Challenge of the Superfriends- Season 1

DVD Reviews | Mar 4th, 2005

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Starring Batman and Robin, Superman, Green Lantern, Wonder Woman,The Flash, Black Vulcan, Hawkman, Aquaman, Lex Luthor, Brainiac, Black Manta, Solomon Grundy, Cheetah, Riddler
Written By:
Directed By: Ray Patterson, Carl Urbano
Studio: Warner Brothers
Buy on Amazon.com

This was probably one of my favorite cartoons growing up. It’s still a favorite of mine to this day so I was kind of giddy to hear that this finally arrived on DVD.

Superfriends was a show about a group of DC Comics superheros uniting and fighting another batch of superheros, but they were evil. Each superfriend (stupid name by the way) had their own enemy to battle with but a lot of the villains on the show were an enemy of Superman. The Superfriends consisted of Superman, Batman and Robin, Aquaman, Flash, Wonder Woman, Black Vulcan, some Samurai guy, Hawkman, Green Lantern, Apache Chief. They fought the legion of doom, which consisted of mastermind Lex Luthor, Brainiac, Sinestro, Black Manta, Cheetah, Grodd, Solomon Grundy, Toyman, Bizarro, Giganta, Captain Cold, Riddler and other evil villains.

Each episode, the Legion of Doom came up with a brilliant plan to stop the Superfriends and to take over the world (what else do you think they’d want?) and they would have gotten away with it too, if it wasn’t for those meddling Superfriends. Somehow, conveniently the superfriends managed to pull things from their ass and get out of the trouble they were in. Then they would beat up the Legion of Doom a little but Lex Luthor usually had the last say and disappeared with all his henchmen so they couldn’t get caught. You’d think the Superfriends would have caught on to that by the second episode and went to Lex Luthor and frisked the freakin’ guy! The Superfriends still kept their chins up and said they will always be there to stop the Legion of Doom. BUT technically, they never stopped them since they got away each episode so the fact is the Superfriends are quite useless haha. That always frustrated me as a kid, Lex Luthor saving them from being captured. Like what point is the show if they keep getting away? Now if I was doing this show, i’d like to see at least some of the Legion of Doom get captured for a few episodes and the Legion of Doom get the other captured villains back in later episodes or something. Would have been more compelling to watch but this was meant for kids so who cared what happened in the episodes. As long as you saw enough battles between the 2 groups and some cool stories happening.

The show definitely had some neat ideas with the episodes like some of the LOD characters going back in time and making sure Superman, Wonder Woman and Green Lantern never existed. Or sending the Superfriends into fairytale stories, I always liked that one as a kid. Still do. I think my favorite superfriend is Green Lantern I’ve always like Captain Cold and Toyman in the Legion of Doom. I don’t know why though. They look cool? I think another great part of the show was just the way it looked and sounded. All those voice over actors’ voices fit the parts so well and it’s what I remember as a kid, all the characters had distinctive voices. The animation of the show looked like a comic book but with a lot of Hanna Barbera cartoons, there was a lot of mistakes as well. Some time characters would be wearing a different color costume, or a character might be in a spot he shouldn’t have been, or they might not have wings or something that didn’t fit the character at all. I wonder how those mistakes got through the cracks or maybe the animators simple didn’t give a crap what it looked like?

There isn’t too many extras on here but the one I enjoyed was “Saturday, Sleeping Bags and Superfriends: A Retrospective” and it had a bunch of comic book writers and producers of cartoon shows like Justice League. I felt like I was watching VH1’s I love the 70’s because everyone was talking about their favorite characters, and also poking fun of the show as well. They showed a lot of the mistakes and errors of the show but also talked about why the show rocked too. The show took a lot of liberty with the characters and everything didn’t always have to make sense, but it always looked very cool. That’s what the appeal was, to see all these different type of superheros/villains duke it out and try to save/end the world. I hope they release the other Superfriend shows on DVD soon, you know the one with the Wonder Twins. Well maybe they should hold off on the Superfriends show with the 2 Scooby Doo looking kids and the dog. That one kind of sucked.

Features:
Audio Commentary
Hall of Justice and Legion of Doom Character Bios
Documentary: Saturday, Sleeping Bags & Super Friends Retrospective

Audio:
ENGLISH: Dolby Digital Mono CC
SPANISH: Dolby Digital Mono

Video:
Standard 1.33:1 Color

Subtitles:

Favorite Scenes: The World’s Deadliest Game, The Monolith of Evil, Giants of Doom, Secret Origins of the Superfriends, Fairy Tales of Doom
Rating: Not Rated
Running Time: 347 minutes
Extras Rating:
Overall Rating: