circuit. The FSL gave way to the Southeast League this year.

Rugby across the Atlantic and hoops overseas in both directions also witnessed the surge in shark sporting symbolism. The British Basketball League’s Sheffield Forgers rebranded as the Sheffield Sharks in 1994. It was a radical move in that the prior handle honored the town’s signature industry, just like the NFL’s Pittsburgh Steelers do in Western Pennsylvania. That said, Sheffield has sustained the second name since.

Two years later, the Chinese Basketball Association’s Shanghai Sharks took root, and began fostering hometown hero Yao Ming in 1997. In between, the rugby club of Durban, South Africa, sought a makeover from Banana Boys. A quarter-century after the fact, SA Rugby Mag noted the franchise’s status as “trailblazers in this country” for pursuing such an overhaul in 1996.

But Durban was not alone in its sport. England’s Hull Football Club broke 130 years of tradition by experimenting with the name Hull Sharks from 1996 to 1999. When Hull abandoned the nickname, the Sale Football Club in Greater Manchester picked it up.

Return to fright

With its July 1999 release, Deep Blue Sea answered the decade’s last call for a shark-related summer blockbuster.

Fundamentally Jurassic Park with timeless sea monsters in lieu of second-act saurians, the Saffron Burrows/Samuel L. Jackson vehicle polarized paying and professional critics. But its basic premise of shark-induced terror spared no imagination, and the ominous background on its promotional poster evoked San Jose’s hockey player entrance tunnel.

Almost 17 years later, in the eyes of Wired’s Brian Raftery, Deep Blue Sea held up as the best shark-related movie other than Jaws. In his 2016 write-up, Raftery sums it up as “part haunted-house tale, part undersea-slasher flick, and part big-ensemble disaster movie.”

“It’s no Jaws,” Raftery continues later, “though it also never makes you think of Jaws—high praise for a movie within a micro-genre that, for decades, has been dominated by one apex predator.”

Two years after Raftery’s retro review, Deep Blue Sea got a belated sequel. Another two years elapsed, and a third film joined the lineup.

That should only whet the appetites for Sharky & George and Street Sharks revivals all the more, should it not?