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19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
All-New Super Friends Hour Vol 1, September 23, 2007
OK, I agree that it's got something to offer that the 1973 first season didn't.
Watch for great guest appearances by DC Heroes Rima, Green Lantern, Hawkman & Hawkgirl, Flash & Atom, as well as introduction of the characters created by Hanna Barbera for the series: Black Vulcan, Samurai & Apache Chief.
Each episode has 4 cartoons: A short with a team-up of two core members (ie Superman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, Batman+Robin), then a Wondertwins short, then a half hour story with all core members and the Wondertwins, then a team-up with a core member and one of the guest stars listed above.
However, the 1973 season had its virtues too, such as narration by Ted Knight (reminiscent of his narration of the same characters in Filmation's cartoons of the 1960s), 45 min stories, and guest appearances by Green Arrow, Flash and Plastic Man.
LET'S SEE VOLUME TWO COME OUT SOON AFTER VOLUME ONE, AND THEN GO BACK TO
(1) THE 1973 SEASON
(2) 1980 SERIES: WORLD'S GREATEST SUPERFRIENDS
Here's hoping.
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14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
"People of Oceana, your boredom is at an end!", February 19, 2008
The featurette on Disc 2 of this super collection unfairly scoffs at The All-New SuperFriends Hour, dismissing it as a "one-dimensional" depiction of DC's superheroes, with no character development and no real sense of threat or menace. These criticisms are valid, but so what? Corny though it may be, this colorful cartoon show is just a good-old all-American Saturday morning fun-fest--packed to overflowing with mad scientists, alien beings, special guest stars, helpful hints, easy-to-solve puzzles and potentially life-saving information! It's wholesome entertainment the whole family can enjoy.
The SuperFriends Hour prominently features those purple-clad twins from Exxor, Zan and Jayna. These siblings possess some of the most mind-bogglingly bizarre super powers ever seen on TV. Simply by pressing their fists together and yelling, "Wonder Twin powers ACTIVATE!" the shape-shifting teenagers can trigger a seemingly infinite variety of transformations. Jayna can take on the form of any animal, bird or insect. She may choose to become a giraffe or a gazelle, a Billy goat or a butterfly...she might even turn into a prehistoric pterodactyl. Weirder still, Zan's changes are limited to either bodies of water or objects made of ice, such as an ice bridge or an ice ladder (both of which sound like slipping hazards). Most often, Zan elects to liquefy himself and fill a small bucket. That's where Gleek--the gibbering buck-toothed space monkey with the ridiculously long prehensile tail--comes in. Gleek is the keeper of the bucket. This is a big responsibility for a little blue primate. We certainly wouldn't want Zan to be without that bucket and wind up in an ordinary drinking glass, where he might accidentally be consumed by a thirsty SuperFriend. Holy un-cola, Batman!
This two-disc set contains seven complete SuperFriends Hours, each of which consists of four separate stories. That makes a grand total of twenty-eight super-powered adventures, including classic tales like these:
THE BRAIN MACHINE: Holy brainwaves! The well-meaning Dr. Cranum invents a machine that he hopes will advance mankind's mental evolution by one million years, but he develops a swelled head (not to mention bulging yellow eyeballs and pointed ears) when he uses the machine on himself. Can Wonder Woman and the Dynamic Duo stop this misguided scientist before he turns all of Metroworld Amusement Park's innocent fun-seekers into grotesquely deformed mental cases?
JOY RIDE: Although he doesn't have his pilot's license yet, Corky the bratty teenager takes his reluctant friend, Jeff, for a ride in a "borrowed" airplane with a bad carburetor and a broken radio. Fortunately, an eagle and a blue monkey with a bucket of purple water are there to save the day.
INVASION OF THE EARTHORS: Zan and Jayna foolishly decide to assume the forms of a puddle and a caterpillar, respectively, allowing them to be captured quite easily by an underground civilization of computer-savvy rock people led by the stone-hearted diabolical genius, Crag.
WILL THE WORLD COLLIDE?: Still sore at the Academy of Science for expelling him because of his supposedly unethical experiments, the vindictive Professor Fearo utilizes the gravitational Gyromagneto to wrench his fiendish alien friend Cleazor's home planet out of its orbit and bring it into a collision course with Earth. And--jumping jeopardy!--Cleazor's planet is composed of solid kryptonite!
TIME RESCUE: The foolhardy Professor Comstock uses his time machine to travel 2000 years into the future, where he soon finds himself in the clutches of a gang of short-statured desert slavers that look suspiciously like the Jawas from Star Wars. Lucky for him, his loyal assistant, Dr. Lau, has the SuperFriends' number on speed-dial.
DAY OF THE PLANT CREATURES: A red-hot meteor full of cosmic radiation splashes into a swamp in the Everglades and quickly turns all nearby Floridians into green leafy vegetable-men.
FIRE: Holy inferno, Batman! Escaped prisoners, Mike and Walt, steal a pickup truck and race through a forest fire and across a burning bridge with the Dynamic Duo and Rima the Jungle Girl in hot pursuit. Little do the fleeing fugitives know that the truck they're driving is loaded with dynamite!
VANDALS: Just for kicks, a juvenile delinquent named Spence and his weak-willed buddy break into Midland High and smash Old Man Morison's print shop to smithereens. Their destructive fun is soon to be spoiled by a gorilla with an ice pole.
SUPERFRIENDS VS. SUPERFRIENDS: Galloping gladiators! Fin-headed father and son fish-men, Bogan and Nerak, capture Aquaman in their toothy green submarine and use their invisible muscle control ray to force the Sea King to do battle with a giant two-headed turtle called Serpentine.
THE ANTIDOTE: An earthquake rocks a remote region of India, startling the area's abundant cobra population and sending the hissing hooded snakes slithering rapidly into a nearby village like a plague. Hundreds of villagers are bitten, and their supply of anti-venom is quickly exhausted. Their only hope is that Wonder Woman and Apache Chief can locate the hidden temple home of the giant king cobra, Cataro, and use his ample supply of venom to make a big enough batch of serum to save all of the suffering snakebite victims. Inuk-chuk!
And there's so much more! You'll learn how to make a rhythm instrument with dried beans and paper plates, and how to build a lovely model of a sailor's spyglass out of wooden thread spools and a drinking straw. You'll see Robin demonstrate the Heimlich maneuver on Batman; and Superman will show you how to treat a burn. You'll learn about the importance of a healthy diet and regular exercise, as well as the dangers of skateboarding in traffic and overloading your home's electrical outlets. Wonder Woman will even show you how to safely pet a stray dog! So don't delay, order your SuperFriends Hour DVD set today. Your health and safety may depend on it! And always remember the immortal words of Green Lantern, "The next time you're in a fix, try acting like a diamond. You'll come out shining under pressure."
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9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Thorough But Hasn't Aged Quite As Well, January 20, 2008
Having been steadily enjoying the Challenge of the Superfriends sets for some time, I decided to take a chance on the All-New Superfriends Hour: Season One, Volume 1 despite having no recollection of the show when it originally aired in 1977 (I was quite young).
After having spent a few nights touring this two-disc set, I have to say that I believe the material contained within will appeal to collectors, very young children, or individuals hoping to relive their own youth. Not that Challenge or the seasons thereafter can be considered engaging, be prepared for an even less developed experience here.
To begin with, each episode is broken down into four parts: The first part involved only 2 members of the Justice League and was a fairly quickly resolved stand-alone plot. The second part features the Wondertwins (and Gleek) in a teen-trouble episode. The third section involved all of the Superfriends and represents the heart of the entire show. Finally the fourth and final segment looked a lot like the first only it featured a guest appearance by the likes of Green Lantern, the Atom, Samurai, etc. Between these 4 main program segments are some engaging interactions with the Friends themselves in the form of Magic tricks, Decoder Games, health tips, and public service announcements.
Now for the bad news, this is 1977-style writing and the one-dimensional quality of the scripts is overwhelmingly apparent. I realize that I am probably being overly judgmental having been spoiled by today's well-developed animation but even when compared to Challenge of the Superfriends, the Hour program is incredibly campy. This is credited to the era itself when Parent Associations cracked down hard on all cartoons expecting none of the violence that plagued society at the time to show up in kids programming. This is a noble cause and certainly an indicator of a more innocent era but it can be very tedious to relive in this day and age.
I believe much of the problem stems from the fact that there are no villains to work with here. Rather the writers are forced to alternate between evil-minded aliens and bitter scientists with experiments gone awry for each and every episode (except for the Wondertwins segments where a few kids make a bad decision and learn a lesson by the show's conclusion). There are a few Scooby-Doo inspired episodes of de-masking a villain thrown in for good measure but overall the experience is quite repetitive. Each episode purposely ends with a corny joke and everyone laughing into the fade. Again, this was pretty on par for the time, I am merely stating these facts so as to provide potential buyers an idea of what to expect.
Truthfully, this series will likely be appreciated by young viewers as it is very light on violence and heavy on humor (both spoken and slap-stick). The set itself is typical Warner with a well-drawn cover and inner sleeve. Disc two contains 2 special features in the form of an interview with some of today's DC writers talking about the flaws of the early years and a profile section for the superhero guest stars. Unlike most WB sets, however, the menus are pretty simple and lack music/ sound. Also the episodes (which appear as only 7 but are actually 28 due to the broken up segments) are not in the original order of airing.
Included on this set are the following episodes:
Disc 1
1) Machine/Joyride/ Invasion of the Earth/ The Whirlpool
2) Invasion of the Hydronoids/ Hitchhike/ City in a Bottle/ Space Emergency
3) The Marsh Monster/ Runaways/ Will the World Collide?/ Time Rescue
4) Doctor Fright/ Drag Race/ Day of the Planet Creatures/ Fire
Disc 2
5) The Monster of Dr. Droid/ Vandals/ Superfriends Vs Superfriends/ Energy Mass
6) The Secret Four/ Tiger on the Loose/ The Mysterious Time Creatures/ The Antidote
7) The Enforcer/ Shark/ Planet of the Neandertals/ Flood of Diamonds
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