***SPOILERS CONTAINED***

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Volume Two of this DVD situation is honest as mountainous as Volume One, released over a year ago. In this original collection we spy the remaining episodes missing from Volume One. A random sampling of what you will gather when you pick this collection are 8 episodes. The episodes originally ran an hour when broadcast on TV but minus the commercials each episode is roughly 45 to 50 minutes in length. Each episode is broken into four separate segments as well, which is why it’s advertised as 32 episodes. The first segment features a team-up between two Superfriends. The second segment features the Wonder Twins on adventures revolving teenage issues/peer pressure. The third segment is the main attraction, a fable entertaining all of the Superfriends and the Wonder Twins. The final segment teams up one of the Superfriends with a guest super-hero. Batman and Robin, since they work as a team, are considered “one” hero in the team-up’s.

Batman and Robin along with Superman appear together in the episode “Man-Beast of Xra” where an despicable scientist, a woman named Dr Xra, unleashes man-beasts on the city with the benefit of her nervous accomplice. The professor is voiced by the show’s narrator, William Woodson. Xra is voiced by Jean Vanderpyl, who became approved as the yell of Wilma Flintstone.

Buy,Download, Or Stream The All-New Super Friends Hour: Season One, Vol. 2! Click Here

Aquaman’s considerable villain, Sad Manta, appears in an episode entitled “Water Beast”. In the episode, though, he’s only referred to as Manta but the character do is clearly based on Sad Manta. Aquaman gets a lot of cover time in the PSA segments where safety and health tips are dispensed. He also appears in the magic segment’s as well. The rest of the Superfriends rotate with Aquaman in those PSA segments. In one safety segment, Aquaman warns a kid about attempting to roller skate with rusty skates and suggests he have a grown-up oil them. In the episode “Frozen Grief”, Aquaman and Superman go on the mission of defrosting the world after an undersea villain, Sculpin, freezes the surface. John Stephenson voices a few characters in this episode including the villain.

The Wonder Twins appear in their have segments and one of them in this collection is frank by 1970′s standards…Saturday morning TV standards specifically. I lisp of the segment called “Prejudice” where the Wonder Twins tackle the subject when two bikers refuse to relieve a stranded motorist due to the color of his skin. “Pressure Point” deals with a kid named Jerry who feels fearful and sets about to display how talented he is at motorcycling by attempting to jump a canyon.

“Mummy of Nazca” is a legend of an improper scientist who uses a mummy to do his dirty work. The doctor’s name is Cooroff, loosely based upon Karloff, as in Boris Karloff, the actor who appeared in the Mummy fear movie 77 years ago in 1932. Henry Corden voices Professor Cooroff. In a rare moment in this series, Superman appears as Clark Kent for a period of time in this episode as he takes the Wonder Twins to the museum. Judging by the script, they didn’t know Clark Kent and Superman were the same person.

“Forbidden Power” is a narrative about an outrageous scientist who sets off to accumulate the ultimate power…and he abducts his assistant as his unwilling accomplice as they search for an elusive “power”. Batman, Robin, and Wonder Woman halt him. The professor’s last names are Zarkoff and Designate, perhaps inspired by the names of Boris Karloff and Vincent Sign? Narrator William Woodson voices Zarkoff.

“Day of the Rats” features Batman, Robin, and Dark Vulcan in Gotham City attempting to trim up the rat’s that have littered the city. The rats turned heinous because of a mechanism in the sewers. It’s one of the few episodes where a main villain wasn’t featured…objective a bunch of obnoxious rats flooding the city and terrorizing businesses. It was like the film ‘The Birds’ but with lots and lots of rats. By episode’s raze, Shadowy Vulcan destroyed the mechanism controlling the rats and they changed benefit to their normal behavior.

In an episode called “Microscopic World of Anxiety” we have a greedy scientist/inventor who doesn’t regain co-operation from his colleagues with one of his schemes and he gets his revenge by terrorized them…he soon shrinks the Superfriends as well and they have to over-come their height disadvantage in order to end the scientist, named Professor Strickland. His partners who he shrunk were Professor Wong and assistant Mary. In a amusing scene, the dinky Superfriends encounter all sorts of animals climaxing with Superman hopping on a giant spider and riding it like a bull. In “Tibetan Raiders”, Flash guest stars and joins Superman in the Himalaya’s to rescue passengers from an airplane that crashed. Flash isn’t voiced by Jack Angel, so it was novel seeing the character with a different say.

As you can ogle, a lot of these stories center around an dismal scientist or a professor who becomes vigilante-like and sets about to “rid the world of war” or “slay all suffering”. William Woodson, the show’s narrator, often provided the voices for the assistant’s and sometimes he was the hiss of the main villain. The villains were described as being mis-guided, rather than intentionally injurious.

The methods in which the villainous doctor’s carry out their hopes and dreams in the episodes, of course, nasty the line into illegal activity and by episode’s slay they’re told how astounding their wishes and dreams are but breaking the law to do their wishes and dreams was collected a ample no-no. There were rarely any villains, with a few exceptions, that were deliberately wicked.

Having said that, one of the villains that was intentionally cruel was Lion-X. He was the leader of the rush of lion’s that appear in the episode “Lionmen”. In this episode, Lion-X uses a special ray procedure and while taking control of the residence location, he beams the ray at Earth. They want to pull the Earth apart and view to be a success radiant remarkable throughout the episode…with Lion-X shimmering Superman’s weakness: kryptonite. Wonder Woman uses a special boom changer and pretends to be Lion-X…ordering the followers to switch off the ray…the conception almost works until Gleek innocently walks across a monitor and his tail clicks on the camera switch…exposing Wonder Woman’s trick.

Rima, Green Lantern, and Apache Chief also perform guest appearances. Atom, the itsy-bitsy guy with the atomic energy, guest stars in the episode “Cable Car Rescue” with Wonder Woman. The two of them have to rescue a cable car dangling in the sky. The only DVD extra is about the Wonder Twins. Five stars…the DVD is of an acquired taste. Those raised on the super-hero cartoons of today with all of that over-the-top realism will perhaps not bag these cartoons titillating because the stories are fantastical and fiction, using honest a shred of reality for the plot-line and going from there. These cartoons were geared at children during a time when they weren’t expected to grow up too like a flash as the children of today are. Most kids today are 11 going on 30.

Jumping from the pages of the hit DC comics and onto television mask, the ALL-NEW SUPERFRIENDS HOUR proved to be a tall hit when it premiered on ABC Saturday morning line-ups in 1977. The tantalizing series which followed the adventures of Superman, Batman, Robin, Wonder Woman and Aquaman would have an indelible impact on an entire generation of youth (myself included) . In the interest of bulky disclosure I must train that I was a expansive fan of the ABC Saturday morning Cartoon “ALL Modern SUPERFRIENDS HOUR” which was impartial released on DVD. Growing up, this was THE display to eye on Saturday mornings – perhaps rivaled only by Scooby Doo. It would be a few years before the negate of classic 80′s cartoon television like He-Man, GI Joe, Transformers or Conceal so Superfriends pleasing worthy had the awesomeness market cornered.

Each episode was divided into four segments and usually ran something like this – the shows would originate out with a team-up between two Super-Friends. The second segment would focus on unique characters the Wonder Twins Zan and Jayne (along with their monkey Gleek) and their shape shifting capabilities. The third and ‘primary’ segment would feature the entire team along with the Wonder Twins and finally the fourth segment would wrap up with a special guest hero stopping by and saving the day in some manner that usually revolved around that character’s recent special abilities. Also recent superheroes were added to the rotating roster. Besides the main five and occasional members from the precise Justice League, modern superheroes `Apache Chief’, `The Samurai’, `Black Vulcan.

Interspersed between segments were the occasional fun mini-segment in which the Superfriends would ask riddles, speak magic and occasionally give shrimp mini-PSAs on vital stuff like First Wait On. If that sounds a shrimp campy and simple – well, it was.

To be just, between this display and the Adam West version, it’s a wonder that I even considered stepping foot in the theater to study the drastically darker 1989 Batman film. Growing up, this WAS Batman and Robin. But it’s nice to peek that regardless of their overwhelming success they’ve had with their novel ‘grim and gritty’ film franchises, DC is not ashamed to pull out and judge upon the more campy aspects of their long history. Although things have changed in the ways of overall tonality to DC’s lineup, this exhibit, when set aside into context is the cornerstone in which all future Enthralling shows would be based upon. Certain, it may be easy to compare the lighter more innocent Super-Friends hour with say ‘Batman: The Engaging Series’ and accomplish fun – but without the success of the Super-Friends Hour it’s unlikely that BtAS would have ever been greelighted for production.

That isn’t to say that there aren’t things worth poking fun at. For instance, upon re-watching this series, my adult mind was left wondering – honest where DID Wendy, Marvin and Wonder Dog go? Replaced by Zan, Jayne and Gleek – no mention is ever given to Wendy, Marvin and Wonder Dog or their whereabouts ever again. And while the Wonder Twins and their ability to transform into nearly anything is glowing tidy – they are a bit… well, creepy. They may be hip and able to recount to the kids but quite frankly they seem to be finish in the kind of borderline contaminated scheme that would uncommon honest about anybody out (unless you’re from Tennessee maybe) .

The DVD’s sole extra features focus on the ambiguous twins in a segment called ” The Wonder Twins Phenomenon: Zan and Jayna’s Impact on Pop Culture”. Impartial imagine an episode of VH1′s “I Esteem the 80′s” based around the Wonder Twins and starring Paul Dini and Alan Burnett along with the hosts of `Attack of the Prove.’ It’s a hilarious romp through pop culture history and actually gives a slight insight into the creation of the Twins.

Bottom line is – it’s hard to earn something cross with this series. Positive it has it’s dated moments but overall I’d have to say that this region is a must have for any serious DC Engrossing collector. Plus it’s a fun stagger down memory lane for those of us who may have outgrown our Batman & Robin Underoos a long time ago. Give this one a shot – you won’t be disappointed. The All Unique Elegant Friends Hour is available now at retail and online stores.
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