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In 1999, The Aquabats self-produced this short video demo in a second attempt to land a full-length pilot. This was not the Aquabats first attempt at getting a television series, as the band had created a pilot in 1998 through Buena Vista Television.

Fun fact: Much of season one of The Aquabats! Super Show! was filmed on the same locations as the In Color! pilot.

"The Aquabats In Color" was shot in two days at Oak Canyon Ranch in Irvine, California. The Aquabats used their very meager music video budget for The Floating Eye of Death album to fund it with the intention of later using the footage for a video.

Without means to produce an entire 30-minute episode, they created a "Last Week Recap / Opening Credits" and "Next Week Preview / End Credits" with a title card intermission in the middle with the words "Place Show Here". However, it was made to seem as if an entire season of episodes was compiled for these sequences. An instrumental version of the band's song Sequence Erase! was used as the theme song.

"The Aquabats In Color!" starred The Aquabats, allies such as The Professor, Planet V, and plenty of enemies for the heroes to fight, such as The Sandfleas, Powdered Milk Man, The Mant, The Mauler, Silver Skull and Pumpkin Face. The style of the video was heavy on the action, yet light on the humor and was heavily influenced by Japanese children's shows of the 60's and 70's such as Kamen Rider, Kikaida and Jonny Sokko. Clips from the first episode of the original Ultraman series from 1966 were used as stock footage during the pilot; the beach party-crashing monster that arrived from a blue UFO that the Aquabats! attack in the "Next Week Preview" is actually Bemular. The Aquabats also wear helmets similar to the science defense teams that appear in the franchise. The end credits feature cut out drawings of the band's Rogues Gallery in the style of various Ultraman openings.

Unfortunately the project never took off, although you can still find it here and on the official Aquabats YouTube channel.

Trivia[]

  • This episode includes the original line up of Aquabats, which include older characters that didn't make it to The Aquabats Super Show, such as Mysterious Kyu and Prince Adam, who later went on to compose the music for the rest of the second season of the series (excluding the Christmas special) and the mini-episodes of The Aquabats Super Kickstarter campaign, in which he made a cameo appearance in a dream sequence in the teaser. Some characters with a larger role in the pilot made a cameo appearance in the Super Show later on. In the Series 1 finale, Showtime!, Catboy and Chainsaw were shown as independent superheroes that rivalled the Aquabats.
  • There are also three of the five Aquabats from the SuperShow that were included in the Pilot, The MC Bat Commander, was just the 'Bat Commander' and his design didn't change much from the current Bat Commander. Crash McLarson was not wearing his hat, showing off his bright hair and his bass over his shoulder and 'Robot', without the name Jimmy, was the sidekick of The Professor, who later made an animated appearance in Summer Camp!
  • Some villains that appeared in the pilot made appearances in the SuperShow, Silver Skull was in the credits, who became an antagonist in AntiBats! and Powdered Milk Man, the Mauler and the Sandfleas all make appearances in The Aquabats Super Kickstarter campaign.

Pilot Demo[]

Official_Demo_Pilot

Official Demo Pilot

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