MASK all seasons

It`s one of those awkward days where due to circumstances I suddenly find myself having finished no less then 10 series in one go during the past 24 hours.

With the GF and the Smurf out on family visits, which included long walks in forests so I passed for the visit, this meant that I ended up watching the odd episodes left and right to complete full series, while checking old Lego sets for completeness.

The second series I managed to complete this way is the box of MASK cartoons.  hailing from the 80s phenomena of `saturday morning cartoons` as the genre is known in the States, these where cartoon shows accompanied by toy lines.

And MASK was definitly one of the cooler toylines, being a sort of a mix between GI Joe and Transformers (and of course, the necessary comic and toyline crossovers did occur).  LUCKILY, this one hasn`t fallen under the Curse of Reboot yet, because rarely the newer series have been better then the older ones.

Spanning 3 seasons in a box of 8 dvd`s, MASK handles the adventures of Matt Trakker, leader of Mobile Armoured Strike Kommand against the evil forces of VENOM, led by Miles Mayhem.
Both sides use transforming vehicles and battle using powered helmets (or Mask`s), for most of the first two seasons where the good guys interfere with a lot of bad guy plans.  By the third season, they know each others identity and instead it is focussed around racing then.

There where four toy line `series`, but only three animated seasons.  The final one, using holographic clones, never made it to the little screen as the cartoon + toy line craze was lying down by then, only surging up a final time a few years later with the Turtles.

The cartoons themselves are of an animation level like they all where back then, not in the league of the japanese, but enjoyable, though they did recycle sequences often.  In ths case, it often led to the funny moment when the Masks where enrgized.  In total, two different styles of powering up mechanism where used, but animation sometimes got it wrong by mixing them up so the device altered appearance during the sequence.

And it came with a `moral lesson` like watching left and right before crossing a road at the end of the episodes, aimed for the young audience clustered to the screen...