M.A.S.K. is a special task force led by Matt Trakker, who operate transforming armored vehicles in their ongoing battle against the criminal organization V.E.N.O.M. with an emphasis on superpowered helmets worn by the characters of both factions. V.E.N.O.M.'s primary goal was obtaining money through either robbery, extortion, counterfeiting, kidnapping, or attempting to steal historical artifacts, but M.A.S.K. always found a way to foil their plans.
Cast
Doug Stone – Matt Trakker, Hondo MacLean, Dusty Hayes, Bruce Sato, Nash Gorey, Bruno Sheppard, Boris Bushkin, Maximus Mayhem
Brendan McKane – Miles Mayhem, Alex Sector, Floyd Malloy, Jacques LaFleur, Nevada Rushmore
Graeme McKenna – T-Bob, Brad Turner, Julio Lopez, Calhoun Burns
A total of 75 syndicated episodes over two seasons were broadcast from September 1985 to November 1986. The first season consisted of 65 episodes, but the second season, whose theme centered around auto racing instead of crimefighting, lasted only ten episodes.
Production
One of many cartoons produced during the 1980s as a vehicle for toy merchandising, M.A.S.K., was a hybrid of popular era cartoons and The Transformers. When originally broadcast, M.A.S.K. was the first closed-captioned series to air in first-run syndication.
Home video
Several episodes of the series were released under Karl-Lorimar's "Kideo Video" branding on VHS in the 1980s, with two episodes per tape. The "racing" second season was distributed by Tempest Video. In the United Kingdom, two releases titled M.A.S.K The Movie, and M.A.S.K The Movie II were released by Tempo Video, featuring episodes edited into a feature-length format. M.A.S.K. episodes have been released on DVD in three different regions.
USA: Shout! Factory acquired the Region 1 DVD rights and released a "Complete Series" set on August 9, 2011 containing only the episodes from the first season of the original series, as well as a separate 2-disc collection of the first 11 episodes, called "Volume 1" and released the same day. The second season, which consists of 10 episodes, are owned by Cookie Jar Entertainment and are not part of the acquisition.
UK: A single DVD set containing the first 5 episodes was released by Maximum Entertainment in August 2004. In November 2007, Maximum released Collection 1, containing the same number of episodes as the Australian set. Collection 1 was re-released on 31 August 2009, and Collection 2 was finally released on 28 September 2009. Both sets are distributed through Lace DVD, replacing Maximum Entertainment, and both sets are in Region 2 PAL format. All 75 episodes were released across both sets.
Australia and New Zealand: Madman Entertainment released the complete series over two DVD collections for the first time in Australia and New Zealand. Collection 1 was released in November 2006 and contains episodes 1–38, Collection 2 was released in March 2007 and contains episodes 39–75 which includes the season 2 episodes.
Reception
voted M.A.S.K. the 99th-best animated series in 2009, calling it one of the most popular cartoon/toy marketing franchises of the 1980s, stating that it took many of the strengths of G.I. Joe and Transformers while taking few of their flaws. On the other hand, David Perlmutter in the 2018 The Encyclopedia of American Animated Television Shows says, "Given that it was tied into a toy line produced by co-producer Kenner-Parker, the intent was clearly to showcase the weaponry and vehicles at the expense of anything deeper in terms of plotting and characterization. That being said, the series did manage to do the little it was asked to provide in advertising the toys."
