Super Friends! – Season One, Volume Two (1973 aka Superfriends!/DC
Comics/Warner DVD)
Picture:
C+ Sound: C Extras:
C- Episodes: B-
The
original Super Friends! was an
hour-long show and when the show was cut to a half-hour, it lost some of its
energy and spirit, but it was a huge enough success that the show would run 13
seasons with new episodes made every few years.
Warner decided to release the original 1973 season in two sets, the
first of which we covered at this link:
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/9421/Super+Friends!+%E2%80%93+Season
Now to Volume Two, which includes these
episodes:
The
Balloon People
The Fantastic
FREEPs
The Ultra
Beam
The
Menace Of The White Dwarf
The
Mysterious Moles
Gulliver’s
Giant Goof (with guest superhero Green Arrow)
The Power
Splitter
The
Watermen
Die hard
fans know that the Gulliver episode
eventually led to Mego Toys (who changed toys forever with their 8” World’s
Greatest Super Hero line, which you can read more about in a book we reviewed
elsewhere on this site) to issue a Green Arrow action figure that many consider
the best of a line that lasted as long as this series. It is not necessarily a coincidence that
Warner, DC and Mattel have relaunched the line as these DVD sets hit the
market.
But the
shows continued to respect the child audience more than usual and the toys were
a given after thought that did not let the show become a toy ad with no point
as would sadly happen with sop many shows in the 1980s. This was also the end of the line for Wendy,
Marvin and Wonder Dog, who never surfaced again, though (in another early
innovation) crated a comic book tie-in to this show that was a hit and was a
precursor to so many explicitly child-friendly superhero comics that were very
rare then. The comic companies usually
reserved comedy and child characters for that market, while their heroes were
considered an audience for more mature audiences and older young readers.
The 1.33
X 1 image again is a little soft throughout, but this is the best color I have
ever seen on these shows in the over 35 years they have been available on and
off. The prints have cel dust and sometimes, you can see the outline of
actual cels used. Still, the color is superior to later seasons as Hanna
Barbera started to ship their shows overseas to be finished, quality and color
noticeably suffered. The Dolby Digital 1.0 Mono is once again a little
compressed and the sound is down a generation at least, but it is never too bad
that you cannot hear the dialogue or Ted Knight’s hilarious delivery of the
narration. Extras again include trailers for other Warner animated
releases and a quiz that is tougher than you’d think, but any featurettes about
the shows success are absent. Too bad.
-
Nicholas Sheffo
