is a 1987 animated television series. It was produced and animated by TMS Entertainment, Inc. and distributed, through first-run syndication, by MCA TV, years before the latter company became NBCUniversal Syndication Studios. Renowned Japanese animation director Osamu Dezaki was involved as chief supervising director, and his distinctive style (as seen in Golgo 13 and Cobra) is evident throughout all its episodes. Character designs were by Nobuteru Yūki.
The title characters of the series are a family of machine-enhanced human beings each possessing unique powers after being augmented with bionic technology. Each family member is given specific bionic powers, and thus they form a superhero team called the Bionic Six.
Development Friedman spoke on how the property came about stating "The idea was what if the Bionic man marries the Bionic woman but they need some other things to be the Bionic Six, so I gave them a bionic pet I forget what the name of it, which was a gorilla and then two kids"
Plot
In the near future (some unspecified decades after 1999), Professor Dr. Amadeus Sharp Ph.D., head of the Special Projects Labs (SPL), creates a new form of technology to augment humans through bionics. His first subject was Jack Bennett, a test pilot who secretly acted as Sharp's field agent, Bionic-1.
On a family ski vacation in the Himalayas, an alien spacecraft triggers an avalanche that buries the entire family, exposing them to the unusual radiation of a mysterious buried object. Jack frees himself but discovers his family in a comatose state. Theorizing that Jack's bionics protected him from the radiation, Professor Sharp implants bionic technology in the others, awakening them. Afterward, the family operates incognito as a publicly lauded team of adventuring superheroes, the Bionic Six.
The primary villain of the series is mad scientist Doctor Scarab, along with his gang of henchmenGlove, Madam-O, Chopper, Mechanic, and Klunkaccompanied by Scarab's legion of drone robots called Cyphrons. Scarab is the alter ego of Wilmer Sharp, Professor Sharp's brother. Obsessed with obtaining immortality and ruling the world, Scarab believes that the key to both goals lies in the secret bionic technology invented by his brother, ever plotting to possess it.
Characters Heroes
Professor Dr. Amadeus Sharp Ph.D. is the genius scientist who infused the Bionic Six team with bionics. All his research is supported by the government, and Sharp's technology must be periodically reviewed by government agency Q10. He lives alone in his private museum, which houses his secret Special Projects Lab, the hidden base of the Bionic Six. Amadeus is also Scarab's brother. Sharp excels in the fields of aeronautics, animatronics, archaeology, bionics, and neurology. He was voiced by Alan Oppenheimer.
The Bennett family includes patriarch Jack, matriarch Helen, and their four children, Eric, Meg, J.D., and Bunji. They live in a secluded oceanfront home in the fictional city of Cypress Cove, in northern California. Each member wears a special ring and a "wristcomp" (a mini-computer hardwired into the wrist), which they use to activate their bionic powers. The Bionic Six can also combine their powers by joining hands, creating a "Bionic Link" to amplify their abilities.
Jack Bennett aka Bionic-1 is an engineer, an expert test pilot, and the secret agent known to the world only as "Bionic-One". He enjoys gourmet cooking, even participating in the Paris Food Conference. Bionic-1's powers are mostly related to his bionic eyes (including "x-ray vision", telescopic sight, energy blasts, and low-powered beams that temporarily cause electronic devices to malfunction or even turn against their users), and enhanced hearing (this last capability beyond even the powers of the other team members, who each possess superhuman levels of hearing in their own right). His family was initially unaware of his secret bionic identity until bestowed with powers of their own. Bionic-1 was voiced by John Stephenson. Helen Bennett aka Mother-1 is Jack's wife. She is an oceanographer and an accomplished marine biologist. Mother-1 possesses various ESP powers that allow her to occasionally see glimpses of the future, telepathically communicate with other sentient and non-sentient beings, determine the function and operation of mechanical devices by mentally "tracing" their internal workings, and can mentally project hologram-like optical illusions. She is also an accomplished fighter, having bested Dr. Scarab's henchwoman Madame-O on the occasions when the two physically fought each other one-on-one. She was voiced by Carol Bilger. Eric Bennett aka Sport-1 is Jack's and Helen's blond, athletic son. At local Albert Einstein High School, Eric is a shortstop on the baseball team, the Einstein Atoms. He routinely employs baseball vernacular in his dialogue. As Sport-1, he employs electromagnetic powers to attract or repel metallic objects with tremendous force, meld them together, or even rip them apart. This force is directional andby varying the configuration of his hands, or by using one or both armsSport-1 can adjust the strength of attraction or repulsion. He can also use objects as he would a baseball bat, including steel beams, lampposts and other objects (including baseball bats) to redirect incoming objects and energy blasts; infused by the same field that comes from his arms, he can use those ordinarily fragile objects to hit and deflect things they normally could not. In one instance, he used a steel beam to hit an incoming asteroid. He was voiced by Hal Rayle. Meg Bennett aka Rock-1 is Jack's and Helen's daughter and Eric's younger sister. Meg is an excitable, and somewhat ditsy, music-loving teenager. She is prone to habitual use of the future-slang phrase "So-LAR!" (comparable to "awesome"), as well as the prefixes "Mega-!" (as befitting her first name) and "Ultra-!" At Albert Einstein High School, Meg is a member of the debate team; in a number of episodes, she is seen dating a classmate named Bim. As Rock-1, she can emit sonic beams from blaster units mounted on her shouldersthe blaster units are only visible when she assumes "bionic mode". While all of the Six can run at superhuman speed, Meg is the fastest among them by a large margin. She and Eric are the only Bennett offspring biologically related to each other, and to their parents. Meg was voiced by Bobbi Block. James Dwight "J.D." Corey aka IQ is Jack's and Helen's remarkably intelligent, adopted African-American son. He enjoys amateur boxing, although he is not particularly skilled at it. As IQ, he has super-intelligence (as befitting his code-name); moreover, while all of the Six have superhuman strength, J.D. is the strongest among them by a large margin. He was the only team member whose bionic code name did not include the number "1" as a suffix. He was voiced by Norman Bernard. Bunjiro "Bunji" Tsukahara aka Karate-1 is Jack's and Helen's Japanese foster son. He was placed under their guardianship after his own father disappeared 10 years earlier somewhere in the East. Bunji is an avid karate enthusiast. As Karate-1, his already-formidable martial arts prowess is enhanced by his bionics. He is the most agile among the Six, and his super-sharp reflexes are surpassed only by those of Rock-1. He was voiced by Brian Tochi. F.L.U.F.F.I. is a gorilla-like robot who lives as a housekeeper with the Bennetts. He regularly demonstrates a comical craving for aluminum cans that extends to casually devouring the Bennetts' cookware, vehicles, or other metal objects. Despite his bungling behavior, he nonetheless proves helpful around the Bennett home, or assisting the Bionic Six with physical tasks in the field. F.L.U.F.F.I. was voiced by Neil Ross.
Villains The primary villain of the series is Dr. Scarabreal name Dr. Wilmer Sharp Ph.D., who is Amadeus Sharp's brother. Scarab is a hefty, egotistically brilliant and occasionally comical man who yearns for the secret to eternal life and world domination. His right eye has been modified with a monocle that has a low-powered scanner that can detect individuals with bionics, even when they are disguised, and a destructive, high-powered beam. In rare instances throughout the series, he seemingly demonstrates superhuman, bionic strength of his own (on at least one occasion, he picked up Mother-One effortlessly and threw her around; in another instance, he was seen carrying as much solid gold out of Fort Knox as his other bionic minionsseveral hundred pounds' worth). He was voiced by Jim MacGeorge.
Dr. Scarab has assembled a motley team of henchmen (described below), imbued with an apparently lesser form of the same bionic powers employed by the Bionic Six. Another one of Scarab's goals in the series is to try to figure out the secrets behind his brother's superior bionics knowledge.
Glove is a purple-skinned villain named for his left-handed blaster glove which is capable of firing both beams and projectiles. He serves as the field leader in Scarab's evil plans (hence made a frequent target for punishment for failures) and constantly vies to replace Dr. Scarab as leader. Although cunning and vicious, he tends to retreat at the first sign of defeat. His strength varies, as in some instances, he seems to be the equal of Bionic-1, while in one instance, he was able to physically overpower and dominate both Bionic-1 and Karate-1 at the same time. He was voiced by Frank Welker. Madame-O, the only female member of Dr. Scarab's crew, is an enigmatic blue-skinned femme fatale who wears a full face mask and uses a harp-like weapon to fire sonic blasts. She has a verbal tic of ending many of her statements with the word "...darling". While she does possess super strength, she is not as strong as many of the other characters; Mother-1 was able to defeat her in physical struggles on various occasions. Before her transformation, she actually appeared to be an elderly woman. She was voiced by Jennifer Darling. Mechanic is a dim-witted, childish brute who employs various mechanical tools as weaponsnail or rivet guns, throwing circular saw blades, using a large wrench as a bludgeon. Despite his short temper, he has a soft spot for animals and an engrossing fondness for (in-universe) children's television cartoons. He was voiced by Frank Welker. Chopper is a chain-wielding thug who articulates sounds mimicking a revving motorcycle. He is sometimes depicted riding a three-wheeled motorcycle vehicle. Like both Mechanic and Glove, he was voiced by Frank Welker (who, perhaps by intentional design, had previously voiced another villain by the name of Chopper, with exactly the same voice and "vocal mannerisms", in a 1970s-era cartoon titled Wheelie and the Chopper Bunch). Klunk is a patchwork monstrosity who appears to be made out of living glue and rarely speaks coherently. Immediately after Klunk's creation, Scarab noted to himself to "use a little less power next time". While he is relatively unintelligent (even moreso than Mechanic), Klunk's unparalleled strength (his strength appears to surpass even that of I.Q, the strongest member of the Bionic Six), high resistance to physical attacks, and his gooey body's ability to engulf his opponent cause him to be considered one of the most dangerous opponents to engage in battle witheven Dr. Scarab fears him to some extent. Unlike the other minions of Dr. Scarab, he is (understandably) horrified by his own transformation and longs to be human again. Like Jack "Bionic-1" Bennett, he was voiced by John Stephenson.
Dr. Scarab has tried to create additional minions with limited success, usually due to envying interference from his existing henchmen. Some of these include: