Do you remember waaaaaay back when having a day off meant Saturday, and Saturday meant waking up at the crack of dawn to plop yourself in front of the television set with a bowl of sugar based cereal substitute to watch Saturday morning cartoons? Yeah, me neither. But that’s okay. Let’s get NOSTALGIC! 


You and three of your friends are looking to start a band. All you need is a drummer. And talent. But that’ll surely come once you’ve got the band together, right? You post fliers all over Aqualand but no one bites. Until one day, when a great white shark knocks on the front door of your undersea apartment. What could go wrong, you think to yourself? He came with his own kit. This day was a Saturday, more or less September 11, 1976, and airing for the first time is Jabberjaw.

“Blending the “teenage rock band” concept of Josie and the Pussycats (q.v.) with the “sharkmania” inspired by the 1975 feature film Jaws, Jabberjaw starred a great white shark who fronted a rock band. Jabberjaw covers a surprising number of TV tropes, including Baleful Polymorph, Batman Can Breathe in Space, and Furry Confusion, for a show that only lasted from September 11 to December 18, 1976.

I don’t remember a Jabberjaw cartoon, but I do remember the character Jabberjaw. Specifically, I remember that he had a really annoying voice (kind of like Curly from The Three Stooges doing a bad Rodney Dangerfield impression) that’s probably going to make me regret rewatching the show. The front cover of the dvd case features Jabberjaw, a giant shark, playing in a band with four humans. The back cover talks about how Jabberjaw and his human companions are both in a rock-n-roll band AND deep sea crime fighters in the year 2076. There’s also a picture of what looks like Zorak from Space Ghost.

Episode 1 starts with [insert generic Asian bad guy here] threatening [insert generic Asian people here] with [insert generic kaiju here]. It’s pretty bad. The [insert generic evil plan] is thwarted when the mascot/drummer of a passing teen rock band, Jabberjaw, sneezes the beast into submission. The bad guy swears that he will have his revenge and kidnaps some of the good guys who are then rescued by the wacky hijinks of the rest of the good guys. Ended with a pun. 

Take the meddling kids from Scooby Doo. Add in the science-fiction setting, and less than subtle racism, of Flash Gordon. Change Curly from The Three Stooges into an anthropomorphic shark. Set it all to a laugh track interspersed with random song montages. This is Jabberjaw.

If you liked Jabberjaw: 

Jabberjaw
Binge Box : Don’t go in the water
Sharknado
The three stooges meet Hercules
The Flash Gordon collection

Also check out:

More to come (live, from what I remember about the 80’s!) as this story continues.