As a kid, I don’t think there was ever a better time to watch Saturday morning cartoons than during the 1970s and early-to-mid1980s.
Sure, today any child has got access to hundreds, if not thousands of animated programs to stream on demand via dozens of popular platforms, but back in the halcyon days of my youth (and yours), watching cartoons was appointment television viewing. A kid had to know what time his or her favourite program started, what channel to find it on – and be prepped with all the things that elevated such joyous cartoon viewing.
For me, my early morning Saturday ritual was wrapping a particular, well-worn blanket over me as I lay down on my parent’s shag carpet, arrayed and protected from any intrusions underneath a teak coffee table, head propped up on hands at the end of bent elbows with wide eyes staring intently upon the television screen. I’d be in that position for hours, only ever getting up for a bowl of Count Chocula cereal or a pancake breakfast or to turn the channel from one favourite show to another.
The cartoon show that was the center of my Saturday morning experience, like many other kids during that time, was always the adventures of the greatest DC Comics superheroes found in Super Friends. Along with the heroes themselves and the soaring theme music, no other show captured my attention in the same way.
This holiday season, you can return to the best of cartoon times – or have your own kids (or grandkids) experience it for the first time with the brand new DVD boxed set Super Friends: The Complete Collection.
Super Friends: The Complete Collection contains the entire 3,142 minutes of the Saturday morning animated series that ran from 1973-1985 under various, if similar-sounding titles including:
- Super Friends (1973, 1980)
- The All-New Super Friends Hour (1977)
- Challenge of the Super Friends (1978)
- The World’s Greatest Super Friends (1979)
- Super Friends: The Legendary Super Powers Show (1984)
- The Super Powers Team: Galactic Guardians (1985)
Featuring the world’s greatest heroes in Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman and Robin, among many others, this was some of the best cartoon viewing any kid, or kid at heart, could ever watch! It was the series that gave rise to the kid detective characters: Wendy Harris, Marvin White and Wonder Dog (Super Friends), the Wonder Twins: Zan, Jayna and their space-monkey, Gleek as well as Black Vulcan, Apache Chief (“Inook Chook!”) and Samurai (The All-New Super Friends Hour). Those new characters would become the stuff of cult fandom and even make the jump the printed page, finding themselves as part of the DC Universe and its haphazard continuity, through popular monthly comic books titles in the decades that followed.
As the series developed, episode segments would focus on team-ups, group adventures or even near-public service announcements. The Wonder Twins segments of The All-New Super Friends Hour, for example, would highlight the trials and tribulations affecting teenagers-of-the-day like hitchhiking, joyriding, high school vandalism, hazing, cheating and prejudice. Although it might seem somewhat cringe to watch these glib moral-tales now, to a kid, they made – and still make – an impression.
Challenge of the Super Friends was tied directly to monthly DC Comics publications like Justice League of America, so if a viewer read those comic books, they were in cartoon wonderland. Here were the world’s greatest heroes up against their world’s greatest super villains: Lex Luthor, Brainiac, Black Manta, Bizarro, Riddler, Scarecrow and Solomon Grundy: The Legion of Doom! Including some preliminary designs by the legendary illustrator, Alex Toth, and the visualization of the villain’s flying, swamp-based headquarters that looked like an enormous version of Darth Vader’s helmet, this was a personal favourite of all the animated titles.
The World’s Greatest Super Friends had the superheroes embroiled in adventures that were inspired by human folklore and fiction, including crossovers with Frankenstein, a nod to King Arthur and Camelot and even J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings.
Super Friends: The Legendary Super Powers Show was tied to the Super Powers toy line collection from Kenner. This was a cross-promotion, along with a Jack Kirby written and illustrated DC Comics miniseries, that many enthusiastic and imaginative young boys (and maybe even some girls) had their weekends revolve around. The series featured the DC heroes test themselves against Kirby’s Fourth World comic book creations, including the omnipotent and all-encompassing evil of Darkseid in his first appearance outside of comic book publications! (Spoiler alert: an upcoming Holiday Gift Guide 2024 entry will feature the massive Fourth World Omnibus Volume Two for any comic book readers out there!)
Super Powers: Galactic Guardians saw a slight change of name in the title, chiefly due to the Kenner toy line tie-in. With Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, Cyborg, Firestorm, Green Lantern and El Dorado battling against the forces of Darkseid, Parademons, Joker, The Royal Flush Gang, Felix Faust, Mister Mxyzptlk and Lex Luthor. The adventures were just as heroic for viewers and, perhaps, a little more serious in tone. Like its audience, the cartoon was maturing – even if only by a little.
Perhaps that was part of the 80’s zeitgeist and the transformation of comic book storytelling itself. An end to one era and the beginning of something new.
With an enormously talented voice cast over the near-hundred episodes, including legendary and iconic iterations of the superhero characters, the Super Friends cartoon series boasted the vocal sounds of Casey Kasem (Robin), Ted Knight (Narrator), Danny Dark (Superman), Shannon Farnon (Wonder Woman), Olan Soule (Batman), Frank Walker (Darkseid), Rene Auberjonois (DeSaad) and many, many others. It truly was the greatest voices for the greatest heroes and villains!
As the perfect gift, you or someone you know can experience it all again for the first time this holiday season with the absolutely wonderful, entertaining and thrillingly heroic Super Friends: The Complete Collection!
