5 Retro Action Cartoons You Need to Rewatch This Week!
5 Retro Action Cartoons You Need to Rewatch This Week!
If you grew up during the golden age of after-school cartoons, action figures, cereal commercials and racing home before the opening credits started, this week’s Serpentor’s Lair Retro Watchlist is for you.
Everybody remembers the giants like G.I. Joe, Transformers and ThunderCats. Those shows absolutely deserve their legendary status. But the 1980s and early 1990s were overflowing with fantastic action cartoons, and some of the most interesting shows from that era don’t get talked about nearly enough today.
This was an era when nobody seemed worried that a cartoon concept might be too outrageous.
Magical knights with holographic animal powers? Sure.
Police officers with cybernetic enhancements fighting organized crime in the future? Absolutely.
Three guys wearing exo-skeletons that allowed giant weapons systems to attach directly to their bodies?
POWER XTREME!
So grab a bowl of cereal, kick back in the recliner and prepare for another trip to the days when the cartoons sold us toys and the toys sent us right back to the cartoons.
Here are five retro action cartoons you need to rewatch this week!
1. Defenders of the Earth — 1986
Flash Gordon. The Phantom. Mandrake the Magician. Lothar.
Putting those four characters together already sounds like somebody dumped an entire comic-strip toy box onto the living-room floor.
That was part of what made Defenders of the Earth so much fun.
The series took heroes whose histories stretched back decades and reinvented them for the Saturday-morning generation. Flash Gordon wasn’t off having his own adventure. The Phantom wasn’t isolated in the jungle. Mandrake and Lothar weren’t operating in their own corner of the world.
They were all together fighting Ming the Merciless.
And they brought the next generation along for the ride.
The result was a wonderfully strange combination of superhero action, science fiction, sorcery, monsters, spaceships and classic pulp adventure.
Looking back, one of the most impressive things about the series is the sheer ambition of the concept. Long before interconnected movie universes became the dominant force in entertainment, Defenders of the Earth was essentially presenting kids with a shared universe of legendary adventure heroes.
Then there was the theme song.
If you watched this show growing up, there’s a pretty good chance you started hearing it in your head as soon as you read the title.
WHERE TO WATCH: Defenders of the Earth is currently available in the United States through Tubi and Prime Video. Streaming availability can change.
2. Visionaries: Knights of the Magical Light — 1987
There may not be another cartoon that screams 1987 toy aisle quite like Visionaries: Knights of the Magical Light.
The premise was fantastic.
On the planet Prysmos, a highly advanced civilization suddenly finds that its technology no longer works. The world is thrown into chaos and society gradually returns to something resembling the age of castles, armored warriors and swords.
But there is one enormous difference.
Magic has returned.
The wizard Merklynn eventually grants mystical powers to fourteen knights, dividing the show’s warriors between Leoric’s heroic Spectral Knights and Darkstorm’s villainous Darkling Lords.
Each warrior possesses an animal totem that reflects something about his or her personality and abilities.
That gave Visionaries an identity almost completely its own. The world was medieval fantasy built on top of the ruins of a futuristic civilization.
And then there were the toys.
If you were a kid staring at those figures on a store shelf, the holograms were almost impossible to ignore. Those shiny chest emblems and staffs looked like something transported straight out of the future.
Unfortunately, the animated series only received a short run. That’s one reason revisiting it today is so fascinating. You can almost see an enormous mythology waiting to develop beyond the episodes we received.
WHERE TO WATCH: As of September 2026, major U.S. streaming listings do not show Visionaries: Knights of the Magical Light available through a regular streaming service.
3. Centurions: Power Xtreme — 1986
POWER XTREME!
If those two words immediately triggered a booming voice somewhere inside your head, congratulations.
You were there.
Centurions followed Jake Rockwell, Max Ray and Ace McCloud, three specialists whose advanced Exo-Frames allowed them to combine with incredible assault weapons systems.
Jake specialized in land operations.
Max handled the sea.
Ace owned the sky.
In other words, the entire cartoon revolved around one of the coolest ideas imaginable to an eight-year-old kid:
Human beings becoming walking military vehicles.
There were missiles, cannons, jet packs, underwater equipment and enough interchangeable hardware to make every mission feel like somebody had dumped a bucket of accessories onto an action figure.
Standing against the heroes was Doc Terror, whose obsession with replacing humanity with machines gave the series a surprisingly dark science-fiction backbone.
The toy line made the concept even better.
The weapons systems could be attached and rearranged on the figures, which meant kids weren’t limited to recreating what happened on television. You could design your own configuration and send Jake, Max or Ace into whatever completely ridiculous battle your imagination created.
That interaction between television and the toy box is exactly why shows like Centurions remain so much fun to remember.
WHERE TO WATCH: The Centurions is currently available free with ads on Tubi in the United States.
4. C.O.P.S. — 1988
Fighting crime in a future time!
Now THAT is how you describe a cartoon.
C.O.P.S. centered on the Central Organization of Police Specialists, an elite crime-fighting unit assembled to protect Empire City from Big Boss and his army of C.R.O.O.K.S.
And the man responsible for bringing the team together was FBI Special Agent Baldwin P. Vess — Bulletproof.
Bulletproof was one of the coolest leaders of the era. After suffering devastating injuries while investigating Big Boss, Vess received a cybernetic torso that made him incredibly difficult to injure and earned him his famous codename.
His visual design was impossible to mistake: dark sunglasses, a tan trench coat, a narrow tie and the calm attitude of a guy who knew exactly how the caper went down.
Then came the rest of the team.
LongArm. Bowser. Mainframe. Sundown. Mirage. Hardtop. Bullseye.
On the other side were names that sounded as though they had been created specifically to make eight-year-olds beg their parents for action figures.
Big Boss. Berserko. Dr. Badvibes. Buttons McBoomBoom. Turbo Tu-Tone. Rock Krusher.
The series took the basic cops-versus-robbers formula and launched it into a near-future world full of cybernetics, strange weapons, armored vehicles and criminals who looked like they escaped from the wildest toy aisle imaginable.
It’s exactly the sort of cartoon that deserved a much longer life in pop-culture memory.
WHERE TO WATCH: C.O.P.S. is currently listed in the United States through the Midnight Pulp Amazon Channel.
5. Exosquad — 1993
Then we arrive at a show that still deserves far more recognition.
Exosquad looked like another action-figure cartoon.
It wasn’t.
The series delivered a serialized interplanetary war story centered on humanity, the genetically engineered Neosapiens and the pilots of the ExoFleet.
The heroes fought using E-Frames — massive powered combat machines that immediately gave the show the giant-robot appeal kids wanted.
But underneath all that armor was a story with considerably more ambition than many viewers expected.
There were invasions.
Occupation.
Military strategy.
Resistance movements.
Betrayals.
Character deaths.
Political struggles.
And actions had consequences.
The heart of the series was Able Squad, led by Lieutenant J.T. Marsh. As the conflict grew, the squad became part of a war that stretched across Earth, Mars, Venus and the rest of the Solar System.
Unlike many syndicated cartoons that could be watched in almost any order, Exosquad increasingly rewarded viewers who stayed with the story.
What happened yesterday mattered tomorrow.
Characters changed.
Battles changed the direction of the war.
The world kept moving.
Watching Exosquad more than thirty years later makes something very clear:
This show was years ahead of what many viewers expected from an American toy-driven action cartoon.
WHERE TO WATCH: Season one of Exosquad is currently available for digital purchase in the United States through Amazon Video and the Apple TV Store. Current listings do not show a free U.S. streaming option.
Five Shows — One Incredible Era
That’s this week’s Serpentor’s Lair Retro Watchlist.
Defenders of the Earth.
Visionaries.
Centurions.
C.O.P.S.
Exosquad.
Five cartoons that remind us just how wildly creative television animation could be during the 1980s and early 1990s.
These shows didn’t seem worried about whether an idea sounded too strange.
A group of classic comic-strip heroes joining forces to fight an intergalactic dictator?
Let’s do it.
Magical knights living among the ruins of a futuristic civilization?
Absolutely.
Soldiers attaching giant missile launchers and weapons platforms directly to their bodies?
Why wouldn’t you?
A cybernetic FBI agent in a trench coat assembling an army of futuristic super cops?
Now we’re talking.
A serialized animated war epic featuring gigantic powered armor, political conflict and battles across the Solar System?
Apparently somebody in the early 1990s said yes to that too.
And maybe that’s why this era remains so endlessly fun to revisit.
The cartoons created enormous worlds, and the toys allowed us to keep those worlds alive long after the television was turned off.
Which One Are You Watching First?
Defenders of the Earth? Visionaries? Centurions? C.O.P.S.? Exosquad?
Drop your pick in the comments and tell us which forgotten action cartoon deserves to appear in the next Serpentor’s Lair Retro Watchlist!
Streaming availability listed for the United States and may change after publication.
