Customer Reviews

Super Friends: The Lost Episodes

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4 star:		(6)
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It looks like the next Superfriends 2 DVD set to be released will be the "Lost Episodes." Here is a rundown of the episodes:

Disc One:
01) Mxyzptlk's Revenge
02) Roller Coaster
03) Once Upon A Poltergeist
04) The Krypton Syndrome
05) Invasion Of The Space Dolls
06) Terror On The Titanic
07) The Revenge Of Doom
08) A Pint Of Life
09) Day Of The Dinosaurs
10) Playground Of Doom
11) Space Racers
12) The Recruiter

Disc Two:
13) Warpland
14) Two Gleeks Are Deadlier Than One
15) Bulgor The Behemoth
16) Prisoners Of Sleep
17) An Unexpected Treasure
18) The Malusian Blob
19) Return Of The Phantoms
20) Bully For You
21) Superclones
22) Attack Of The Cats
23) One Small Step For Superman
24) Video Victims

Total Run time for both discs together is 168 minutes. All episodes are in original Fullframe (1.33:1) with English audio & English subtitles. Extras include two downloadable Superfriends comic books in PDF format, playable on DVD-ROM.

The above episodes appear to be all the Lost Shorts from 1983, which is a bit strange to have them released first, since there were two other Seasons of Shorts that came out earlier in 1980 & 1981 which are not yet on DVD. Here is a list of those episodes:

The 1980 Shorts:
01) Bigfoot
02) Ice Demon
03) Makeup Monster
04) Journey Into Blackness
05) Cycle Gang
06) Dive To Disaster
07) Yuna The Terrible
08) Rock And Roll Space Bandits
09) Elevator To Nowhere
10) One Small Step For Mars
11) Haunted House
12) The Incredible Crude Oil Monster
13) The Voodoo Vampire
14) Invasion Of The Gleeks
15) Mxyzptlk Strikes Again
16) The Man In The Moon
17) Circus Of Horrors
18) Around The World In 80 Riddles
19) Termites From Venus
20) Eruption
21) Return Of Atlantis
22) The Killer Machines
23) Garden Of Doom
24) Revenge Of Bizarro

The 1981 Shorts:
01) Outlaws Of Orion
02) Three Wishes
03) Scorpio
04) Mxyzptlk's Flick
05) Sink Hole
06) Alien Mummy
07) Evil From Krypton
08) The Creature From The Dump
09) Aircraft Terror
10) Lava Men
11) Bazarowurld
12) The Warlord's Amulet
13) The Iron Cyclops
14) Palette's Perils
15) Colossus
16) Stowaways From Space
17) The Staraghosta Sea
18) The Witch's Arcade

What worries me is that the 1983 Lost Episodes are being released before the 1979 "Worlds Greatest Superfriends" series, which only consisted of eight 30 minute episodes:

"Rub Three Times For Disaster" (9/22/79)
"Lex Luthor Strikes Back" (9/29/79)
"Space Knights of Camelon" (10/06/79)
"The Lord of Middle Earth" (10/13/79)
"Universe of Evil" (10/20/79)
"Terror At 20,000 Fathoms" (10/27/29)
"The Superfriends Meet Frankenstein" (11/03/79)
"The Planet of OZ" (11/10/79)

This may be an indication that there are copyright problems getting 'Worlds Greatest' released because it incorporates story ideas taken from famous books/novels like "Lord Of The Rings," "The Wizard Of OZ," etc. I hope I'm wrong, but then why skip it and focus on the "Lost Episodes" instead? And let's not forget the 1973 "Superfriends" series with Wendy, Marvin, & Wonderdog that lasted for sixteen episodes and is currently only available, legally, as digital downloads on i-tunes & Amazon's Video-On-Demand:

01) The Power Pirate
02) The Baffles Puzzle
03) Professor Goodfellow's G.E.E.C.
04) The Weather Maker
05) Dr. Pelagian's War
06) The Shamon 'U'
07) Too Hot To Handle
08) The Androids
09) The Balloon People
10) The Fantastic FRERPs
11) The Ultra Beam
12) The Menace of the White Dwarf
13) The Mysterious Moles
14) Gulliver's Gigantic Goof
15) The Planet-Splitter
16) The Watermen

First, to clarify the number of episodes. This DVD set consists of 8 half-hour shows of "Super Friends" from what would have been their 1983-1984 season on ABC Saturday mornings. Each half-hour show is composed of 3 episodic shorts running about 7 minutes each. A total of 24 shorts (8 X 3) are on this DVD set. These 8 half-hour shows are complete with both their original opening and closing credits.

Unfortunately, ABC never aired any of these half-hour shows during their network 1983-1984 Saturday morning season. They did, however, air the first half-hour's worth of shorts the following year during the 1984-1985 season of "Super Friends: The Legendary Super Powers Show". Since then, these 8 half-hour shows (or more specifically these 24 shorts) eventually all aired years later in syndication and have become known as "the Lost Episodes" of Super Friends.

Each half-hour usually (but NOT always) consists of:
1. a team-up between two or more primary Super Friends
2. a team-up between the Wonder Twins and one or more Super Friends
3. a team-up between one primary Super Friend and one secondary Super Friend

Because the original Superman movies with Christopher Reeve were still fresh in the public's mind, these shows are heavy on Superman and Superman lore.

Since the titles of each short are listed by other reviewers, I've decided to list the stars of each short for those of you who are looking for particular heroes in this set:

Disk 1:

1.1 Superman and Batman
1.2 Wonder Twins and the Atom
1.3 Batman/Robin and Apache Chief

2.1 Superman, Wonder Woman, and Robin
2.2 Wonder Twins and Batman/Robin
2.3 Aquaman and Black Vulcan

3.1 Superman, Batman/Robin, and Wonder Woman
3.2 Wonder Twins and Aquaman
3.3 Wonder Woman and Samurai

4.1 Superman and Batman/Robin
4.2 Wonder Twins, Wonder Woman, and the Flash
4.3 Superman and Wonder Woman

Disk 2:

5.1 Superman and Batman
5.2 Wonder Twins, Wonder Woman, and Green Lantern
5.3 Superman and Apache Chief

6.1 Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman
6.2 Wonder Twins and Hawkman/Hawkgirl
6.3 Batman/Robin and Black Vulcan

7.1 Superman and Green Lantern
7.2 Wonder Twins and Batman/Robin
7.3 Aquaman and El Dorado

8.1 Batman/Robin and El Dorado
8.2 Wonder Twins, Superman, and Batman
8.3 Superman, Wonder Woman, and Samurai

The animation and storylines on these shorts are pretty much standard fare for this time period of the late 1970's to early 1980's. So those of you who grew up on the 1990-2000's DC animated series will most likely groan while watching these.

However, there are some unexpected high-points for comic fans: (1.1) another appearance by Mr. Mxyzptlk, (2.1) Jor-El and Lara when Superman returns to Krypton before it explodes, (3.1) the return of the Legion of Doom with all 13 members, (5.2) Gorilla Grodd and Giganta, and possibly the only appearance of 13 members of the Super Friends together (sort of, and no, I'm not counting the Wonder Twins and Gleek), (7.1) the return of the Phantom Zone villains who travel back in time to Smallville and Superboy, (7.3) Brainiac, and (8.3) the return of Bizarro and Bizarro World.

The only special features are two Super Friends digital comic book reprints from the late 1970's that you can page through screen by screen, and the usual trailers for other DC animated DVD sets.

All in all, this DVD set is recommended for anyone who is a fan of the Super Friends and/or the Legion of Doom, and for anyone who is a fan of this era of Saturday morning television.

I'm glad these episodes have been issued on DVD!!!

As you can see on the DVD cover there is Batman, Superman, Aquaman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, the Wonder Twins and Gleek. Green Lantern fans beware, though, there isn't a lot of him in this series. His biggest impact during the classic era is in the series Challenge of the Superfriends. These lost episodes are considered to be the more obscure episodes in the series because of the lack of repeated play on television. In fact, these 1983 episodes never aired in America until 1995. They aired on a USA Network show called The Superman-Batman Adventures.

That 1995 series consisted of reruns of the 1960's and 1970's superhero cartoons and on some episodes they'd sprinkle in an early '80s short episode of Superfriends. All of these 1983 episodes aired on that USA Network series but even still they're not as familiar to most. This DVD consists of 24 short episodes...8 half hour episodes in all. Each episode contains 3 separate adventures that run roughly seven and a half minutes each.

Here are just some of the stand-out episodes in my opinion from this collection...

**CONTAINS SPOILERS**

Warpland: Superman and Batman are pulled into another dimension where they meet up with an alien race headed up by Super-Frog. The voice of the frog is provided by Frank Welker, giving the super amphibian the same voice he'd provide for Darkseid. The alien's have their headquarters...none other than The Hall of Zoon. Superman is turned into an Eagle while Batman is turned into an actual bat. They battle Super-Frog's forces and once they leave the warp they revert back to their natural selves.

Mxyzptlk's Revenge: This episode features Batman and Superman matching wits with the 5th Dimension prankster, Mr. Mxyzptlk. In one memorable scene Superman almost passes out from green bean exposure...Mxyzptlk had placed Superman on a farm where green beans become a substitute for kryptonite. They eventually trick their way out of the 5th Dimension.

Revenge of Doom: This episode begins with a couple of inquisitive workers asking Batman and Robin a lot of questions about the Hall of Doom. The two workers turn out to be Lex Luthor and Solomon Grundy in disguise. Suddenly all members of the Legion of Doom have appeared and we're told that the Legion is back in session. Given this is a 7 and a half minute episode not a lot of the members of the Legion have speaking roles even though they're visibly present. Unlike in the Challenge of the Superfriends series, in this episode the Legion of Doom is captured.

Two Gleeks Are Deadlier Than One: Grodd and Giganta make an appearance in this episode where they kidnap Gleek and replace him with an android duplicate. The android was sent there under the notion that all of the Superfriends would be meeting at the Hall of Justice. One by one evil Gleek zaps the Superfriends into oblivion...but who really ends up with the upper hand? You'll have to watch for yourselves.

Bulgor the Behemoth: Apache Chief gets the most action in this episode where a writer's creation comes to life after a lightning storm...well, I should say, the writer turns into his own creation. It's up to Apache Chief and Superman to put a stop to the destruction and get the creature transformed back into the writer.

The Krypton Syndrome: In this fantasy adventure, Superman is zapped into a time warp where he finds himself near his home planet of Krypton before it exploded. He prevents the explosion of Krypton and saves the lives of millions in the process...but once he returns to his own time he discovers how Earth looks extremely different. He realizes when he saved Krypton from exploding that nobody on Earth knows of a Superman...and therefore his life on Earth never happened. Seeing that the Earth needs a person like 'Superman' to protect it from villains he decides to go back into time again but this time to make sure Krypton explodes.

Prisoners of Sleep: In this adventure, a mysterious floating figure known as Sleep starts a nightmarish reign of terror which soon finds Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman enmeshed in the nightmare world with the possibility of never waking up. Thanks to some mortals, the three Superfriends "wake up" just in time.

Return of the Phantoms: This episode is something of a sequel to an episode entitled Terror from the Phantom Zone that aired in 1978. In this 1983 cartoon, the three Phantom Zone villains named Hull, Romlock, and Logar, escape once again to cause trouble for Superman and the other people on Earth circa the late 1950's and Superboy. Superman and Superboy join forces in this episode to battle the Phantoms. In the end the villains are zapped back into the Phantom Zone.

Video Victims: In this quirky episode, Bizarro plays an arcade game which features arcade versions of several Superfriends. The episode starts out on Bizarro World, the square shaped planet where everyone looks like imperfect zombie duplicates of Superman and Lois Lane. Bizarro returns to Earth and immediately creates trouble. The episode also doubled as a mock of video games in general...including a Pac-Man style character.

Those are just the episodes that stand out the most among the others. Brainiac makes an appearance in the "Superclones" episode. El Dorado and Aquaman are the two victims who are cloned. The two create a world of problems for the Superfriends by creating trouble and mayhem all over the country. Later, in a court room, the android clones tell the court that the entire Justice League has turned evil. The real El Dorado and Aquaman free themselves from Brainiac's trap and make their way to the courthouse.

There's also an episode where Superman and Wonder Woman are captured by aliens and forced to play spaceball...this episode is called "The Recruiter". It's anyone's guess why the short episodes from 1983 were released first instead of the ones from made during 1980-1982...but there's no complaints from me...this is a step in the right direction at getting all of the short episodes released on DVD.

I LOVE THIS SEASON. THIS WAS 1 OF THE BEST SEASONS OF THE ENTIRE 'SUPERFRIENDS' SERIES. THE ONLY EPISODE I DID'NT LIKE WAS 'TERROR ON THE TITANIC'. I DID'NT UNDERSTAND WHAT THAT EPISODE WAS ABOUT. IT WAS'NT A GOOD EPISODE. BUT ALL THE OTHERS WERE GREAT. ALL IN ALL, A GREAT SEASON.

Love this show! Glad these episodes were released on DVD. Fans of the Superfriends and DC comics should check this DVD set.

I loved it! I grew up on this show and never knew about these episodes!

A collectors item in animation. We just dont have television shows like this anymore.

When it comes to the Superfriends there's two ways to look at them...on one hand, the show was the cheesiest of cornball fests, diluted down by the censors of the era to the point where there was hardly a hint of violence. On the other hand, if you were a comic book fan back then pickings were pretty slim in terms of cartoons so most kids happily tuned in to the Superfriends and ate up seeing their comic heroes on screen.

The Superfriends had various incarnations over the years it was on Saturday mornings from the 1970s through the mid-1980s. These "Lost" episodes are an interesting story. By 1983 Saturday morning cartoons were starting to fade away as more and more syndicated afternoon cartoons became popular. These 24 episodes were produced for the 1983 - 1984 season but never shown. They were eventually broadcast over a decade later in 1995 as part of the Superman/Batman Adventures show and are now available for the first time on DVD.

This incarnation includes the usual mainstays: Superman, Batman & Robin, Wonder Woman, Aquaman and the Wonder Twins along with lesser known charters like Apache Chief, El Dorado, Samurai, and Black Vulcan, and tossed in with a few guest appearances by the likes of The Atom, Flash, and Green Lantern.

As such, there's nothing inherently different about these episodes than any other season of Superfriends. The heroes are opposed by some of their usual villains like Mr. Mxyzptlk, Lex Luthor, Brainiac, and Gorilla Grod. Unfortunately too many episodes, especially those with the Wonder Twins, are simply groan inducing such as "The Space Racers" where Zan and Jayna are policing space and run afoul of some teenage hot rodders.

In Bulgor the Behemoth" an animation writer's monstrous creation comes to life when his typewriter is struck by lightning. And then there is the utter laughable "Playground of Doom" in which three giant space kids arrive on Earth and consider it there new toy. Ugghhh!

Still, it's not all bad. "Superclones" finds Brainiac creating clones of El Dorado and Aquaman after stealing their DNA. The Legion of Doom returns in "The Revenge of Doom" as the attempt to rebuild their headquarters. In "Return of the Phantoms" three escaped Phantom Zone prisoners travel back in time to 1957 to try and destroy Superboy before he can grew up to become Superman.

Superfriends the Lost Episodes is a mixed bag as most of the series always was but it's a nice nostalgic step back in time.

Love the cartoon shorts. They really bring me back to a time when you had a Large variety of cartoons to choose from. But the extras are null and void. Most of the extras on the other Super Friends releases were nothing special but this one has ziltch. A digital comic?...who cares. Where are the voice actor interviews? Not much effort into this one. It's like Disney releases.....NO EXTRAS. Plus some of the remastering was sloppy. Some of it looks like I'm watching a VHS tape recording. I still love it though.

This DVD comprises what to me may be my favorite era of Superfriends - after Challenge but before the really poorly animated "Super Powers" 30-minute toy commercials. Lots of fun stuff in here. Unfortunately, there are no extras on this set, which is why I give it only 4 stars instead of 5.