Customer Reviews

Jonny Quest Season 1

5 star:		(172)
4 star:		(31)
3 star:		(9)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(10)

 

 

When the JONNY QUEST DVD Box Set was finally released I was one of the first to buy it. The wait for these fantastic episodes was finally over. And what a long wait its been! What a shame it is then that the "politically correct" people at Warner Brothers found it their duty to EDIT, that's right, EDIT these classic cartoons! A typical EDIT from DISC ONE "Pursuit of the Po-Ho" A purple Race Bannon confronts the Po-Hos who have Dr. Quest held hostage with,"All right you ignorant savages, get a load of Aquizio you heathen monkeys!" The "REMASTERED" version is a watered down, "Get a load of Aquizio!" All the while Race's mouth is moving but no words come out! At least no words that some idiots at Warners find offensive. Who are they and how dare they think they can just EDIT someone elses work! What's even more outrageous is that for some reason they don't have a problem showing the UN-EDITED versions on their own CARTOON NETWORK! Get it together guys and RE-ISSUE the Jonny Quest Box Set UNTOUCHED, UN-EDITED, and truly REMASTERED as your packaging states! And the next time you think its "your job" to EDIT a classic cartoon, DON"T! Thank GOD your EDIT MONKEY kept his stinking paws off the LOONEY TUNES Box Set!

When I found out that all 26 episodes of the classic Jonny Quest were released on DVD I was stunned. I felt that finally the HB execs are getting it together and recognizing the good stuff. After watching the first two episodes I realized I had been DUPED! Editing dialogue to be PC, using the same ending credits for all episodes and no credit for Doug Wildey. A (...)release of the best classic prime-time animation of the 1960's.

After I finish watching all the episodes, I'm donating the DVD's to my local public library. I know better now to read the reviews before buying. I think Warner Brothers and Hana-Barbera owe all of us an explanation for this hack-job. WHY DID THEY HAVE TO DICK WITH IT?

When I pay for DVD's, I expect the real deal without edits and deception. I can only hope that they fix it with another release with everything intact except the insert commercials. And you can bet they know that we will buy it again. Greedy, corporate pigs!

(...)

I was four years old when this was on Television, yet I remember several episodes plain as day. That was how exciting I found young Jonny Quest to be and how enveloping the inventions and science fiction to be, even as a preschooler. I also remember being excitedly scared by some of the more fantastic elements of the show...like "Turu the Terrible" and "The Invisible Monster!" This was the kind of stuff an eventual reader of Hardy Boys, Tom Swift and Danny Dunn books craved before books began to seep into my life. Now that these DVD's have been issued, it's a safe bet to say they will have a permanent space on my DVD shelf.

So why not a perfect 5 stars? We'll get to that. First the plusses. These were, more than anything else, adventures for boys. Jonny and Hadji were always there when the brilliant Dr. Benton Quest got a call to rush from Quest Laboratories in the Florida Keys to some far off country, travelling on the most recent invention. Lasers and Space Flight were frequent resources for story lines, and as a 4 year old want-to-be astronaut, it made it seem like anything was possible. Of course, this was the era of cold war politics, so the villains were often foreign guys with creepy accents. (Think Dr. Zin.) One of the frequent reasonings for Dr. Quest to have to go out on one of his missions was to make sure that these innovations didn't fall "Into the wrong hands."

But it also meant that Jonny (and, by proxy, I) were able to visit Tibet, the Arctic Circle, South American rain forests and other exotic (and real!!) locales before I even entered school. Looking at these 40 year old episodes anew, it's amazing that Jonny looks like he could be drawn today; an inquisitive eleven year old in black shirt, blue jeans and sneakers, he could be from anywhere USA even now. And who wouldn't want to have an extended family with a cool an adoptive brother as Hadji (one of animation's -- or, for that matter, all of prime time's -- minority main characters), a tutor as devoted as teacher/bodygaurd Race Bannon or a dad as equal parts brilliant to understanding as Dr. Quest? Add that the animation was far more real looking than the club footed dopiness of "The Flintstones" or the animals acting like people of "Top Cat," (Bandit never suddenly started to ask for treats...) etc, and the world of Jonny Quest was something that we all could slip in to.

In the pre PC world, Jonny could react exactly as a kid could when first confronted by an inquisitive girl (in "The Dreadful Doll"). No matter how you slice it, a kid his age would be flustered and annoyed by a female his age making inquiries. By the time the "New Adventures" came out, Jonny had to have a female foil, and my response was just what Jonny's would have been had he been a typical (read: real) 11 years old..."Ick!" And can you imagine a show today with a broad base of young watchers where the Father character smokes? (Dr. Quest enjoys a pipe in one of the episodes.)

Which leads to my short list of minuses. Coloration throughout the set is really good, but sometimes oversaturated, and in "The Werewolf of the Timberland," White Feather's skin is in two different colors! Also of dubious note, what happened to Doug Wildey's credit? It seems to only show up during "Double Danger," otherwise I seem to get the impression that the end credits were remastered from one episode then taped onto the end of all the episodes for DVD transfer.

And the worst offense...what heathen monkey was responsible for editing the dialog out of "Pursuit Of The PoHo"? Is this from the same brain trust that wiped out explosions and gunfire from classic Warner Brother cartoons and then blacklisting Speedy Gonzales for being stereotypical? If I emerged unscathed from that kind of language as a 4 year old, why am I expected to be offended by it now? If that was the root case, why not edit out the smoking, the shooting, the animal cruelty and the really obvious stereotypes from the Cold War era? It's enough to make me want to wave my hands while muttering "Sim Sim sala Bim" and to thusly wipe all of you ignorant savages of the face of the Cartoon Network.

OK, end of rant.

Those are all just me carping. If you were at all enthralled by "Jonny Quest" in 1964 or its countless repeats on Saturday Mornings, you need to have this. As soon as the exquisitely James Bond-ish musical theme comes up (Hoyt Curtain's music for this series was light years beyond most TV shows, and even today's), you'll be back in your PF Flyers and ready for more adventures for boys.

Before I start singing any praises to Warner or Hanna Barbera, I've got two major complaints:

1) Why is Doug Wildey's name conspicuously missing from the end credits? On the broadcast versions he was credited with the original Jonny Quest concept and there was no mistaking (or missing for that matter) his distinctive signature on the end credits. Seems to me that the real driving force behind the look and feel of Jonny Quest deserves better treatment than to be dropped from the show he helped to create.

2) If you are remastering the episodes anyway, is it that much trouble to include the real end credits that accompanied each episode? If you pay close attention to the end credits on the DVD set, you'll see that it's the same one being used over and over again. The end credits on the broadcast versions were different in regards to voice acting and writing/storyline credits.

Pretty shabby folks. I can only wonder what kind of flack would have resulted if somehow Warner or Hanna Barbera weren't credited on this set. But I guess so long as they get their recognition, it doesn't matter if the people who deserve the real credit get overlooked.

Just found out that this SUPER series is finally coming to DVD, ...Santa got my letter. This show along with "The Flintstones" is truly a favorite of mine. It's better than the new Jonny. It only lasted one season, but was a great adventure show for the whole family. I like that phrase "For the whole family", you don't have too many shows like these anymore. This is a must for any DVD collection. Here are the air dates and the rerun dates for the season.
{SEASON ONE}
9/18/1964 "Mystery of the lizard men"
9/25/1964 "Arctic splahdown" 4/8/1965
10/2/1964 "The curse of the Anibis" 6/3/1965
10/9/1964 "Pursuit of Po Ho" 4/1/1965
10/16/1964 "Riddle of gold" 4/22/1965
10/23/1964 "Treasure of the temple" 3/25/1965
10/30/1964 "Calcutta Adventure" 7/1/1965
11/6/1964 "Robot spy" 5/6/1965
11/13/1964 "Double danger" 5/27/1965
11/20/1964 "Shadow of the condor" 4/29/1965
11/27/1964 "Skull & double crossbones" 7/8/1965
12/4/1964 "The dreadful doll" 6/24/1965
12/11/1964 "A small matter of pygmies"
12/18/1964 "Dragons of ashiba" 3/18/1965
and 4/15/1965
12/25/1964 "Turu the terrible" 5/20/1965
12/31/1964 "The fraudulent valcano" 8/12/1965
1/7/1965 "Werewolf of the timberland" 7/22/1965
1/14/1965 "Pirates from below" 5/13/1965
1/21/1965 "Attack of the tree people" 6/10/1965
1/28/1965 "The invisible monster" 8/5/1965
2/4/1965 "The devil's tower" 8/19/1965
2/11/1965 "The Quetone missle mystery" 9/9/1965
2/18/1965 "The house of 7 gargoles"
2/25/1965 "Terror Island" 7/15/1965
and 7/29/1965
3/4/1965 "Monsters of the monastery" 8/26/1965
3/11/1965 "The sea hunt" 9/2/1965

It was 1964-65, and being almost 11 at the time, I remember JQ very well indeed. My brothers and I would be totally captivated by JQ when it aired on Friday evenings at 7:30. It was light years ahead of any other animated program... bar none! Fast paced, intelligently written with story lines that would even hold our father's interest.

After it's one season run, JQ was rehashed in syndication for several years. I will always recall noticing how in the mid-70's someone decided to "crop" certain scenes from each episode... usually involving some level of violence. This always seemed to lend an air of "lameness" to that particular episode... ala the "A-Team" where a dozen guys with automatic weapons fire at each other with NOBODy getting seriously hit!

Hmmm... violence with NO consequences... gee, what a FANTASTIC message for impressionable young minds!

Gee, in this day and age of rampant "PC", I am surprised to read that only comments such as "heathen monkeys" and "ignorant savages" are being voiced over. How in the heck did Jade get away from the censors with that cigarette holder she is almost always seen with ?!?

What can we expect next from the "PC" brigade... screening every film since 1972 for any reference to the World Trade Center and editing THEM out too?

Come on, people... Jonny Quest is a CARTOON. Leave things as they were originally ment to be, will ya' ?!? Anything less is just plain insulting to those of us that remember...

The shows themselves rate five stars, of course. The two star rating is for the presentation, merited by the following:

1. Dialogue edits from "Pursuit of the Po-Ho"
2. Dialogue edits from "Monster In The Monastery"
3. Atrocious, hack artwork on the box
4. Cutting of JQ title cards from the introduction sequences
5. Use of only one end credit sequence (the only one without creator Doug Wildey's name on it) for all 26 episodes
6. Amping up the colors to an eye-straining saturation level
7. Ridiculous modern extras; as a previous reviewer stated, they should've included pre-production artwork and/or Hoyt Curtin's musical cues

Never, never, never, NEVER trust a bunch of hamfisted, bottom-line watching suits to preserve something like this in the definitive, most complete way it should be. The Peter Principle is alive and well in every company big & small, and this set was spit out by one of the biggest. Keep those VHS copies handy...

Some of you may remember reruns of the TV show, Jonny Quest on the television machine.

Jonny Quest was made in the early 1960s; the greatest years of american civilization. The tailfin years. The world of Jonny Quest is a world filled with super technology; they all have special secret agent gadgets, hovercrafts are how scientists get around land, they fly around in a supersonic jet; everything is tailfinned and jet powered. America had just conquered the atom and beat the stuffings out of the Nazis a mere 19 years before, and had turned the Empire of Japan into the empire of nice cameras and Godzilla movies. It was the time of the first generation of supersonic jet aircraft; every barrier that nature put up seemed breakable. This was the apex of the machine age. The age of optimism that built the Saturn-5 rocket that took americans to the moon. It was the age of chrome grilles and preposterous consumer items like 500 horsepower Plymouth Max Wedge engines.

The Johnny Quest adventures happen in the wilds of the world. To the western mind of the early 1960s, there were still wild lands where one could experience high adventure. Places with poisonous snakes, quicksand, animated mummies, villains in submarines, booby-trapped ivy-covered hidden temples, levitating hindus and bone-through-the-nose cannibals. Places like Bali might as well have been the dark side of the moon to an american in those days. This is completely bizarre to modern sensibilities, but it is quite true. Even in the early 1970s, being able to make a few minutes telephone call from Vietnam to America was insanely difficult. Getting to Yemen was still an adventure; people actually wrote adventure travel books which simply involved going some place weird and far away.

The animation is shockingly good. Apparently, this wildly popular show had to be canceled because the production quality was too high: it simply couldn't make enough money to justify itself. This is too bad, as amortized over its lifetime, I am sure it more than paid for itself. But people didn't have the concept of using films like high yield bonds the way the studios do now a days. Those were more innocent times, indeed.

One of the more interesting things about this show is Hadji. Hadji was the first serious kids show character in america who was from another culture. I remember being very confused why it wasn't called the "Hadji and Race Bannon show" -they were more interesting and sympathetic characters than Johnny Quest (who was the type of oafish kid who would give me noogies when I was younger) and Dr Benton Quest (who was a helpless wimp, really, always getting into trouble). Hadji by contrast was very well educated, and extremely composed. Not only that, but he was simply a lot smarter than Johnny. Plus he could do magic tricks, which was awesome. Since I was young when I watched this show, I identified best with Hadji. I wanted to be a sikh or a hindu or whatever he was supposed to be, so I could levitate, jump around magic jars, and pick bones out of dogs ears. Apparently, Hadji is the american soldier nickname for natives of Afghanistan and Iraq. All things considered, it seems to be a high compliment.

Race Bannon was also a great character. Back in those days, a hero could have grey hair. George Clooney aside, that doesn't exist any more. Now the hero has to have striations on their abdomens. While Dr. Quest was supposed to be the smart one, it was generally Race Bannon who knew important stuff, like what the Sargasso sea was all about, how to do judo throws, or how not to get kidnapped. I never quite figured out who Race was supposed to be, but I knew he was bad to the bone. Upon re-watching the show as an adult, I realize he was a CIA man; spies were often considered universal men in the early 1960s. He was an american James Bond sent to look after the hapless Dr. Quest and his high spirited lad.

I see this show (recently rereleased) as a sort of last ultimate embodiment of a certain kind of adventure entertainment. Men's adventure magazines died around the time Johnny Quest died; they were cut of the same cloth. Early Dr. Who was something similar, though it was more British; a kids adventure show that teaches a bit of history and geography. It's fortunate such things still exist in video form; they embody something which is really great. Will you be offended by its anachronisms? I suppose many people who calibrate their exquisitely sensitive moral barometers with a protractor made from recycled tofu, a straight edged icon with Germaine Greer's photograph in it, graph paper and a copy of the New York Times Editorial section will be offended. But such people are born to be offended. Those folks miss out on many of the great things in Western culture, like Mr. Moto movies, and the fact that they don't live next door to cannibals. I think modern kids will love it. It's not jaded, or wretched and denatured like modern kids entertainments; just wholesome adventuring.

The era of timid, PC a__ -covering, that is. I refer of course to the dialogue edited from the PO-HO episode, tho' apparently Pygmies can muster no relevant pressure groups which would deluge Time Warner with choreographed protests, so it's still okay to note that they were not "warm and friendly people."

Actually, I'm a bit surprised that this set was released at all, cognizant as I am of the number of spare-timers in the world these days whose sole occupation is waiting to be offended, and if the stimulus doesn't come, seeking it out. That said, there are just four very minor beefs about this set which any sane person (i.e. any person whose all-time favorite show wasn't Jonny Quest, and who has not been waiting since the 70s for a release like this) can safely ignore:

1. The aforementioned censorship. Cheap, low-class, sniveling -- more offensive than what Race actually said, in the sense that it was a cartoon character saying something about a far-remote and imaginary jungle tribe DURING the mid-1960s IN prime time. Meanwhile, the cut is REAL. So you thought you could toss your VHS copies when this set came out, eh?

2. Of all the grand artwork produced in conjunction with this series in the Sickles/Caniff/Toth/Wildey mold, the good folks at Time Warner went to great pains to dredge up a hack image which appears to have come from the mid-1980s version of the show -- the existence of which most Jonny Quest fans refuse to recognize -- and slap it on the box cover.

3. Remastering is a fine thing where film and video are concerned (it is death to original analog sound recordings, but that's another topic), but the saturation of these colors is a little blatant, seemingly in line with the idea of making the show look as if it were produced yesterday. Film prints age like wines and cheeses, and take on a velvety richness which is quite subtle. This subtlety is steamrolled in cranking up the colors to an extent which they never really possessed (anyone who has seen original cels or early film prints of JQ will acknowledge this to be the case). Again, a minor quibble, and certainly not something I expected a DVD reissue campaign to even consider.

4. Extras, schmextras. Aside from the P.F. Flyers ad, I'd rather all that space went to just two things: Hoyt Curtin's musical cues (as many as could be found and cleared -- note the bootlegs currently up on for auction), and all the original model sheets, , presentation boards, promotional art, storyboards and layouts that H&B archivists could lay their hands on, be it from the vaults or by putting a call out to happily-obliging collectors. Most of this material has never been reprinted in books satisfactorily -- imagine the ability to bring it up nice and sharp on your TV screen!

There you have it, the rants of a nitpicker. Suffice it to say that the CONTENT of this show cannot be ruined no matter how many heathen monkeys or ignorant savages at Time Warner get in on the act.

First of all, I'm thrilled to finally have Jonny Quest on DVD. Despite being a product of its time, with its overt racism, sexism, etc., it's still head and shoulders above the sanitized pablum that is currently inflicted on children (and the parents responsible enough to watch what their children are viewing). Let's face it, even the sanitized pablum has its problems with non-PC issues...they're just disguised better than they were in the old sixties cartoons. Yes, JQ was quite violent, but it showed violence with consequences. People were hurt or died when they were shot or beaten. Nowadays, cartoons show violence as being safe, i.e., nobody dies, everybody just bounces back and recovers.

Overall, the DVDs are pretty good, however, I'd also like to complain about the dialogue edits that other people have mentioned. Given all the other non-PC issues in JQ that were left in, these particular edits (of outdated terms that most of the younger generation are unlikely to even recognize as racist slurs) are ridiculous.

In terms of the DVD production, I agree with other reviewers that the colors are oversaturated.

I'm also going to mention that two episodes, "Mystery of the Lizard Men" and "Pursuit of the Po-Ho," have a bad case of the telecine jitters. So if you've noticed these episodes jittering back and forth, it's not because your eyes are tired or your equipment is bad. Somebody involved in the DVD production decided to be cheap, obviously, since they didn't bother to correct this problem. I sincerely hope the various technical issues are resolved in a future release.

JQ started out with a five from me for the nostalgia factor, but because of the edits and the technical problems, I'm subtracting a point.