Jawsome?
Street Sharks are easily in
my top five action figures, I’m pleased to see them developing the cult
following such good quality toys deserve, but of course we’re not here to talk
about those, nah, we’re here to talk about 3” knock-offs frankensteined from
their parts. Meet the Ocean Warriors: The Warriors Powered by Ocean:
Figurerealm.com dates these as coming from 2000, I personally think that’s a little late –
Street Sharks lasted for a surprisingly
long time, around three years and six waves of figures but their time was well
and truly over by 1998, let alone 2000, so I can’t see anyone bothering to
release knock-offs of them that late in the day, however as these are made from
parts from the third and fourth waves of Street Sharks they must have come out
fairly late in the day, I’d put them around 1997 personally but officially the
only date we have for them that isn’t from the mind of some shitty blogger is
2000. You’ll also see them commonly referred to as Mannix figures, this
is…complicated – the company name Mannix was only used for one line – IWC
International Wrestling Champions – but this line introduced a body mould that
was used for several other lines (Two Face Monster, Monster Maniacs, Apes
Attacks etc) that were put out under other company names, exactly how all these
lines connect is something of a mystery still being unravelled, regardless the
company name Action is on the Ocean Warrior cards. Also I will mention that
each of these figures came with guns, mine don’t have these weapons because I
bought them loose and as the Street Sharks don’t have signature weapons (and
the original toys didn’t come with any accessories) I wasn’t bothered, you can
see their guns on card art below though.
The card art also shows off
nicely that none of these characters have names, that is common for Mannix
related figures and I refer to them by the names of their official figure
counterparts but that isn’t going to work here so, um, let’s call them Bob,
Chuck, Dave and…um… Ralph.
Streex
Fun fact, Streex wasn’t
called Streex in the toyline until his third
figure; previously he’d gone under the name ‘Blades’. Bob from Ocean Warriors
is literally half Streex and half Blades, his upper half is a shrunken down
version of Streex (having examined these figures I’m leaning towards these
being moulded from the original toys then shrunken and modified, everything’s
just too well placed to be copied) while his lower half is from Blades and
paint job from the series 2 version of Blades. I greatly enjoy this about these
figures, I think I just get enjoyment of recognising things - I’m the sort of
person who likes to go through huge group shots in comics and name all the
characters – so maybe it’s more just because I’m cripplingly sad but whatever
it may be, I enjoy ‘kit-bashed’ figures, part reuse and repaints, I like how
you can transform and disguise thing simply by changing their colour and y’know
I just think it’s fun to see character in ridiculous colour schemes. Something amused
me (and we’re back to being crippling sad here) is that Bob has Streex’s
muscles painted as if they’re part of his top, I like it when this sort of
thing happens to, when one thing is used to represent another, either
intentionally or in this case, completely unintentionally (Toy Biz did this
with characters heads, Polaris for
instance, is Rogue’s head).
Jet Pack Jab
The least modified Ocean
Warrior, Chuck is just a shrunken down version of Jet Pack Jab from the fourth
series of Street Shark toys. Happily Jet Pack Jab was my favourite Street
Sharks figure as a child so I’m good with this – Jab was always my preferred
'Shark because he was just Raphael but a shark, but then Mattel seemingly
merged him with a fighter plane turning him into a bronze flying metal hammerhead shark with a fucking jet pack.
‘Action’ have managed to differentiate Chuck form his inspiration by… removing
the rivets from Jet Pack Jab’s teeth and putting them on his gloves, and taking
off the numbers from his fin and shoulders, and you know what I bet legally
speaking that is actually enough, also he’s a different colour and you know I’d
love a proper Jet Pack Jab in silver, however Action’s paint job does remove
some of the inexplicable weirdness that makes JPJ so appealing to me, the
Mattel colours imply that somehow Jab now has metal for skin and is wearing
trousers, Chuck is far more likely either a robot or wearing armour, it’s kind
of weird when the bootleg makes more sense.
Moby Lick
I have done studies and
these studies show that literally every boy in the UK owned a Moby Lick, he’s
easily the ‘Shark (well Orca) I see the most being sold second hand and he was
in the house of every kid I knew at school, either 90’s kids loved Killer
Whales and I never knew or he was the figure most commonly found at a
discounted price. Moby Lick, whose name is such a bad pun you’d think he
belonged in He-Man, was a construction worker who was turned into a killer
whale with a huge tongue – I love cartoons. ‘Action’ wisely removed the
trademarkable tongue and then just made the rest of him from bits from Chuck
and Bob, thus while Dave looks the most like his Street Sharks counterpart at
first glance, he’s actually pretty damn different, firstly no attempt was made
to follow his colour scheme beyond his face and no other Moby Lick parts were
stolen, using Blades bottom half and Jet Pack Jab’s arms instead and can we
just taken a minute to appreciate how cool a Killer Whale Man with metal arms
is please? …
…
…
Thank you. The colours
scheme’s odd by the way, making him look like he’s wearing ski boots, a really
expensive watch and no trousers.
Slobster
The earliest Street Sharks
toy to be stolen from (well with Blade's bottom half), and the most modified – the other Ocean Warriors seem to
clearly have been moulded from Street Sharks ‘Action’ bought at a local Toys 'R' Us but Ralph seems to have had his whole face and chest remodelled, his face is
wider and he’s grown some abs, his antennae have also been shortened,
presumably so they could be made on the same tool as the rest of the body, in fact
I’d go so far as to say that it’s an entirely newly sculpted piece and so with
the rest of the figure being taken from other figures who aren’t Slobster this
is easily the most unique looking Ocean Warrior. Of course with Ralph getting
arms taken from Streex and a lower half from Jet Pack Jab he’s still 75 percent
stolen, but he has a completely original paint job. Actually, on being
different, Ralph is the only figure that feels the same as his ‘inspiration’,
one of the many good things about Street Sharks figures is that they had
‘shark-like skin’, a rubber layer, over their body so they all feel slightly
squishy, however the villains didn’t have this feature (nor did Mantaman or
Radical Bends) so Slobster and Ralph feel the same, the biggest difference in
feel, if you care, is Moby Lick & Dave, because Moby has no ‘chomping’
action feature and thus lacks hard plastic in his jaws and is thus far more
squishy (and I got to use thus twice in one sentence!).
Part Reuse Theatre
 |
| Jet Pack Jab's arms |
 |
| Jet Pack Jab's legs |
 |
| Streex's arms |
 |
| Blades' legs |
Though not exactly cheap
these are easily the easiest (bad English?) Street Sharks bootlegs to find. Yes
there are multiple Street Sharks bootlegs, for a good laugh check out the
‘Mannix’ Mighty Sharks,
which just cut out Street Sharks heads and stick them on the Mannix body, which
is kind of a mix of vintage Masters of the Universe and Hasbro’s WWF. I also
find Ocean Warriors to be the best Street Sharks knock-offs, Mattel didn’t repaint these
four figures, nor did they produce ‘Sharks in many scales (there was a 10”
Ripster and a couple of riders for Hot Wheels Smash N Crash bikes) so Ocean
Warriors actually manages to fill a hole left by the official line, which is
where the best bootleg lines shine – i.e. Galaxy Fighters bringing in styles of
He-man characters that Mattel never produced (werewolf, Spartan, dinosaur,
Viking…). And I’m done, thanks for reading about action figures that flaunt
copyright laws about as much as action figures possibly can, and sorry it
wasn’t very funny, I’m just not a very funny mood today.
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