The Aquabats! Super Show!

The Aquabats! Super Show! is an American action-comedy musical television series which aired from March 3, 2012 to January 8, 2014 on The Hub Network. The series was created by Christian Jacobs and Scott Schultz, both the creators of the Nick Jr. series Yo Gabba Gabba!, and Jason deVilliers. Based on the superhero mythology of The Aquabats, a real-life comedy rock band which series co-creator and lead singer Jacobs formed in 1994, The Aquabats! Super Show! follows the comic adventures of a fictionalized version of the band, a musical group of amateur superheroes, as they haphazardly defend the world from a variety of villains and monsters. Styled similarly to the campy aesthetics of 1960s and 1970s children's television and Japanese tokusatsu, Super Show! utilizes various mediums of visual styles and special effects, mixing live-action storylines with cartoon shorts, parody advertisements and musical interludes. The series' first season concluded on June 16, 2012 following a run of 13 episodes, having met with a largely positive critical reception, consistently high ratings for the channel and a Daytime Emmy nomination for Outstanding Children's Series. The series' second season consisted of an initial five episodes which aired through June 2013, with three additional episodes airing in late December and January 2014, receiving similar acclaim and a further five Daytime Emmy nominations, ultimately winning one for Best Stunt Coordination. In 2015, over a year after the series' last original episode had been broadcast, Super Show! was again nominated for two Daytime Emmy Awards. Following news of The Hub's relaunch as Discovery Family in June 2014, series co-creator Jacobs revealed during at panel at the 2014 San Diego Comic-Con that the channel had opted not to renew The Aquabats! Super Show! for another season, effectively cancelling the series. In July 2018, The Aquabats launched a high-profile Kickstarter to help independently finance new episodes of The Aquabats! Super Show!, promoting the campaign with a series of YouTube-exclusive mini-episodes continuing the original series' storyline. After falling short of their initial goal, the band launched another, smaller campaign the following month for the continued production of Super Show! mini-episodes, which was successfully met within minutes.