Hurricanes (TV series)

Hurricanes is an American-British-Canadian animated series produced by DIC Entertainment L.P., Scottish Television Enterprises and Siriol Productions.[1] The series first aired in 1993 and ended in 1997.[2]

Hurricanes
Country of originUnited States
United Kingdom
Canada
Original language(s)English
No. of seasons5
No. of episodes65
Production
Running time30 minutes (inc. commercials)
Production company(s)DIC Entertainment, L.P.
Scottish Television Enterprises
Siriol Productions
DistributorScottish Television Enterprises (United Kingdom)
Bohbot Entertainment (US)
Release
Original networkSyndication (Amazin' Adventures) (US)
ITV (Scottish Television) (UK)
Original release12 September 1993 (1993-09-12) –
1997 (1997)

Summary

The series focused on a fictional football team headed by the heiress of the teams' legacy, Amanda Carey, and their coach, Jock Stone. During the series, the Hurricanes football team would either be battling a renegade football club, the Gorgons, managed by Stavros Garkos, for pitch supremacy, or having wild, unpredictable adventures off the field in exotic world touring locations.[3]

Despite such a lengthy episode number, and a cult following among British football fans who watched it faithfully in reruns during the football seasons, the Hurricanes remained a fairly dormant and minor addition to BKN's library, and its impact worldwide is particularly small, its most memorable aspect being its theme song ("We're the Hurricanes").

The programme had been aired in weekly first-run syndication in the United States in the late 1990s, though it did not see mainstream broadcasting until the fall of 2012 when Cookie Jar Entertainment (whom DIC had merged with), which had re-acquired the rights to the show from BKN through a bankruptcy in 2010, added the program to the weekday Cookie Jar-controlled This Is for Kids lineup on the This TV digital subchannel network.

In 2015, STV Glasgow and STV Edinburgh began re-airing the show daily and also added the programme to the STV Player.[4]

Cast

Episodes

Season One, 1993
  1. "Deep Cover" - 12 September 1993
  2. "Family Feud"
  3. "Stowaway"
  4. "Toro"
  5. "Midfield Dribble"
  6. "Go Ape!"
  7. "Bloodmatch"
  8. "Around the World in 90 Minutes"
  9. "Home Game"
  10. "The Team that Time Forgot"
  11. "Hot Dog"
  12. "Reunion in Rio"
  13. "Papillon and the Princess"

Season Two, 1994
  1. "Phantom Fan" - Garkos tries to buy the historic home of Jock's first soccer club, with a literal ghost's chance of success.
  2. "A Game of Two Halves" - When the Hurricanes accept an invitation to play against an Arabian team captained by powerful-but-spoiled Prince Rupert, the young ruler abuses his diplomatic immunity by taking it to the field. So does the game become a royal pain with one iron rule: Let the Prince win, or else.
  3. "Boot of All Evil" - After refusing to promote a new brand of athletic footwear, Plato gets lost in the Australian outback.
  4. "Topper's Typo" - Monkey Business takes on a whole new meaning when Topper fiddles with Jock's PC...and winds up booking the Hurricanes at a most unorthodox venue, pitted against an all-girls team. A furious Jock wants Topper shipped off to the zoo...until the chimp gives an obnoxious photojournalist a dose of his own medicine.
  5. "Techno-Team" - The Hurricanes learn about the mechanics of soccer when Garkos pits them against a team of robots initially designed for training purposes.
  6. "Missing in Moscow"
  7. "There's Only One Jock Stone"
  8. "Soccer Safari"
  9. "Love at First Byte"
  10. "The Serpent's Tail" - The Hurricanes oppose Garkos' designs on a rain forest.
  11. "Traitor"
  12. "Escape to Freedom"
  13. "Marley in Chains"

Season Three, 1995
  1. "Team Spirit"
  2. "Terror in Transylvania"
  3. "Water, Water, Everywhere"
  4. "When Hurricanes Collide"
  5. "One Million Years F.C."
  6. "Big Sister, Big Trouble"
  7. "Balancing Act"
  8. "Ecosphere to Death"
  9. "Serpents of the Nile"
  10. "The Flying Eye"
  11. "Football Fugitives"
  12. "Hurricane Hooligans"
  13. "Lord Napper of Stepney"

Season Four, 1996
  1. "The Relegator"
  2. "The Curse of the Gorgon"
  3. "Target: Winston"
  4. "Double Trouble"
  5. "Who Do That Voodoo"
  6. "Death Valley Girl"
  7. "Dino´s Snapshot"
  8. "The Great Defensive Wall of China"
  9. "It´s a Jungle Out There"
  10. "The Bull and the Wolf"
  11. "The Masked Matador"
  12. "A Fright at the Opera"
  13. "Napper Thompson, Scourge of the Underworld"

Season Five, 1997
  1. "New Strikers of the Purple Sage"
  2. "Diamonds on the Soles of Their Boots"
  3. "Tide of Terror"
  4. "Koh-I-Noor"
  5. "Southern Exposures"
  6. "A Lot of Hot Air"
  7. "Going Berserkers"
  8. "Home Team"
  9. "Shootout"
  10. "Ball of Doom"
  11. "Space Ace"
  12. "Daring Due"
  13. "Surfer Girl"

Characters

The Hispanola Hurricanes

Amanda Carey: The 16-year-old owner of the Hurricanes, inheriting the position after her father disappears. Carey is involved with the management of her football team rather than hiring another manager or selling the team. Unlike Stavros Garkos, Carey always respects the integrity of the game and believes in fair play. She owns a Scottish Terrier named Dribble, who serves as one of the team's mascots.

Jock Stone: The wise, no-nonsense Scottish head coach of the Hurricanes, notably based on Celtic F.C. manager Jock Stein. His main priority is football, and he's so strict that he tends to be upset when the team is late for or skips out on his training.

Cal Casey: The Hurricanes' team captain from the United States. If the team faces a problem outside of football or if the Gorgons are up to no good, Cal is usually there to help set things right.

Plato Quiñones: A naive Brazilian who believes in superstitions like vampires, and apparently has a heart for animals. He is often seen barefooted, and plays this way (which is not allowed in professional competitions in real life). In the episode "Go Ape!", Plato smuggled a monkey he named Topper into stadium. The monkey ended up becoming Plato's pet and one of the team's mascots.

Napper Thompson: An Englishman who enjoys poetry and sci-fi stories. He tends to get into more strange situations than the others. In "Traitor", Garkos had a transmitter unknowingly put in his filling so he could steal secrets from the Hurricanes. In "Lord Napper of Stepney", Napper inherited his uncle's fortune on the condition he never plays football ever again. In "The Great Defensive Wall of China", a cult saw Napper as "The One". Napper is usually seen hanging out with Cal.

Helmut and Jorg Beethoven: German twins who, despite being confident in their abilities as the team's strikers, often feud with each other. Helmut is slimmer, taller and insists on being the driver of the team bus. Jorg is shorter, more muscular and wears a distinctive headband.

"Stats" Hiro: The team's right-midfielder hailing from Japan. The smallest of all team members, he is known for his agility. He is very intelligent too, and mechanically inclined creating a flying camera called the Flying Eye and a high-tech 'computer-bot' called MATT (Multimedia Analysis and Training Toolkit). In "Team Spirit", he injured his leg and was replaced in the Hurricanes' game against the Eagles with Little Bear.

Dino Allegro: The Italian goalie of the team. Dino has a picture of his brother, which he keeps in his bag as a lucky charm to look at before every match. When Garkos discovered this, he had Rebo steal it, crushing his confidence. It took a visit from his brother to get his head back in the game. He is also afraid of space and flying in a space shuttle.

Oliver "Rude" Marley: A Jamaican football player known for his rude attitude, hence his nickname. He was a high school drop-out, until "Marley in Chains" where he gets his high school certificate after encouragement from Napper, who also didn't finish school.

Georgie Wright: An English footballer who always calls the coin toss at the start of the match. He cannot swim and is afraid or large bodies of water because of it.

Papillon: The team's talented French striker with a one-word name similar to Pelé. He has an eye for the ladies and possesses an overall suave personality. He also likes driving fast cars and racing.

Toro Contrais: A bulky Spanish centre-back who is slightly overconfident on the field. In "Toro", he is revealed to be afraid of cats. When Jock temporarily suspended him, Toro became a pro-wrestler named "The Masked Matador".

Andy Stone: Son of Jock Stone, Andy is the team's physician. He created a revolutionary cold-compress which he used in a game against the Zebras.

The Garkos Gorgons

The Gorgons are a team of violent players who usually utilize illegal tactics inside or outside the field. Their headquarters is inside a volcano in the Island of Garkos. The team includes:

Stavros Garkos: The main villain of the show, he is the owner of the Garkos Gorgons, a football team composed of thugs who often use dirty tricks not only to defeat the Hurricanes, but also assist Garkos in his other dirty schemes. He runs Garkos Enterprises and is known for using the name Medusa as a pseudonym for some of his companies and breaking his Medusa-head staff whenever angered.

Stavros Garkos is the most persistent of the villains in Hurricanes. In most of his appearances, he tries to steal the Hurricanes' status as world's greatest football team and/or make large sums of money. Garkos' interests also include damaging the Hurricanes' image (even when he doesn't seem to gain anything from this) and his attempts at 'proving' football is a Greek sport.

Stavros Garkos holds many companies around the world, all of which are part of his own Garkos Enterprises. Garkos also owns an unnamed insurance company that covers the Medusa Network satellite. Garkos Enterprises also has an office in London, even though it was unclear which kind of activities he develops there.

Wyn Smithe and Genghis Khan: The Gorgons' two best players, they also serve as Stavros Garkos' right-hand men enlisted to assist him with his schemes. It is rare to see the Gorgons playing without them both, except through injury, and even rarer to see one of them appearing in an episode without the other. One instance of this occurring is in "When Hurricanes Collide", when Genghis appeared but Wyn did not. Even though Garkos favours them, they have little loyalty in return; they once attempted to steal a gold mine so as to be able to stop working for Garkos.

Rebo: Rebo's biggest role in Stavros Garkos's dirty schemes was in "Blood Match", when Rebo stole Dino Allegro's lucky charm, damaging his abilities as the Hurricanes's main goalkeeper. He also makes a cameo where he assisted Wyn and Genghis in an attempt to prevent the Hurricanes from arriving for a fundraising game in Inverfinnan Park, home to Jock Stone's former team Inverfinnan Celtics, so Garkos could buy it. Most of Rebo's other appearances is simply playing football.

Benny the Viking: An unpopular Swedish football player who is hated by fellow footballers in his home country for his dirty play. Stavros Garkos tried to revert it by hiring a publicist who put Benny to compete against Cal Casey on a game show, only for Casey to defeat Benny and teach him the value of good sportsmanship. A lesson that he only practices at his home country, this enhances his popularity for a price Stavros Garkos didn't like to pay.

Lobo: Lobo was once nominated for the title of Spain's best football player. His rival for the title was the Hurricanes' own Toro. To help his player get the title, Garkos kidnapped Toro's sister, Maria, as part of a plan to ruin his popularity.

The Garkos Family

Stavros Garkos sometimes enlists the help of some relatives for some dirty tactics. Here are some of them:

Spiro Garkos: Stavros' brother. Spiro is nowhere to be seen without a uniform, and on his very first appearance, he's called "mister-in-charge-of-everything" by Amanda Carey. What could be noticed from his first appearance in "Stowaway", when he was revealed to be the coach of the Gorgons' Youth Team, the Police Chief of the Island of Garkos and the head of Child Welfare. In "Around the World in 90 Minutes", Spiro is the admiral of the Garkos Navy and helped his brother take over the aircraft carrier the Hurricanes were using to play football at sea. He also makes a cameo appearance in "There's Only One Jock Stone" as captain of Stavros Garkos's cruise ship.

Melinda Garkos: Stavros' sister. Melinda helps her brother in anything he wants to, no matter how low she has to get. Her low acts include making people ruined by Stavros Garkos sell their homes to him ("Water, Water, Everywhere"), stealing artifacts from an Egyptian pyramids ("Serpents of the Nile"), passing herself as the legendary Medusa ("The Curse of the Gorgon"), and helping the Gorgons forge evidence to blackmail the referee ("Dino's Snapshot").

Irena Bole: Stavros' niece. Stavros Garkos had a scheme involving a childhood friend of Cal Casey. This friend had criminal records and is now a goalkeeper for the L.A. Lasers. Irena only agreed to help her uncle in exchange of becoming the first female vice-president of Garkos Enterprises. When the plan failed, Garkos says he wouldn't hire her even as a coffee-lady. Since she's single (she's called Ms.) and doesn't bear the name Garkos, it can be assumed that Spiro and Melinda aren't Stavros Garkos's only siblings.

Stavros Garkos IV: Stavros' namesake and look-alike great-grandson from the future, only appearing in "The Relegator". Stavros Garkos had mortgaged all his assets to bet against the Hurricanes and lost. Because of that, all Stavros IV inherited was his football team. To revert this situation, Stavros IV sent a robot player named The Relegator to change the game results. Stavros Garkos was reluctant about this because he couldn't have a great-grandson for not even having grandchildren, as he stated, but he started believing when the bet (something he never expected to meet someone who already knew about) was mentioned. For a final test, Garkos asked the Relegator what he thinks about rules, and he said they must be broken, this making Stavros believe he's been sent by Garkos. The robot failed and the Plan B destroyed a factory, forcing Garkos to pay for the damages, creating an alternate future where Stavros IV washes the Hurricanes' uniforms. Since this was a dream of Napper Thompson, it doesn't affect the continuity of the series. Even then, this strongly implies that Stavros Garkos is a father of at least one child.

Garkos Enterprises

Stavros Garkos holds many companies around the world. Even though it was never stated which ones are branches of Garkos Enterprises and which ones are not, below is a list of known Garkos companies:

Gorgon World: A nightmarish theme park Stavros Garkos has built in Los Angeles by destroying Cal Casey's childhood neighborhood. Garkos intended to destroy a nearby sports centre where impoverished kids could learn and play soccer, so he could build a parking lot for his park. The park and this story took place in "Home Game". It was never revealed if Garkos ever opened this park, or what happened to it.

Garkos International Holding: First (or only once) mentioned in "Hot Dog", this holding company holds The Hotel Jasper, where Stavros Garkos tried to frame Rude Marley. It's unknown what else is held by Garkos International Holding.

Medusa Arms Hotel: Only seen in "Target: Winston", this is, according to Amanda, the hotel where the Gorgons go to sleep when they are in Hispanola. It was never said if the hotel belongs to Garkos or not, but the name "Medusa" and its connections to the Gorgons suggest it does belong to him.

Medusa Gold-Mining Company: First seen in "Team Spirit", Garkos utilized it to extract gold from a piece of land stolen from Native Americans.

Garkos Finance Company: In "Techno-Team", this company assisted Stavros Garkos in taking over Walker Laboratories when its former owner, Mickey Walker, had missed the deadline to pay the mortgage.

Medusa Network: Out of the idea of having his own television network that would show sport events around the world, Stavros Garkos opened Medusa Network in "When Hurricanes Collide". When Garkos tried to use its satellite to destroy a space station where five of the Hurricanes were located, Dino hijacked the satellite to prevent the collision. The satellite was left on the loose in space afterwards, having been derailed off its original orbit.

In "Ecosphere of Death", Stavros Garkos gambled against a casino owner named Jackson Black and claimed Black's ecosphere as a reward. Part of the deal was that every time Garkos won, Black would have a chance to recover what he lost. So, Black made a bet against the Gorgons. The Hurricanes won the game and Garkos had to return the ecosphere.

In "The Flying Eye", Garkos tried to force relatives of Amanda Carey out of their land so he could open a water park developed by Garkos Enterprises.

List of Hurricanes' opponents

Note: Edit this list with the names of the teams from their corresponding countries

International broadcast

Video games

In 1994, three games based on the Hurricanes license were released; one for the Sega Mega Drive, one for the Sega Game Gear, and one for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. The Sega ports were exclusively released in Europe, while the SNES version was the only version to have a North American release. All versions of the game were published by U.S. Gold. Development for the Sega versions was handled by Arc Developments, while the SNES version was developed by Probe Entertainment. Despite the show revolving around soccer, all three games are action games in which the player uses soccer balls to defeat enemies, similar to Soccer Kid. Despite the Sega versions being developed by the same company, they differ in gameplay. In the Game Gear version, the goal is to collect a certain amount of items strewn about each stage before heading to the exit, whereas in the Mega Drive version, the goal is to simply make it from the beginning to the end of the stage.

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References
  1. "A Game Of Two Halves (1993) - Hurricanes Cartoon Episode Guide". Bcdb.com. 12 September 1993. Retrieved 13 October 2015.
  2. Erickson, Hal (2005). Television Cartoon Shows: An Illustrated Encyclopedia, 1949 Through 2003 (2nd ed.). McFarland & Co. pp. 423–424. ISBN 978-1476665993.
  3. Perlmutter, David (2018). The Encyclopedia of American Animated Television Shows. Rowman & Littlefield. p. 294. ISBN 978-1538103739.
  4. "Hurricanes | STV Player". Player.stv.tv. Retrieved 13 October 2015.
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