Sushi Pack is a children's Saturday-Morning Cartoon featuring a team of items from a sushi menu, jolted to life thanks to a bolt of lightning. The Pack consists of Tako (octopus), Maguro (tuna), Kani (crab), Ikura (salmon roe) and Wasabi, who together battle evildoers and learn life lessons. They live in an organic donut shop with their human friend and mentor Ben. Despite the superhero element of the story, violence is used only as a last resort.
The show was co-created by Tom Ruegger of Animaniacs fame and Nicholas Hollander, and produced by American Greetings and DiC Entertainment (notable for being the latter's final cartoon before Cookie Jar Entertainment acquired them). The show aired on CBS' KEWLopolis block from November 2007 to February 2009 for 2 seasons.
TV, TV, TV, TV, TV Tropes!:
- Achilles' Heel: Heat is the only weakness for most of the Pack. Wasabi can take the heat, but in turn he can't stand extreme cold.
- Aesop Amnesia: The cast frequently ends up offending Wasabi and needing to apologize.
- And That's Terrible: "You were teasing Wasabi and teasing hurts!"
- Animesque: A mix of this and regular cartoon style.
- Anthropomorphic Food: The main characters are assorted kinds of sushi and hot mustard that have been uplifted via lightning.
- Aren't You Forgetting Someone?: In "Sushis of a Certain Stature," the Pack think that the town is putting up a statue of them, since it's announced as "Wharf City's Greatest Hero." It's actually of Kato Platypus, who was more active years earlier.
- Attack of the Killer Whatever: In "Pants On Fire", Unagi develops the ability to bring anything from traffic lights to a jungle gym to bagels to murderous life.
- Badass in Distress: Satellightning's return episode involves him needing to be rescued from the bottom of the sea. Bear in mind this is someone who schooled the police, the army, and The Pack when they fought him in his debut episode.
- Bad Is Good and Good Is Bad: Sir Darkly. He appears to be a manifestation of evil, so it's justified.
- Blush Sticker: Kani, Maguro, and Mochi Mochiato have them.
- Cardboard Prison: The only villain shown consistently in jail is The Collector.
- Carnivore Confusion: Played rather disturbingly in that the Pack actually remembers their past lives as animals (save Wasabi, who was a plant instead). This means that not only should they remember dying, but somebody was actually cruel enough to slaughter intelligent, talking animals.
- City of Adventure: Wharf City.
- Cool and Unusual Punishment: Titanium Chef punishes Mochi Mochiato by having her teammates ridicule her.
- Cute Bruiser: The entire Pack. They're a team of cute and tiny anthropomorphic food-based critters... who have superpowers they use to fight crime and defend an entire city.
- A Dog Named "Perro": The main characters and most of the Legion of Low Tide are based on and named after primarily animal-based dishes in Japanese cuisine. The Sushi Pack has Tako the octopus and Kani the crab, while Maguro and Ikura are respectively named after the Japanese words for tuna meat and salmon roe. The Legion of Low Tide has Fugu the blowfish, Unagi the eel, and Uni the sea urchin, while Toro's name refers to fatty cuts of tuna meat.
- Easy Impersonation: In "The Wrong Sushi," Tako, Maguro, Kani, and Wasabi are convicted of a crime, despite presented video evidence showing what is obviously the Legion of Low Tide made up to look like the Pack.
- Edible Theme Naming: Each of the members of the Pack has a name relating to what food they were before the lightning strike.
- Every Episode Ending: Every episode ends with the Pack jumping into the air and shouting "Sushi Pack!" The only exception is the episode "Lights On, Lights Off", when Unagi helped them save the day and all six of them shouted "Go Planet Earth!"
- Eyepatch of Power: Tako wears a fake eyepatch.
- Fire-Breathing Diner: Ben drinks some hot sauce and has this reaction in "Red Hot Chili Planet".
- "Freaky Friday" Flip: Wasabi and Mayor Martin in "Everybody is Some Body"
- Goldfish Poop Gang: The Legion of Low Tide, basically.
- Humongous Mecha: B.O.B. (Being of Bamboo). Huge to the Pack, normal-sized to us.
- Hypocritical Humor: From "Deep Freeze":Titanium Chef: Maguro is not one of us. She's different. We don't tolerate difference. Right, boys?
Toro: We can barely tolerate ourselves. - Intelligible Unintelligible: Wasabi. Oddly, Ben ends up speaking his exact dialect of this trope after drinking hot sauce.
- LEGO Genetics: In "Fish Tales," a special bisque made with DNA from Kani's shell turns Oleander into a Crab Person.
- Meaningful Name: The Pack's names all relate to the kind of food they were before uplifting via lightning.
- Merchandise-Driven: It's made by a greeting card company. Averted somewhat, as the only known merchandise of the show appears to be for promotional purposes only.
- Noodle Implements: In "When Will Ben be Zen?," Wasabi's plan to help Ben involves him wearing mukluks for some reason.
- Not Me This Time: In "The Thing That Wasn't There," an electrical creature that only Maguro can see is causing havoc all over the city. Since the attacks all have to do with electricity, the rest of the Pack assume that Unagi, the electric eel member of The Legion of Low Tide is up to no good. When they confront him, he denies having anything to do with it.
- Out-of-Character Moment: When Maguro flips out at Tako in "But Is It Art?".Maguro: "If I wasn't so in time with my inner tuna, I'd go barracuda in him!"
- The Psycho Rangers: The Fried Food Fighting Force were created as this. They ended up turning on Oleander after discovering she planned to eat them later.
- Remember the New Guy?: A few villains have "returned" in their debut episode (Oleander, Paradoxtor, Sir Darkly, to name a few).
- Repeating So the Audience Can Hear: Used occasionally by the Pack to translate Wasabi's "mustard speak" for the viewers.
- Shoe Shine, Mister?: In "Chemicals Made From Dirt," the Titanium Chef's evil plan involves shoeshine, even though his own minions point out that no one shines his shoes in this day and age. However, his plan also involves the power of peer pressure, and sure enough, everyone wants to get his shoes shined to be "cool". One boy even volunteers to help them shine shoes.
- Team Title: The show is named after the superhero team it's about.
- Title Theme Tune: "Sushi, sushi, sushi, sushi, Sushi Pack!"
- Villainous Glutton: Oleander doesn't care that the protagonists are sentient, they're still food to her.
- Voices Are Mental: Wasabi remains The Unintelligible when in Mayor Martin's body. Martin's secretary can still understand him because "All politicians speak gibberish."
- Word, Schmord!: The episode title "Mirror Schmirror".
