When M.A.S.K. came on the scene in 1985, it was the perfect juxtaposition of all that was trending at the time. Two of the biggest cartoon and corresponding toy lines came in the form of G.I. Joe, a military task force charged with defending the world from a terrorist organization and Transformers, sentient robots that could disguise themselves by reconfiguring into daily objects / vehicles.
M.A.S.K. was the perfect middle ground between the two - offering up a covert team of secret agents charged with defending the globe from a terrorist operation who just so happened to own and operate high tech vehicles capable of reconfiguring to serve multiple purposes.
And while it remains a staple in the mid-80s (saturated) market, it managed to carve out a niche strong enough to inspire studios and toy makers alike to revisit the concept two more times in the decades to follow. Surely by coincidence, these later entries happened at nearly exactly 10 year intervals. What follows is the unofficial trilogy of conversion vehicle squads that began sandwiched between giants of the mid 1980s.
1.) M.A.S.K.
M.A.S.K. (an acronym for Mobile Armored Strike Kommand) is a special task force led by Matt Trakker, who operate transforming armored vehicles in their ongoing battle against the terrorist organization V.E.N.O.M. (an acronym for Vicious Evil Network of Mayhem) with an emphasis on superpowered helmets worn by the characters of both factions.
The 1985 animated television series produced by DIC and ICC TV Productions, M.A.S.K. was based on the action figures produced by Kenner Products of the same name.
It ran for 2-seasons (1985 & 1986) for a total of 75 episodes - 65 of which came from the first season and a final 10 for season two that shifted emphasis away from the secret agent organization work in favor of an auto racing angle.
2) Vor-Tech
Considered to many an unofficial sequel series to M.A.S.K., Vor-Tech: Undercover Conversion Squad is an animated television series produced by Universal Cartoon Studios. It aired for one season of 13 episodes in 1996.
The animated series itself boasted only superficial resemblances to M.A.S.K - namely the group of secret agents with special masks and transforming vehicles, the respective toyline from Kenner is where the greater connection lie. Namely they were able to slap new colorways on vehicles and playsets from the original M.A.S.K. line and repackage them as Vor-Tech.
The show, however, wasn’t quite so copy & paste - with a distinctive 90s feel to the art and animation (an era sometimes referred to as “extreme”) where character models are overly large and muscular, it centered on a story focused on the team’s effort in stopping a techno-plague from a group of cybernetically enhanced humans. Even the transforming vehicle gimmick was quite different - stemming from onboard talking computers that acted as cohorts to the characters.
3) A.T.O.M.
In 2005, twenty years after M.A.S.K., it was time to revisit the core concept yet again. This time with A.T.O.M. (an acronym for Alpha Teens On Machines), a team of five teenagers on experimental transforming vehicles provided by tech billionaire Janus Lee as they do battle against the crime boss Alexander Paine.
Similar to the pair of unrelated shows before it, A.T.O.M. boasts a color pallet and animation style very indicative of its era of production. In this case character models with sharp angles, thick black frame lines and a smoother animation style as resulting from computer based models rather than hand drawn cells. Even its scoring relied on then-popular trends of sustained guitar riffs during scene transitions and a cast of characters with ties to and lingo from the emerging extreme sports arena.
Produced by SIP Animation in association with Jetix Europe before getting global distribution, A.T.O.M. ran for two 26 episode seasons (2005-2007) for a total of 52 episodes.
