Customer Reviews

Mission: Magic! - The Complete Series

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

First off, I have to give kudos to Ink & Paint, Entertainment Rights, and BCI for unearthing these Filmation treasures from the Seventies. Especially with Mission: Magic! since this illustrates the reason why we fondly miss Saturday Morning Television.

Before Springfield became famous as an international rock star, or starred on General Hospital, he did a stint for Filmation back in 1973. Jumping on the popularity of films like 'Wizard of Oz,' 'Alice in Wonderland,' and 'The Yellow Submarine,' the premise dealt with Rick being sort of a monitor of dimensional worlds beyond our own.

The ingenuine part was his 'agents' so to speak (since he contacted them via a grammaphone): a class of high school students belonging to The Adventurers' Club, and a teacher known as Miss Tickle. Whenever Rick contacted the group, Miss Tickle would revive her familiar statue of Tut-Tut to conjure forth a door on a blackboard (How many fans recall as kids drawing on chalkboards, in hopes to open the magic door?), which became a doorway to fantastic lands and realms.

The stories were rather simplistic but fun, basically Rick would discover a problem in his dimensional travels, contact Miss Tickle and the group, and they go and attempt in solving the problems.

Considering this was 1970s Saturday Morning TV, Miss Tickle rarely used her magic to hurt anyone, nor did anyone actually get hurt. For instance, in '2600 AD', Rick ends up getting 'stunned' while fending off robots, while in another episode, he gets knocked out while under a spell.

The show was rather great and actually once crossed over into 'The Brady Kids' when Wilmer (magic mynah bird) borrows Tut-Tut to access the magic door and accidentally transforms the familiar (cat) into a bird.

What really made the series great was, besides hearing Rick's Australian accent, like most of Filmation's original shows, the plethora of characters were voiced by three or four actors, including Erika Schiemer (Lou Schiemer's daughter, and famous for the original Sabrina's voice) and Howard Morris (aka Ernest T. Bass, the original Jughead, and doing voices for The Jetsons as well.).

Despite the outdated references, Mission: Magic! actually holds up rather well. One beef I had was the booklet claims the show was too out there (due to the wild scenery and abstract openings) for it to ever be put into syndication. Actually, this is inaccurate, since back in the Seventies, ABC would sell their 'failed' Saturday Morning Shows (series never going past their first season mark) to their affliates as 'afternoon fillers' between 3 and 5. Though not shown on the DVD set, Filmation did run an 'alternate' opening version of the series where Rick Springfield sang a more subtle version of the title song.

Thus, if Mission: Magic! was so great, why did the series last for only one season? Normally in those days, animation was an extremely costly process, meaning networks would only order so many episodes made. If the ratings did exception well (on rare instances), they'd order more for the next season.

But the problem with Mission: Magic! was not lack of ratings, but instead a radical change with children's programming. In 1974, a watchdog group called ACT (Action for Children's Television) didn't fancy Miss Tickle being a teacher who could perform magic, and 'endangering' her class by taking them on 'unauthorized' field trips into other worlds.

Also came the fact a teacher performing magic was not exactly acceptable, despite the fact, Miss Tickle didn't always use her powers for solving problems. And you thought critics against Harry Potter were strict!

Which was a shame because Mission: Magic! was indeed a great treasure and could have been the first animated version of 'Doctor Who' and 'Fat Albert' rolled into one if given half the chance.

Even if you're not a great fan of Rick Springfield, the DVD is still worth getting and watching. Because not only was it honestly a great show for its time, it definitely revives the lost spirit of Saturday Morning Television.

I'd give this one six stars if I could.
Incredibly innovative sci-fi fantasy plots well animated by Filmation in the early 1970s. Miss Tickle (pun on "mystical") leads an animated Rick Springfield and her students on adventures into fantasy lands and alternate realms.
Amazon also still has copies of the Mission Magic CD with the songs from the show, if you're interested.
This one will be money well spent, and great kid-friendly material too.

Mission:Magic was one of the first origanal animated series from Filmation. It was also one of the first cartoons to have a diversified cast of characters. The show was a mixture of Magic School Bus and Isis. Some of the background music for the show was also used in other Filamation classics such as the Shazam/Isis Hour. The only downfall to the show was the terrible laugh track that was included with each episode.
The characters in the show were:
Rick Springfield - This legendary singer used a gramophone to get in contact with the Adventurer's Club to give them missions in magical lands to solve mysteries. Rick has a pet owl called Ptolemy. Rick has a song he sings in almost every episode of the series.
Miss Tickle - The teacher in charge of the Adventurer's Club who had magical powers and a magical cat called Tut-Tut who is a stone statue of ancient lore that becomes a real cat. Miss Tickle uses school supplies like chalk, keys and erasers as magical items, and has a magical purse that when a knob is turned, makes the Adventurer's Club members fly.
Carol - A blonde girl who is infatuated with Rick Springfield.
Harve - A chubby kid with glasses who always lands on his rump unlike everyone else who lands on their feet when they are flying to a mission. Harve is afraid of heights and thinks he can do anything.
Socks - Wears a hat that looks like Dr. Seuss' Cat in the Hat.
Vinnie - Messes up his speech all the time
Franklin - Black student who always talks about how he doesn't like how tall he is.
Kim - Asian girl who seems to be the most level headed of the group.
Principal Samuels - Only in a couple of episodes but loves to tell tall tales.

Some fun facts about Mission: Magic - Miss Tickle and Tut-Tut debuted on another cartoon series The Brady Kids (an animated version of the Brady Bunch). Tut-Tut and Ptolemy were based off the poem The Owl and the Pussycat. The episode Horse Feathers is the only time another character sings a song other than Rick Springfield. Miss Tickles powers don't work in water. Franklin is the only member of the club who seems to own a car.

Special Features include:
a 3:30 interview with Lou Scheimer founder of Filmation
a 4:40 interview with Erika Scheimer daughter of Lou Scheimer and voice actress for Kim
a 32:40 documentary on the magic of Filmation

All 16 episodes of Mission:Magic are included and are presented on the DVD in production order. They are:
1) The Land of Backwards
2) Modran
3) Dissonia
4) Land of Hyde and Goseek
5) The City Inside the Earth
6) 2600 A.D.
7) Something Fishy
8) Giant Steppes
9) Statue of Limitations
10) Will the Real Rick Springfield Please Stand Up!
11) Doctor Astro
12) Doctor Daguerrotype
13) Nephren
14) Modran Returns
15) Horse Feathers
16) A Light Mystery

There are those of us who remember one special Friday night of the year...the night that we got a sneak peek of the new season's cartoon lineup on Saturday mornings. We also used to get Friday night previews of the regular shows, but nowadays, high school football has relinquished this pastime to, well...the past!

For those who don't remember, this series was created in 1973, a time when the Banana Splits came on at noon and House of Frankenstein at 3pm were quickly replacing cartoons from the 60s primetime slots. Before then, Three Stooges and Little Rascals were the only "kiddie" alternative to the $1,000 afternoon movie, usually hosted by the local channel's weatherman.

In the late 1960s, the Flintstones, Lost In Space, and other "fantasy" programming was competing with Dr. Kildare, Marcus Welby, Television Theatre productions, etc. I don't know if they had Saturday morning cartoons in the 50s, but in the early 70s, it was the start to every young kid's Saturday. It gave us adventures to recreate all day, over and over again with different buddies playing different characters. Also, we seem to somehow realize that Wiley would survive falling from a cliff where we, unfortunately, would not. This, too, is another lost art it would seem.

This series was an attempt to bring the spiritual feelings of I Dream of Jeanine / Bewitched with the open-minded, racially tolerant Star Trek (which was off the air by then), and the youth who were still following The Archies and Josie and the Pussycats. And don't forget to flavour with the moralistic lessons of Sesame Street! It's definitely corny by today's standards, but it's also a good teaching tool, especially about reasoning and tolerance of other's views. It really is too bad this kind of programming cannot be found anywhere on the tellie today.

I am a huge Rick Springfield fan so I collect all things Springfield.Little did I expect but my kids love this series. THey are 5 ,12, 14 . They all love it .My kids are walking around the house singing all the songs.This was a great purchase. I can highly recommend this series to everyone.

It was great to see this classic cartoon from my childhood again. :) Thank you. :)

Okay, right off the bat, Im going to tackle the idea that this offering or Space Sentinels were ground-breakers with their token Asians and African-American kids (Whereas Hanna-Barbera with Josie and the Pussycats and Where's Huddles, as well as Rankin Bass' Kid Power had both stepped up earlier), but compared to the results then and since then (Kid Super Power Hour would have no Asian token, He Man never had a notable, semi-regular black or Asian character), it really doesnt say much. Kid Power had both an Hispanic kid and a Native American.

But back to Mission: Magic itself. Yes, there was the young Rick Springfield. Not alot I can add about him. He sings, yes. Again, not alot I can say.

And Miss Tickle apparently emerged from an episode of the animated Brady Kids cartoon, with the kids from the Brady Bunch. There that stands.

But I am really intrigued by the kids themselves. Sporting stereotypes of various degrees, they are really quite a varied bunch, for that time and today. I can't help but notice this.

Six kids, two female, four male (no, they didn't go three couples, but just before this time, there would only be one female token anyway).

Now we have one white girl and one Asian girl. Other than that, they really don't do alot. And we have the African-American male, and again, he doesn't really do alot (on Josie and the Pussycats, Valerie was a doppleganger for a princess, and Freight Train on Where's Huddles did have a singing episode, tho it is awful).

So that leaves three white males. What an interesting lot! Not a fair-haired, broad-shouldered, soft spoken, all-knowing one in the lot! I guess Springfield was to fill this position.

What we do have is a short, heavy-set, whiny, bespectacled, curly-haired twerp in a baseball cap;

A bit of a pointy-nosed, sinister looking fellow (voiced by Howard Morris, this guy is some strange combination of Reggie Mantle AND Jughead);

And the slow-witted mumbler, clearly pushed closer to Jughead Jones, perhaps a bit of Big Moose as well, with the hat flopped over his head. Possibly also a beatnik-hippie interpretation here as well.

Episode-wise, I can only point out two notable ones:
One deals with computers taking over the world. Long before the internet, I do recall the slant (kind of Logan's Run) about we must rebel against computers and continue to think for ourselves. This would be strangely altered within ten years with a Saturday morning commercial, Computer Critters, with the alligator woman exclaiming in an English accent, 'Computers are here to stay!'

The other one, not really notable, deals with the rodeo. One of the last episodes, or the last, I think it showed how ideas were scarce. Had the show needed another episode or two, they would have been cosmic surfing or something, I'm sure. Or the kids would have formed their own Archie-Brady Kids band. Rick would have liked that.

For an early Filmation, I couldn't help but notice how animation was cheapened with the kids endlessly disappearing and levitating instead of simply walking or moving.

I was thrilled to actually find this series on DVD I haven't seen it since I was a kid- and to order and receive it so quickly was even more of a Plus. Amazon Rocks!!

As far as the content goes - it is Refreshing to see Positive way to teach Children about the world and how to accept others and treat them with equality and respect.

An all around entertaining Series (and good Music too!!)

This is a fun series featuring Rick Springfield. I bought it for the nostalgia.

WOW, it's like being 5 all over again! it really brings back sweet saturday mornings! amazing, i have been in love with a cartoon who turned out to be the BEST musician in the WORLD! from, doggielover