I loved this show as a kid. It's always nice to see it pop up somewhere. Like when the toys show up in clearance sales, or finding nearly every episode online.

That show also spawned an awesome series of action figures.

Loved this show

Especially the fleet Admiral with the punk-rocker hairstyle

I loved this show so much when I was a kid. I always wanted the toys but could never find or ever afford them.

HOLY SHIT. I LOVED THIS SHOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It was BSG before BSG.

Amazing, I was trying to figure out the name of this show for weeks.
I started flashing back when I saw old episodes of Centuriions on Boomerang.

Well done, io9.

The only show I liked as much as ExoSquad vehicle wise was StarCom. The one with the magnetic feet on the easily inhalable figures. StarCom also had the best opening. But the ExoSquad suits were the closest I could get to RoboTech when I was a youngster.

I could be (and probably am) misremembering this, but wasn't Larry Niven a writer/producer on this show? I remember his name on a cartoon I watched from this era and I want to remember it being this one.

Well, there went my work day. I loved this show.

@Git Em SteveDave: hot damn, that was the lat one I needed
Centurions
Mask
Exosquad
StarCom

well, its off to eBay for me.

Hey io9, any chance we could get a poll of greatest cartoon opening intro? I loved StarCom's

But there were a slew of other ones, like ThunderCats, SilverHawks, Bionic Six, Dinosaucers(Sara was hot), C.O.P.S(had a crush on Mainframe), the Orbots, MASK, Pole Position(could outdrive the Mach5),etc.... Anyone else agree?

@Git Em SteveDave:
there was the cross-promo toyline where they unleashed a bunch of the robotech action figures under exosquad, claiming the SDF-1 jumped into a new universe.

sadly, it was only for the toys.

I totally had JT Marsh's E Frame as a kid. I want it back so bad now.

ExoSquad was borderline Space Opera and it holds up surprisingly well. I miss the good old days of animation.

OK, just to kill ALL productivity, spend 30 minutes watching this:

Damn i remember the action figures they rocked. Though i always like the Sapians gear better than the humans. More style.

@mitchel_stevens: I just looked those up on eBay, and I remember I bought some for my dorm room mid-90's. Just the small figures though. I still remember Robo from when I was a kid, and the 90's veritech fighter was no match for the one I remember as a kid, so I didn't buy.

io9 well done indeed, perfect end to the week!

I completely forgot about ExoSquad! Now I remeber reading an interview with the creator, his rule was "No kids, no cute robots."

Awesome.

I loved my Starcom toys, though never saw the show. Each one transformed or had a great action feature.

One of those wierd contradictions growing up: GI Joe = evil warmongering. Starcom = slightly educational due to magnets.

I don't remember this at all. But what about "Battle of the Planets"?!

[en.wikipedia.org]

This was a spectacular show. This, Gargoyles, the 90s X-Men show and Batman: The Animated Series defined my childhood as far as cartoons go.

Exo-Squad was the first show I remember watching where you could not miss an episode because the plot would leave you behind. It was truly ahead of its time.

Maybe if the show does well on Hulu someone will consider releasing it on DVD!

@mitchel_stevens: The scuttlebutt at the time, if memory serves, was that a deal was struck with Harmony Gold to incorporate the Robotech 'verse into the ExoSquad 'verse; beyond just rereleasing toys. The invading aliens in the last episode were going to be the Invid from Robotech:New Generation/Genesis Climber Mospeada. And Robotechnology, Veritechs, Destroids and the like would have been introduced in the 3rd Season to combat the invaders. Series cancellation nixed that deal...or possibly vice versa.

Here's hoping for Season 2 on Hulu.
...or, God forbid, the entire series on DVD. Only S1 was released on VHS.

@DeepFriar: Lets face it, not only were the cartoons better, so were the toys. I had a GI Joe Wild Bill helicopter that had these fast spinning rotor blades. The ends were sharp. So to protect the kids, they put orange slip-on rubber tips on them. Trust me, you took those off, pulled the trigger to spin the blades, you could cut vegtables w/them. Today, that would never happen.

God I miss this days when cartoons were this good.

From the summary you would think the Neo-Sapiens were the heroes of the story. Really, think about it. The bad guys are a group of genetically engineered slaves who rebel against their masters?

While the episodes are good, you can definitely see the influence of the time with the media being the "enemy of the military" and politicians afraid to do what is really necessary.

With the racism you see the Neo-Sapien leader experience during the "Sister City presentation", can you really blame them for rising up?

Ah, ExoSquad. Great show.

I actually still have the action figure of Wolf Bronski's Exoframe. The character himself and 3 of the missiles are missing, and the string for the grappling hook disappeared years ago, but other than that, it's in pretty good shape.

@Chimaera:
Ooh. I had always assumed that it was just a tie-in toy deal. Thanks for the insight.

People People!

The song may not have been great but at the end of this intro every week I was ready to watch Goosman clean house!

Galaxy Rangers FTW. Still one of my favorite fighter designs right behind the 80's vipers

Heh, I have the first season on laserdisk - top that for geekiness- and the second on tape. The art stank, but this show had some awesome villain monologing. And they didn't mind doing horrible things to their cast. Yay, death! I also dug the little touches like the Niven-inspired "Belter strips" hairstyles.

The writers also didn't treat the viewers like idiots. There's a scene near the end where they're storming the baddie's Doom Fortress, over whose gate he had placed a sign reading "Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate" ("Abandon hope, all ye who enter"). As the good guys pass through, one of them opens up with his gun, shooting out all the words except "speranza," the one for "hope." He moves on, and NO ONE SAYS ANYTHING. In any other show, somebody would have ham-fistedly spelled it out. Kudos, dudes.

Funnily, the same writing team went on to do a cartoon based on the Street Fighter videogame. Comeplete with the same awesome speechifying.

I loved this show; and even though it came into being while I was in adolescence, I remember it as pretty well written and adult enough to still get into the story.

Here's a torrent for those of us who live outside the US:

[isohunt.com]

Fantastic show. I still have a ton of the toys locked up in the attic, somewhere. One of the first cartoons I remember watching where a main character died. Also, the one storyline with the mutant hybrids really freaked me out, back when I was around 12 or so.

Also, Hulu is awesome. It introduced me to Arrested Development. Now I'm using it to give Firefly a shot, finally.

@Sharpless: I now know why I got the three seasons of Arrested Development dirt cheap on Amazon a week ago.

@Rybanis: A bit of trivia, a few of the Exosquad toys were actually Macross toys repackaged from the Robotech toys that came after them. Its very complicated. But they had a Tomahawk as part of the action figure line up, even though it never showed up in Exosquad.

So much love for ExoSquad. AND for ComStar, for the one who linked the video up there.

Damn those cartoons (and their toys) were awesome. ;)

@jchasse: OH SNAP - the memories! They come flooding back!

thanks for the heads up

btw: there was talk aboout scariest horror movies ever...you can see the entire 28 days later on hulu...crazy

you know now that i think about it, unless they were genetically engineered to be dumb (in which case there wouldnt have been a revolt) wouldnt the humans have lost (and badly) the war? i mean...if they're superior in every way...wouldnt their hand eye cordination, in the heat of the moment strategy making, and technology, all be much more superior than their creators?

@Sharpless: Firefly will not disappoint. Great show.

@phoenix: The title you're looking for is "StarCom". ComStar is an organization in the Battletech universe that handles interstellar communication.

One of my most entertaining moments of law school was stumbling upon the Exosquad/Battletech lawsuit.

There are certain terms I never thought I'd read in an appellate case, and "Inner Sphere" is one of them. Seriously, it's worth a look, as you get to watch the 7th Circuit, not exactly known for their party down mentality, attempt to grasp and grapple with the fictional past-through-tomorrows of not just one but two sci-fi worlds.

It's even juicier when the court tries to differentiate the two on the basis of their own internal logics. Like, clearly, where two things look identical, but if one is supposed to be a ten meter tall fusion powered mech whereas the other is a three meter tall fission powered battlesuit, well, that's not the same at all.

And the very idea of FASA suing someone for trademark, when it went 'zoink!' to Robotech so. And who they called in for experts on either? Priceless.

@Rhainor: I am both simultaneously ashamed that I was mistaken but also so glad that you caught it, corrected me, and that we both know exactly what the other is talking about. :D That makes me happy beyond belief.

You're totally right, thank you!

Exosquad rocked! I remember catching this on like channel 9 at 7:30 am and vcr'ing it.
At the time actions cartoons like GI joe dominated the airwaves and GI joe just completely sucked. No long term plot. No one ever got killed.
Then exoquad came along. And it was a retelling of wwII complete with the neosapiens playing the nazis. The fall of poland. hitler youth. demented medical experiments. the uber race. death camps. mass murder. the french resistance. mass starvation. and of course all the sci-fi battle action you could want. There were numerous fleet battles and when ships blew up, there were no survivors.
SPOILER ALERT
The human allies try to train their own exosquad with 5 or 6 members. and they go on 3 different missions where almost everyone in the team dies and they have to start over from scratch.
And the finale... damn I just rewatched it and it still makes my skin tingle.
best scifi animated series ever made. should be required viewing for preteens. seriously. the wwII lessons are all here.

Man , I loved this back then. I don't think i watched the 3 seasons completely though. I hope Hulu puts them all.

Also, i remember back in school everyone had a battletech action figure, I had 3 that I remember of. I had Phaeton, Bronsky and DeLeon. Thanks to wikipedia 'cause I didn't remember their names :|. I remember I extended Bronsky's hook line so I could swing him aroung :P.

ah ah ah, do you guys remember Galaxy Rangers?