I was recently watching the show on Cartoon Network. Boy, did it bring back nice memories from my childhood; I absolutely loved it when I was a kid.
Of course, aided by newfound maturity and objectivity I now laugh at the scientific inconsistencies and all the deus ex machinas that are invoked to save the heroes’ asses every once in a while.
Anyhow, even after factoring in all its simplicity it still stimulated my intellectual curiosity by introducing to the tabula rasa that was my mind such fascinating concepts as black holes while also delving into the magical stories narrated by Greek mythology. So, here is my question, what is your favorite episode? Your favorite superfriend?
My choices:
Episode: the one where the Superfriends are pitted against the Greek monsters. I particularly liked the Batman vs Sphinx matchup.
Superfriend: I had two, The Flash and The Green Lantern. My cousins and me had this routine where each of us selected a superfriend and as we watched the show we rooted for the hero of our choice and made fun of the other when his/her hero had a particularly lame showing. You can’t imagine how competitive cartoon watching can be when you are a kid. Ah, the old times!
I remember how proud I felt when Firestorm was promoted to the television show. Firestorm was the first comic book that I ever started collecting, so to see him next to the classic characters like Superman and Batman was like what I imagine it would be like to see someone you knew in high school make the NBA.
I still love all the Wendy, Marvin and Wonder Dog episodes. They were a full hour long and had great narration. Granted the villains were never really evil, just misguided. The one that took place in the center of the earth with the walking trees was my favorite.
I would have to go with Green Lantern as my favorite superfriend. Least favorite Apache Chief.
Gotta love the Legion of Doom too. Soloman Grundy smash superfriends.
Oh, darnit, for a minute I thought you meant the Canadian rock band The Super Friendz (yes, named after The Superfriends, “z” in an attempt to keep the lawyers at bay). No longer around, but worth checking out, if you can find either of their two albums.
I liked Aquaman, myself. I didn’t know they were rerunning the Superfriends – I’ll have to find it and watch a few. Saturday morning cartoons aren’t the same anymore.
I loved Superfriends, in most of their incarnations. Specifically:[ul]
[li]“Challenge of the Superfriends”, where they had 12 (13?) of the JLA and an equal number of their nemiseses in the Legion of Doom.[/li][li]The Wonder Twins, especially that cool synthesizer chime that occured when they activated their powers.[/li][li]Ted Knight’s melodramatic narrations. 8-)[/li][li]The music, especially the “fight” song that starts with a French Horn herald.[/li][li]when they added Firestorm. He was definately one of DC’s most original superheroes, where one of his two alter egos didn’t remember their adventures.[/li][/ul]
I don’t know if you will get the show back on the States. I live in Costa Rica and what we get here is the Latin American version of Cartoon Network, so programming might differ a bit. Good luck, though.
Just the opposite. Wendy, Marvin, and Wonder Dog were in the 1973 incarnation, “Super Friends”. The Wondertwins debuted in 1977, “The All-New Super Friends Hour”. They in turn were bumped for a while by “Challenge of the Super Friends” (1978). The twins returned for “The World’s Greatest Super Friends” (1979). Then in 1984, Firestorm became a regular, and the twins weren’t seen again.
The thing that always annoyed me was that Superman was the only one who ever did anything. Okay, Batman usually found the important clue but all the rest of them just kept getting captured, so Superman would have to resue them. And every episode where superman lost his power(about 20% of them), he would pull something out of his ass like the supermobile, and still be the only one doing anything.
A comic book came out two weeks ago, titled “Superman and Batman: World’s Funniest,” which has Bat-Mite and Mzlptxayk (yes, I know I’ve mangled it) fighting through every DC incarnation you can think of. Lots of artists parodying the DC styles (my personal favorite is Frank Cho of “Liberty Meadows” drawing the old Justice Society of the 40’s). Frank Miller draws a parody of his own “The Dark Night Returns” and Alex Ross paints a takeoff on his own “Kingdom Come.”
Of course, the highlight is our two ‘heroes’ coming upon the Superfriends world. Damn, it’s scary. Heeeee.
“Hey, when you talk, how come only your lips move?”
My favorite episode of the Super Friends the one in which the LoD went back in time to various time periods stealing treasures and setting traps for the Super Friends. When the Super Friends went back to stop them - one went to each time period - all of them, except for the Flash and Superman, IIRC, got trapped. Then, with 3 minutes in the episode to go, they were all freed - but the LoD got to keep all the treasure! That was so lame it was hilarious.
In college, a drinking buddy & I were fond of saying:
“Wonder twin powers, activate!”
“Form of A bottle of Tequila!”
“Shape of A shot glass!”
And we thought we were so cool…<ahem, cough>
To tell the truth though, I didn’t care much for Zan, Janya, or Wendy or Marvin. I liked it better when they didn’t have any annoying kid sidekicks. I liked it much better when it was the 12 member team fighting the Legion of Doom.
Favorite character had to be Hawkman. No favorite episode though.
Cartoon Network also has this “public service announcement” by the Wonder Twins about how the kid viewers can’t really change into things.
About 2/3 of the way through the “announcement,” Zan interrupts Jayna by saying, “Hey, how come every time we transform, I always turn into something lame like ice? Come on! How threatening can a bucket of ice water be? I could be defeated by a sponge! And it wouldn’t even have to be an evil sponge!”
They also have a scene of the Super Friends in a movie theater, treating a run for the snack bar as though it were a world-threatening crisis.
The funniest part of the that show to me is that the Legion of Doom and the Hall of Justice have a hotline to each other’s HQ. For what good reason was that? To make allusions to the Kremlin/White House hotline?
Lex Luthor: We were working on a cloning machine, but it malfunctioned and only spits out tribbles. Now the tribbles are overrunning the place. At this rate tribbles will cover the Earth in 4 hours. Will you come and help us out?
Batman: Ok. I’ll get the group together and figure it out.
One could only form variations of water, and other could only form animals.