Mutant League was an animated series based on the videogames Mutant League Football and Mutant League Hockey which aired from 2 July 1994 to 24 February 1996. The show ran for two seasons, with the second typically incorporating more poignant stories and issues (such as Magic Johnson contracting HIV), while the first seemed somewhat hodgepodge with little regard for continuity (the Monsters have one win streak that ends twice, for instance). There are forty episodes in all, thirteen in Season 1 and twenty-seven in Season 2.[1]
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During a football game, an earthquake reveals buried toxic waste, and the fumes cause all of the attendees and players to mutate, including young Bones Justice (cf. Bones Jackson in the games). A sports federation based around the superhuman beings, the Mutant League, springs up, and Bones grows up to play for the Midway Monsters. Corrupt league commissioner Zalgor Prigg constantly schemes to get the popular athlete to play for any one of the four teams he owns (Slayers, Evils, Derangers or Ooze), or if nothing else discredit him for refusing to join. Bones' search for his father, missing since the day of the quake, and his personal quest to bring order and fair play to the league, are subplots throughout the series. Several other characters from the games such as Razor Kidd, Mo and Spew, K.T. Slayer, Grim McSlam and Coach McWimple regularly appear in the show.
Unlike the games, players didn't die from their unique approach to contact sports; though frequently maimed to the point of losing body parts, through treatments in a machine called the Rejuvenator which bathed them in toxic chemicals, they would soon be as good as new. The show also has no robot players (except in one episode where K.T. Slayer was benched by robotic clones of himself.), and only five teams: the Monsters, the Slayers, the Ooze, the Derangers and the Screaming Evils. It also has the teams competing in all manner of sports, not just the ones seen in the games. Most commonly Football, but also hockey, basketball, soccer, baseball, volleyball and even monster truck races and sumo wrestling. As with the videogames, all of these sports were modified with deathtraps and loose rules on violence to accommodate the near-indestructible nature of the players. Some episodes end with a "grudge match" between two particular players.
A line of action figures was released based on the show, but went virtually unknown.
Rumours of a Mutant League wrestling league surfaced featuring such characters as The Polluter, The Toxic Teacher, and "Dad" (or possibly Butch Justice) but apparently never entered production.
A 69 minute VHS tape of the show was released in 1996, featuring episodes edited together into what was called Mutant League: The Movie.