What do you get when the 6 Million Dollar Man and the Bionic Woman decide to pull a Brady Bunch and a Johnny Quest at the same time?
Impossible to find streaming in high quality anyplace, but a bunch of eps in pretty decent quality hit archive.org.
Decent animation, an earworm themesong that I am so frightened of I muted it while taking its screenshots. The Bionic Six is a lost 80s gem. Not like, a diamond or a sapphire, but like, at the very least a citrine, or a really nice tiger eye that's all polished up in a riverbed? Anyhow...
I joke about the premise. It's not Steve Austin, it's Jack Bennett. It's not Jaime Sommers, it's Helen Bennett. It was a serial number filing but it absolutely is someone's 6MDM and Bionic Woman fanfic where they got married and both had and adopted a bunch of bionic kids.
The story, however, involves Jack (already bionic) and his family getting irradiated by an alien spaceship (the 80s was a hell of a drug) in the Himalayas, with the family going comatose except for Jack, thus requiring the family's upgrades.
This explains why a bunch of children would be turned into cyborgs, but it does not explain why those upgrades came with superpowers. That seems to be down to the grandpa-figure of the group, Professor Dr. Amadeus Sharp Ph.D, which, I gotta say, that's a chef's kiss cartoon character name right there.
Putting both Professor and Doctor in front of your name is exactly what I'd expect from a guy that's like "these children are comatose... I think I'll give that one the magnetic repulsors..."
As for the family proper, you've got Bionic-1/Jack Bennet, the literal team dad who suspiciously has all the bionic powers you'd expect from Steve Austin, with a touch of Reed Richards gray on the temples.
You have, ahem, Mother-1/Helen Bennett, who doesn't have the Bionic woman's powers because they'd be redundant. But she is a lady in an 80s team cartoon so she's got... say it with me folks... psychic abilities!
Also, if I had a nickel for every brunette be-bobcuted supermilf in a red jumpsuit named Helen I'd have two nickels, which isn't a lot, but it does lead to some obvious crossover concepts that the r34 community have thus far failed to provide. I'd commission something but, as established, I've only got the two nickels.
She also stands out by having a codename that is calculated to make villains deeply uncomfortable with using it, thus putting them on the back-foot. Just takes every deathtrap situation to a weird place.
Their (at least initially) biological children, Sport-1/Eric Bennett and Rock-1/Meg Bennett establish the pattern of there being a bionic kid for every interest. Sport-1 has magnetic attraction-repulsion powers, and uses lamposts like baseball bats all day, every day.
Rock-1 was literally designed to be cartoon Cyndi Lauper and has speakers built into her shoulders for sonic attacks. She is also super-speed runs the fastest.
IQ/J.D. Corey is adopted, and doesn't do the normal naming convention. He's an unusual character in 80s toon terms, as he's both the smartest member of the team (per the codename) but also has the most powerful super-strength. You don't get the smart AND strong combo that often, and you'd expect the Sport-1 to be physically strongest but it seems he's more the Mario of the team.
Karate-1/Bunjiro "Bunji" Tsukahara is a foster kid who got dragged into all of this, and has both the most greatly enhanced super-agility and also actually knows how to fight without powers.
They also have a robot ape named F.L.U.F.F.I. who wasn't in every episode.
The story structure is an 80s toyvertoon take on Johnny Quest, with the whole family having toyetic super-powers and vehicles, and instead of a cavalcade of one-off baddies, you get a recurrent cast lead by Dr. Scarab, who is Sharp's brother, and is after Sharp's superior bionic knowledge.
Mad science, not even once.
I have vague memories of Scarab's pursuit of 'trionic' technology, which assumed both that the 'bi' in bionic was for 'two' (reasonably understandable assumption) and that that if two was good, three was logically better, while never really establishing what third thing was being mixed in (baffling even to my childhood self).
On top of his drone robots, called "Cyphrons" (not Cylons, Battlestar Galactica Lawyers, cyphrons), Scarab had a host of modified goons, most of whom where combinations of dumb, strong, and ugly.
The main stand out being Madame-O, who is a cartoon femme fatale of the classic variety, who punctuates her sentences with 'Darling', uses a harp to shoot energy blasts, and can disguise herself as other people, because why be good at one thing when you can be confusing at several?
The animation is pretty good for the time period (It was a TMS animated show!) and it has that weird mix of self-aware and totally earnest that makes 80s cartoons fun.
It was, like most of them, an advertisement for action figures. In this case from LJN, the gimmick of which was they were G.I.Joes that were mostly made of die cast metal. A lot of the characters were pretty chunky, to the point that a FLUFFI could be bring down an assailant if you chucked it at 'em just right.
Oh, and the whole family could join hands to pull of Deus Ex Machina bullshit. It's a trip.
Go watch ya some cartoons.
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