The Aquabats! Super Show!

The Aquabats! Super Show! is an American action-comedy musical television series that originally aired on The Hub Network from March 3, 2012, to January 18, 2014. It later returned as an independent YouTube series from September 2019 to February 2025. The show was created by Christian Jacobs, Scott Schultz, and Jason deVilliers; Jacobs and Schultz were also the creators of the Nick Jr. series *Yo Gabba Gabba!*.

The series is based on the superhero mythology of The Aquabats, a real-life comedy rock band formed by Jacobs in 1994. It follows a fictionalized version of the band, a group of amateur superhero musicians who clumsily defend the world from various villains and monsters. The show’s style mimics the campy aesthetics of 1960s and 1970s children’s television and Japanese tokusatsu, blending live-action storylines with cartoon shorts, parody advertisements, and musical interludes.

The first season, consisting of 13 episodes, concluded on June 16, 2012. It received largely positive critical reviews, consistently high ratings for the channel, and a Daytime Emmy nomination for Outstanding Children’s Series. The second season initially aired five episodes through June 2013, with three more episodes in late December 2013 and January 2014. It earned similar acclaim and seven additional Daytime Emmy nominations, winning one for Best Stunt Coordination. In June 2014, co-creator Jacobs announced the series’ cancellation, following The Hub’s financial losses that led to its rebranding as Discovery Family in October 2014.

In July 2018, The Aquabats launched a successful Kickstarter to independently fund new episodes. They promoted the campaign with YouTube-exclusive mini-episodes that continued the original storyline. From September 2019 to February 2025, the band premiered 12 new episodes on YouTube under the title *The Aquabats! RadVentures!*, though the show retained the original *Super Show!* theme song and title card.

The series chronicles the adventures of The Aquabats, a group of superhero rock musicians who travel the countryside on a self-appointed mission to fight evil and “destroy boredom,” while also aiming to become a famous rock band. The band members include singer The MC Bat Commander (Christian Jacobs), the swaggering leader; bassist Crash McLarson (Chad Larson), who can grow up to 100 feet tall; drummer Ricky Fitness (Richard Falomir), who has super speed; guitarist EagleBones Falconhawk (Ian Fowles), armed with a laser-shooting electric guitar; and keyboardist Jimmy the Robot (James R. Briggs, Jr.), an android. Despite their powers, the Aquabats are bumbling, disorganized, and sometimes cowardly, earning them the label “the world’s most inept superheroes.” They live and travel in their “Battletram,” a modified GMC motorhome with an implausibly massive interior (similar to the TARDIS from *Doctor Who* or The Big Bologna from *The Kids From C.A.P.E.R.*), containing a science lab, command center, and living room.

The Aquabats’ origin story was intentionally left vague. Jacobs explained this was to encourage viewers’ imagination, noting that kids accept the premise’s absurdity more readily than adults: “There’s five guys. This is what each of the five guys does. There are monsters. They’re gonna try to fight them. It’s so simple.” In the first five episodes of season two, each band member shares their memory of joining the band via animated flashbacks, but these flashbacks directly contradict each other, leaving no clear canonical origin.

The show juxtaposes live-action and animated segments, interwoven with tangential skits and cartoon interstitials. The live-action storylines follow a self-contained villain-of-the-week formula. In season one, each episode featured brief anime-styled cartoon shorts introduced by a character finding “A Cartoon” (a miniature television set) in an absurd location. These cartoons followed a serialized story arc with cliffhangers. In season two, this format was replaced with animated flashbacks recounting the band’s origins, each done by a different animation studio in a different style. Between these segments are pantomime shorts starring “Lil’ Bat,” the band’s anthropomorphic bat mascot, and live-action parody commercials for fictional products—a staple of The Aquabats’ stage shows. Jacobs described the concept as a “campy, live-action, funky kid’s show” inspired by 1960s and 1970s television.