Super Friends: The Complete Collection - DVD Review

[Michael Scott]

Super Friends: The Complete Collection



Movie:
Video:
Audio:
Extras:
Final Score:



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Movie
Super heroes cartoons are almost generally locked into a decade generation for the most part. Talk to a comic book fan in the boomer/Early Gen X era, and then come talk to a millennial comic book fan, or even a Gen Z comic book fan. Each of us will have our own hallowed shows that we instinctively look backwards upon and hail as the “golden age of super heroes”. For us elder millennial viewers it was the Bruce Timm era of Batman: The Animated Series or the various spin offs, but got back to an elder Gen X or young Boomer and they will tell you in no uncertain terms that DC’s Super Friends! Was where it was at. As I said, a matter of taste and cultural relevancy based upon when you grew up, but I digress.

Super Friends! was Hanna Barbera’s take on DC’s Justice League, just given a more family friendly twist that is DECIDEDLY Hanna Barbera in its tone. Airing between 1973 to 1985 on ABC Saturday mornings, as well as syndication later on it’s run for afternoon showings. The series was infamously canceled back in 1983, but the suits brought the show back for the final 1984-1985 season renaming it The Legendary Super Powers Show. Supposedly this was to time itself to the release of a Kenner toyline called the “Super Powers” and meant to tie in, but I didn’t think that was ever confirmed more than rumors and hearsay back in the day.

Looking back I remembered the show being split up a lot more than it was, with Hanna Barbera and Warner’s old DVD releases separating each season out into it’s own “show” (name wise) and attempting to market the old old DVD releases as their own individual things. Luckily for us, all 93 episodes are re-released (and remastered for HBO Max digital release a while back) in their original order in one giant box set here. Like most Warner “complete series” DVD releases they’re released in that gigantic DVD height clamshell case that features the overlapping disc technique. But to add weirdness to the mix, not only are the individual DVDs overlapping, but they’re stacked discs as well, with 2 discs per side stacked, then over lapped per disc tray. Again, not something I’m overly fond of, but it is what it is (according to confirmation, the Blu-ray release is simply over lapped, not stacked)

The show itself is very much a Hanna Barbera production, using the more slapstick and child friendly adaptations of the DC super heros, as well as adding some of their own like Black Vulcan, Apache Chief, Samurai, and El Dorado to form a rather large team of super heroes out to save the world. Much like most Hanna Barbera shows, the 45 minute long episodes (they ran about 60 minutes including commercials of course) are sillier and more light hearted, featuring the “gad zooks!” cheesiness of the old Scooby Doo cartoons more than the darker tone of the 1990s era of DC television. Most of the villains tend to be from Superman’s rogues gallery, with Lex Luthor, Brainiac and Mr. Mxyzptik each showing up to trouble our intrepid super heroes.

But, like I said above, super hero shows are usually generational in how they appeal to audience. Growing up in the late 80s and the 90s as my formative super hero years, I was so used to the Bruce Timm era that the silliness and “gad zooks!!” interpretation of the super hero genre just didn’t vibe with me. Much like how fans of the 1960s Adam West Batman couldn’t grasp how modern audiences liked the darker and more brooding version of the caped crusader. Even showing the series to my nephews was met with my youngest nephew was met with middling results, and these kids LOVE the original Scooby Doo material.



Rating:

Not Rated




Video:

Supposedly the masters these are struck from were made a while back for use on the HBO MAX streaming service, and have subsequently been transferred across to DVD and the MOD Blu-rays (sadly no wide release of the Blu-rays, they’re Manufactured On Demand only for the time being). The end result is a fairly stable image with good colors and strong image stability. I didn’t notice as much film grain as I would have hoped from animation cels transferred to film stock, but this is no Max Fleischman’s Superman either. All in all, there’s your typical DVD artifacting with some macro blocking to go around on large screens (I started noticing it at the 55 inch and above TV size). Simultaneously the DVD menu screens were definitely lower rez upscaled, as I noticed blocking and haloing around the buttons. But all in all, a solid looking DVD transfer for 50 (ish) year old show.







Audio:

Super Friends 2.0 Mono track is merely serviceable, with a decent recording that was basically as low budget as you can get back in the 70s. Voices are clear and intelligible, but there’s not a lot of dimensionality to them. Effects are thin as are any score sounds. It’s all basically your very typical ancient “shot on a sound stage at midnight” type of situation and I doubt very much that it will get any better. It’s simply an artifact of the era and sounds about as good as it can.









Extras:

• Super Friends (Including the Lost Episodes
• The All new Super Friends Hour
• Challenge of the Super Friends
• The World's Greatest Super Friends
• Super Friends: The Legendary Super Powers Show
• The Super Powers Team: Galactic Guardians

Final Score: ​

This is going to appeal directly to die hard fans of the old Hanna Barbera cartoons, as well as collectors who have to have anything DC. Sadly I think I’ve grown out of the Super Friends cartoons and can’t seem to really spark that old love of them that I had when I watched beaten up VHS recordings as I did when I was 6 or 7 years old. So with a heavy heart I have to relegate this to a “for the fans” rating simply because it isn’t my thing. The DVD release looks and sounds solid enough for an old DVD series, and the new remastered versions don’t look to be scrubbed to death like the Max Fleishman’s Super hero set did last year. As I said, “For the Fans”


Technical Specifications:

Starring: Danny Dark, Olan Soule, Casey Kasem, Frank Welkner, Micahel Rye
Created by: Gardner Fox
Aspect Ratio: 1.37:1 MPEG2
Audio: English: Dolby Digital 2.0
Subtitles: English SDH
Studio: Warner Brothers
Rated: Not Rated
Runtime: 3142 Minutes
Blu-ray Release Date: September 10th, 2024

Recommendation: For the Fans

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