The All New Super Friends Hour: Season One (Volume One) DVD Review

Another 1970s cartoon being repurposed and revived on the DVD format is The All New Super Friends Hour: Season One (Volume One), which comes compliments of Warner Bros., Hanna-Barbera, and DC Comics. Like many of the cartoons from the 1970s, this one doesn’t lose its magic and quite possibly becomes even more compelling for children who don’t have anything as pure to grasp and adults who can find new nostalgic humor in the “old” style that refuses to go away quietly.

The Super Friends are: Superman, Batman, Robin, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, and the newly introduced (at least, at the time) Wonder Twins, Zan and Jayna, complete with their mischievous blue space monkey, Gleek. Together they make the force that constantly keeps Metropolis and the world at large safe from earthly evil and unearthly harm. This particular DVD set has seven episodes complete with multiple adventures and numerous public service announcements that you just don’t see implemented in cartoons anymore. Some of them are hilarious because of the content but, overall, they are a good element that has become all but extinct.

This installment of the series offers plenty of good action and a number of unintentional laughs—mostly for the older viewers. You’ll see why Batman and Robin have this homosexual stigma that has been so evident over the years although I’m sure it was perfectly innocent at the time. Either way, it’s a good time for everybody.

The Super Friends evolved from the Justice League that DC Comics created. When the first Super Friends installment found its way onto television in 1973, it had kept everyone from the Justice League except: Flash, Green Lantern, and Martian Manhunter. For the show, a trio of sidekicks replaced them: Wendy, Marvin White, and Wonderdog, who were more or less sidekicks in training. In the 1977 All New Super Friends Hour, the Wonder Twins and Gleek replace the trio. Super-heroes from the original Justice League, among many others, such as Flash, The Atom, Rima, and Hawkman, make special guest appearances and help fight crime and save mankind.

As far as the episodes go, they are entertaining. The plots and reasoning seem a little goofy at times but that’s part of the late 1970s charm. It makes me miss the old school elements of cartoons, like a distinctive narrator, amazing transitions, decoder clues, and the courage to try something completely new. It’s impressive how the episodes find a way to come up with all new adventures, plots, and obstacles. Unfortunately, the memorable Legion of Doom does not make an appearance in this series. You’ll have to wait for Challenge of the Super Friends to be released on DVD before you can enjoy the wide array of popular villains.

The Special Features are decent but you would think there would be more considering that this is such an important piece of popular culture. One-Dimensional Goodness: The Super Friends and the Good Old Days is a retrospective featurette that draws upon interviews from people involved and people highly familiar with the material to give their two cents on what the show was all about. Origins of the Guest Stars is a shorter piece but it highlight such super-heroes as: Hawkman, Hawkgirl, The Atom, and Green Lantern. There’s some good stuff here but there could have been much more. The All New Super Friends Hour is a DVD set that will fit perfectly on the shelf of any original fan, modern day children, and any geek. There’s more than just late 1970s television here. There’s a piece of popular culture that will always continue to live on.