15th October 2013

6 Ridiculous Kid-Friendly Adaptations of R-Rated Material

posted in News |

 

(CLICK HERE to read more in the original source article)

#4. The Toxic Avenger Turns into a Mutant Captain Planet

Troma Entertainment

The Mature Source Material:

The Toxic Avenger tells the story of Melvin, a 90-pound weakling who is transformed into a hideous superhero thanks to the hilariously lax waste disposal and transportation laws of New Jersey. The film was meant to parody 1950s B-movies about radioactive mutation by showing what would actually happen to a human being doused in toxic waste.

Troma Entertainment
Searing pain. Like aftershave on an 8-year-old’s face.

That isn’t to say that Melvin doesn’t get superpowers — he totally gets atomic Hercules strength, which he uses to graphically dispatch the city’s criminal element, including smashing a drug dealer’s head with a weightlifting machine:

Troma Entertainment
Unrelated to that, here’s a photo of some ice cream with caramel syrup.

The Toxic Avenger (and all three of its sequels) are intensely violent to the point of being grotesque, and like any good independent horror/comedy without an official MPAA rating, there is loads and loads of nudity to bridge the gaps between the hellacious killings. There’s even a sequence where a woman has sex with the melty-faced sludge ogre himself:

Troma Entertainment
His back looks suspiciously unblemished. Can’t wait to see the rest.

The Kid-Friendly Adaptation:

As you have probably guessed by this point, someone watched the movie we just described and thought it would be an excellent idea for a children’s cartoon. Thus, the 1991 animated series The Toxic Crusaders was born, which recast the Toxic Avenger as a pollution-fighting superhero with a sentient mop sidekick.

Troma Entertainment
In a terrifying alternate America with an undetermined number of states.

He was essentially a Captain Planet knockoff, leading a team of similarly afflicted mutant superheroes who had all come into contact with toxic waste due to the most wildly improbable set of circumstances ever conceived by a professional writing team. One character, Junkyard, is literally a homeless man who was struck by lightning, a junkyard dog, and toxic waste, all at the same time.

Troma Entertainment
Here’s the gang in an Abbey Road homage, showing just how well they could appeal to ’80s children.

The Toxic Crusaders were sworn to defend the planet from evil aliens from the planet Smogula who sought to pollute the Earth’s environment for their own nefarious purposes. We’re not really sure why the Crusaders would feel so beholden to a planet whose own cavalier attitude toward pollution had directly caused all of their hideous disfigurements, and we’ll never get a chance to find out, because the show only lasted 13 episodes before everyone came to their senses and realized they were trying to market an X-rated film character to third graders.

(CLICK HERE to read more in the original source article)

 

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