The awesomest ship that ever be!
A dimwitted crew on the seven seas!
Pirate Express!"
There's being Screwed by the Network and then there's what happened to this show.
Pirate Express is an Australian-Canadian animated series produced by Atomic Cartoons and Sticky Pictures Ltd. that aired on Teletoon in Canada and 9Go! in Australia in 2015. While it aired for a relatively long time in Australia (airing there as late as 2021), in Canada it wasn't treated the best to say the least. All 26 episodes of the series aired over there on Teletoon for a single week, with the show then being taken off the air without any further word.
The show stars Newt, the 12-year-old son of Poseidon, who one day discovers a strange ship in a bottle in his father's office in Atlantis. The ship is in fact a miniaturized version of a real pirate ship belonging to a gang of pirates who had attempted to rob the god of the sea three hundred years ago. The pirates were imprisoned with their ship as punishment, but are also still alive centuries later. Of course, Newt accidentally breaks the bottle and frees the pirates along with their ship. To save the bumbling buccaneers from his father's wrath, Newt makes himself the captain of their ship, which he rechristens Pirate Express, to the chagrin of the crew's original captain Henri De LaPoutine. Now it's up to Newt to teach his motley crew of sea dogs that there's more to life than plundering treasure as they sail the globe in search for adventure and cause plenty of high seas havoc in the process.
Pirate Express contains examples of:
- Atlantis: Appears very frequently. Poseidon rules it, so naturally Newt lives there when not on adventures with the pirates.
- Bratty Half-Pint: Newt's spoiled and entitled cousin Violet, who's also the daughter of Zeus.
- Christmas Episode: "Shop 'Til You Drop Anchor" involves Newt taking the pirates to the mall for gifts on the Atlanteans version of Christmas called "Kelptime".
- Cloud Cuckoolander: Bert, the Australian pirate who clearly isn't right in the head and loves blowing things up. According to the episode "Father Time" the reason why he's like that is because of a event he calls "the big bang" in which he attempted a space mission that resulted in his spaceship blowing up upon launch and splitting him in two.
- Dashing Hispanic: Armando, a swashbuckler who isn't quite as swashbuckling as he thinks he is.
- Fish People: Newt and the other Atlanteans are portrayed as blue humans with finned ears.
- Lord of the Ocean: Newt's dad is none other than Poseidon himself.
- Only Sane Man: Newt is this when compared to the other pirates in his crew. With him usually trying to keep the pirates out of trouble.
- Pirate: Obviously! The title ship and its crew are a gang of misfit pirates who aren't particularly good at being pirates or reforming from such.
- Sea Monster: Plenty of them. Newt and his gang encounter krakens, sea dragons, leviathans, and the like.
- Sibling Rivalry: Poseidon has one with his brothers Zeus and Hades.
- The Speechless: Spewey the penguin can't actually speak words, so he does charades which the other crew members misinterpret to his dismay.
