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Rating: Country: USA Release Date: January 27, 2009 Distributor: Turner Home Entertainment Director: · Charles A. Nichols Cast: · Norman Alden · Danny Dark · Olan Soule · Casey Casem · Shannon Farnon · Michael Bell · Louise Williams Related Sites: · IMDb: The All New Super Friends Hour · Review: Season One - Volume One Grade: B

When I was a kid, "must see TV" referred only to a time-slot, not a particular network, and that time was Saturday mornings. Being a comic book fan from age four, I intentionally sought out the superhero shows, and was always keen for the full-page ads that would show the upcoming fall lineup of new shows.

A mainstay of the programming of my youth was the Super Friends, in any of its many incarnations. While an even further bowdlerized version of the post-Wertham watered down comics, The All New Super Friends Hour was an un-missable part of my childhood, and even now seen through the mirror of modernity and maturity as characters devoid of characterization, the blandness of the plots and animation still doesn't diminish the warm nostalgia I hold for the series.

Seen en masse as with this collection, it quickly brings to light just how few plots there were in the show. There were the ubiquitous inventors who had developed a new technological device that could dig, turn objects into stone, increase the size of fish, or other dubiously useful things. (My particular favorite was the Dr. Sivana-clone and his two children who made a device that could take any object and trasnform it into a picture. I like to call that a "Polaroid.") Sometimes the technological device was even called "technological device" in headlines whenever it got lost and enraged sewer rats into attacking. Greedy criminals were the villains as often as invading aliens or giant animals, giving reason for Superman, Batman, Robin, Wonder Woman and Aquaman (occassionally joined by Samurai, Rima the Jungle Girl, Apache Chief, Black Vulcan, or even Flash, Green Lantern and Atom) to bring their might into the fight.

An interesting thing about the villains when viewing these shows in retrospect is that the writes seemed to intentionally go out of their way not to use existing characters, although sometimes cloning their look and appearance. Aquaman doesn't battle Black Manta, but a villainous Manta nonetheless (in a different colored costume); Giganta doesn't show up, but a nondescript female scientist nonetheless goes on a fifty-foot woman rampage; in fact, it's not until late in the run that we see a DC-owned villain come to the for -- and then it's Jim Craddock, the so-called Gentleman Ghost.

Two give the otherwise lame villains an advantage, the more powerful heroes were often taken out of play too easily, or given a writer-induced amnesia that made them forget some of their basic abilities that would have settled things in seconds. For instance, Green Lantern materializes a Lantern Jet, apparently unable to recall that he can fly. On the other hand, characters like Batman and Robin are suddenly able to produce such deus ex machina life savers like inflatable Bat-buoys from their belts, or Bat-springs from their shoes allowing for prodigious leaps.

The lesson almost always seems to be that humanity (or aliens) should never tamper with things that are too powerful -- just leave it be. The message to kids must have been to passively accept the way things are, and by all means exercise all the safety and caution warnings in the many PSAs that peppered each episode.

Of each episodes four-adventure set, one would always focus on the made-for-tv characters, Zan and Jayna, also known as the Wonder Twins. These shorts were invariably about teens getting into trouble -- entering bear dens, exhibiting prejudice, or playing "chicken" with vehicles. Hokey as they were, with their animal/water transformations, Zan and Jayna indelibly engrained themselves upon our collective consciousness, so much so that the second disc of this two-disc set includes a twelve-minute featurette, "The Wonder Twins Phenomenon," in which cartoon historians and film and television buffs like Doug Goldstein, Jerry Beck, Olivia Munn and Rich Fogel chat about Zan and Jayna (as well as Wendy and Marvin), the safety messages, the Donny and Marie look, and the requirement that each episode of death-defying danger always end with a fadeout of laughter.

Previews on this set include the upcoming DC Direct DVD feature, "Wonder Woman."