General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

Turbo FAST

Turbo FAST (also styled Turbo F.A.S.T.) is an American animated television series that premiered on Netflix on December 24, 2013 as the streaming service's first original series for kids, a spinoff of DreamWorks Animation's 2013 feature film Turbo about a team of racing snails.¹ Created by Chris Prynoski and produced by DreamWorks Animation Television, it ran for three seasons until February 2016.²

Key fact	Detail
Premiere	December 24, 2013, at 12:01 AM PT, exclusively in all Netflix territories¹
Significance	Netflix's first original series for kids, and the first title under DreamWorks Animation's 2013 deal to produce 300 hours of exclusive content for the service¹^•³
Run	Three seasons, 2013 to 2016; the final season arrived in February 2016²
Episode count	52 episodes per What's on Netflix; other trackers list 102 episodes across seasons of 50, 26, and 26, a disagreement between sources²^•⁴
Creator	Chris Prynoski, executive producer and founder of the animation studio Titmouse⁵
Main voice cast	Reid Scott (Turbo), Eric Bauza (Chet), John Eric Bentley (Whiplash), Grey DeLisle (Burn), Amir Talai (Skidmark and Tito), Mike Bell (White Shadow)⁶
Rating	TV-Y7 (FV)⁷
Netflix removal	All three seasons left Netflix on April 2, 2023²

Spoilers

Premise

The series continues the story of the 2013 film Turbo, in which a garden snail gains super speed and wins the Indianapolis 500. After Turbo's victory tour, his human companion Tito has built Starlite City, a miniature metropolis with an elaborate race track where Turbo and his fellow snails live and race. Turbo and his crew, the Fast Action Stunt Team (FAST), face new rivals of all varieties eager to unseat the champion, from surfing roaches and a con artist gecko to a pirate rat and a drift-racing cricket, in settings ranging from Africa to a Mississippi swamp.⁴^•⁶

The stunt team roster carried over from the film: Turbo, Whiplash, Burn, Smoove Move, White Shadow, Skidmark, and Chet. Ken Jeong reprised his feature film role, and Reid Scott, then known for HBO's Veep, voiced Turbo.¹

Production

Studio and method. DreamWorks Animation Television, the studio's newly formed TV division, produced the series, with Chris Prynoski as executive producer. Animation was done at Prynoski's own Titmouse studio in Los Angeles for the first episodes, with additional work at Titmouse's Vancouver studio and at studios in Korea to stay on schedule.⁵^•⁸ The show combines 2D and CGI elements: the snails' racing domes and shells were modeled in Maya as rotatable 3D assets, then cleaned up by hand to look like 2D drawings and banked into a growing library for animators to reuse.⁵ Prynoski noted that Netflix was hands-off, with no standards-and-practices department, so the team policed itself.⁵

Release strategy. Unlike Netflix's adult originals such as House of Cards and Arrested Development, which dropped entire seasons at once, Turbo FAST was staggered: five episodes were available on Christmas Eve 2013, with additional episodes arriving throughout 2014. Netflix chief content officer Ted Sarandos said the schedule gave kids "something to look forward to all year."⁹ The initial order was for 26 episodes, the traditional volume in kids television at the time.¹⁰

Place in the DreamWorks-Netflix deal

In 2013 DreamWorks Animation signed a landmark agreement with Netflix to produce 300 hours of exclusive animation, the largest push into original kids' programming Netflix had made and the first time DreamWorks introduced its characters to television as a branded collection of shows.¹¹ Turbo FAST was the first program under that deal, followed by series including All Hail King Julien, The Adventures of Puss in Boots, Dinotrux, Dawn of the Croods, Voltron: Legendary Defender, Spirit Riding Free, and Guillermo del Toro's Trollhunters.³

Netflix's Q4 2013 shareholder letter reported that, though just launched, Turbo F.A.S.T. was on track to become one of the most popular kids series ever on the service, crediting the theatrical and home video release of the film with positioning the series for success.¹²

The show also set a production pattern that later shifted. Since Turbo FAST, DreamWorks Animation Television's seasons rarely exceeded 13 episodes, and by 2021 new seasons ranged from six to 15 episodes as streamers moved away from the 26- and 52-episode orders that linear scheduling had favored.¹⁰

Reception and availability

On IMDb the series holds a 6.5/10 rating.¹³ Common Sense Media rated it appropriate for ages 6 and up, noting themes of self-confidence, teamwork, and perseverance carried over from the film, along with cartoon-style peril and potty humor; the review also observed that the series' more subdued animation style felt flat next to the computer-animated movie and that only a few of the original cast members reprised their voice roles.⁷

Although Turbo FAST carried Netflix Original branding, the underlying rights remained with DreamWorks, and after DreamWorks's parent NBCUniversal (Comcast) took ownership, the series left Netflix on April 2, 2023.² As of late 2026 it was not available on subscription streaming services in the Netherlands, though it could be purchased as a download on Amazon Video, the Apple TV Store, and Fandango At Home in the United States, and streamed on Prime Video in Brazil.¹⁴^•⁴^•¹⁵

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Series and fictional screen worlds › Scripted television and comedy series › Animated television series (individual series) › Children's animated adventure and fantasy series › Comedy and slice-of-life series › Premiered 1961 to 2019

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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