Challenge of the Super Friends: Season 1

This amazing DVD box set is a time machine. It will instantly place any viewer over the age of about 30 back in front of their TV set on Saturday morning chowing down on the Crunchberries in their pyjamas out in the living room, absolutely rivited to whatever cushion or bean bag they had at their disposal as the fate of the whole world would be battled over week after week. This is hand-drawn animation for TV at it's attention deficit disordered best, with fantastic color that provides instant wish-fulfillment for any other grown up 11 year old who like myself was forced to grow up with the cruelty of black & white TV as some obligatory punishment for an offense that was never quite understood. All the cool kids had color, we had B&W, but you know, I think we maybe enjoyed it a bit more because we had to use our imaginations to color what we were seeing in grayscales.The original Superfriends were great of course, and as a classmate from grad school pointed out to me once, one of the important things about the show is that these super heroes were FRIENDS before all else. Yes they worked together to fight crime and protect the American consumer culture which spawned them, but they cared about each other just like the rest of us care about our friends & family. It made them more human, and even apprentice super heroes Marvin, Wendy (one of my earliest crushes) along with the annoying Wonder Dog and later Gleek the Super Chimp always came across as actual people. With "Challenge of the Superfriends" the core Justic League outfit was expanded with the addition of several other DC Comics heroes. There were even ethnic super heroes added for cross-cultural appeal, all of them incorruptable, honest, modest and totally devoted to upholding justice.BUT THE REAL STARS OF THE SHOW WERE THE VILLAINS!! and that's where this particular 16 episode series really outshined all other incarnations of The Superfriends. Without a good villain super heroes can be kind of boring, even silly, and this series' creators were well aware that while we may have been rooting for The Flash & Green Lantern, the real reason we kept tuning in week after week was because of the fantastic array of super villains they populated this series with: Black Manta and Solomon Grundy were always my favorites. They had a Dark Side mentality to them that allowed the kids watching to actually precieve a threat that required Superman or Wonder Woman to intervene on the behalf of mankind lest our whole planet be doomed.Super villains also require super plots at global domination to make them memorable, and this show had plots to set the world on fire, send it back or forwards into time, enemy invaders from the cosmos who were indifferent to the meek, humble ordinary humans populating the planet. No nation was safe from the chicanery of The Riddler or Captain Cold either -- the Russians, Chinese and Arabian nations were just as likely to be clobbered by some super plot as the USA, linking those of us on the world together in needing to oppose tyranny from wherever it came. The USSR may have been bad news but they weren't as bad as the Legion of Doom.Gone are the days of hand-drawn animated cartoons of this nature, and this DVD set is a treasure trove of material that continues to look fresh and exciting when placed next to the computer rendered animation of today. Sure some of it was goofy, the repetitive, over-excited music gets kind of routine after a while, and some of the plots border on the ridiculous: Trapping the Superfriends in the classics of literature anyone? It may have been clumsy but ultimately that episode might have encouraged young viewers to read the books in question, so in the end you wound up learning something even if it wasn't as cool as "Swamp of the Living Dead" or "Revenge on Gorilla City".I simply cannot recommend this box set enough: Any kid will be delighted and any parent will be oddly compelled to go out and find a box of Quisp or Freakies to wolf down. Just remember to get an extra box of cereal for the kids too, since traditions are best handed down from generation to generation intact.

I never grew up watching the Superfriends as most of the reviewers have. I do remember catching it in re-runs on weekday afternoons...usually at 3:30...so i never caught it on the Saturday morning line-up. I had always liked the shows...i liked all the versions of SUPERFRIENDS that i have been able to see through the years. The one that sticks out by far is CHALLENGE OF THE SUPERFRIENDS. As one reviewer put it, the villains and their over-the-top zeal at everything they do, make the show even more enjoyable. Another thing i like is the narration by Bill Woodson...his voice is heard in every episode as the narrator plus in several episodes, specifically FAIRYTALES OF DOOM on DVD #2, Woodson gives voice to Captain Nemo. That scene takes place inside the book 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Toyman had created a device that inserted people into fairytales and the Superfriends only had a certain amount of time before they become permanent characters inside the fairytales: Jack and the Beanstalk {Hawkman}, Gulliver's Travels {Superman}, and Alice in Wonderland {Wonder Woman}. I love the episode REVENGE ON GORILLA CITY and i also like THE SECRET ORIGINS OF THE SUPERFRIENDS, THE TIME TRAP, INVASION OF THE FEARIANS, and SWAMP OF THE LIVING DEAD. I do however want to clear up something about Flash. Several have noted that he flies...well, in my eyes, he isn't "flying" as Superman would...Flash i think creates enough super-energy to lift himself into the air...especially on the episode when the Fearians and the Legion of Doom trick the Superfriends into changing the atmosphere of the Earth to make it like Venus. In that episode, Captain Cold goes on a freezing spree...Flash defrosts all of the cities which causes the air to become smoggy. In another episode, dealing with an invention called Liquid Light, Bizarro {the backwards version of Superman} dumps it out and it begins to devour everything in it's path. Flash circles around at high speed and it acts as a vaccum and sucks the Liquid Light up and it falls back to the earth "in the form of harmless falling stars" as narrator Bill Woodson explains. Green Lantern's power ring, i think, enables Aquaman and the others to appear to be "flying"...especially in the episode called GIANTS OF DOOM where Captain Cold freezes the regular-size Superfriends and Toyman "airmails" the Superfriends to the planet, Saturn. In that episode, it frequently shows Aquaman up in the air with the rest of them...flying...as with Flash and the others. I liked all of the episodes and i give the entire collection 5 stars. As far as the animation goes, i am aware of the mistakes. There are several...i can't make any excuses for it beyond saying whoever looked over the final cuts before they were aired on Television didn't pay close attention to detail. Outside of those errors that have been talked about, everything else about this series is great. This collection is billed as the First Season but it's the ONLY season...so any newcomers to all things Superfriends, do not look forward to a second season of CHALLENGE OF THE SUPERFRIENDS because there won't be one. Another thing about the animation before i conclude the review...this is 1978 animation...i know how superior and technically advanced animation has become since 1978 so there's no comparison...but the lack of superior animation shouldn't dictate what one would watch...at least for me it doesn't.

This DVD brings back some of my most cherished childhood cartoon memories. I can remember watching these on Saturday mornings, and when I found out that they were released on DVD, I snapped this up right away. What a great treat!Now, let's state a few obvious caveats. The video quality is almost 40 years old, so it's clearly not as good as today's standards. The stories may not be very intricate, but again, we've come a long way. Also, the stories may not reflect the full details of the histories of the Superfriends and the Legion of Doom, but a lot of fictional history has been written since them.But are these reasons good enough NOT to buy this? No. If you saw this show as a child and loved it (like I did), then this set is for you. The episodes are short (~20 minutes) and the stories are fun to watch.Perhaps one of the greatest parts of this set is that it makes one want to go explore the origins of the Superfriends and the Legion of Doom. By searching the internet, you will learn that the histories of these characters is a lot more intricate than that which is portrayed in this DVD set. But that's OK, because these stories were not meant to give exhaustive details about the characters. They were just meant to be plain fun, and that's what they are.For all of those 1970s children (like me) who can fondly remember their Saturday mornings, this set is for you. For all of those younger people who want to see how we got where we are today, then this is worth watching, as long as you don't watch it with too critical of an eye. Let's face it...these were not the best made shows, but for their time, they were state of the art. And now they are back again for all of us to enjoy.So go ahead and enjoy them....you will have hours of fun!

Excellent

This was the show in which Hanna-Barbera lined the content of Superfriends up far more accurately with DC comics, using 13 regular DC villains all teamed up against the Superfriends, regular appearances by most of the guest stars from the last segment of the previous season (Green Lantern, Flash, Hawkman and the HB created Samurai, Apache Chief and Black Vulcan). So successful were they that DC created Black Lightning in response to Black Vulcan soonafter, and later adopted Samurai into their 1984 Super Powers mini-series. The show also provided a new and better origin for Wonder Woman's old foe Giganta, giving her a power derived from Apache Chief's origin: the ability to become an actual giantess, making her a formidable opponent. The plots included time travel and a visit to Gorilla City. Note to purchasers: it is also well worth buying the Volume 2, which provides the second segment for the show: ie the one with Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman (who also appear in the segment on these DVDs), and the Wondertwins. In 1978, Challenge was originally a 1 hour show comprising the segments in this release and the ones in the Volume 2 release. My only concern is the poor packaging in 2005: double sided disk pressed against a single sided disk. This one is overdue for a rerelease with no double sided disks, and no disk surfaces touching eachother.

A lot of fun watching these for the first time since the 1970s.

It was amazing

Awesome set!! Was very happy with it!! Too bad that they didn't release the whole season or even series in one set though. Was disappointed that they had a double sided dvd in there though instead of an extra single sided dvd.