The All-New Super Friends Hour: Season One, Vol. 1 (1977)
Super Friends DVDs

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The featurette on Disc 2 of this super collection unfairly scoffs at The All-New SuperFriends Hour, dismissing it as a "one-dimensional" depiction of DC's superheroes, with no character development and no real sense of threat or menace. These criticisms are valid, but so what? Corny though it may be, this colorful cartoon show is just a good-old all-American Saturday morning fun-fest--packed to overflowing with mad scientists, alien beings, special guest stars, helpful hints, easy-to-solve puzzles and potentially life-saving information! It's wholesome entertainment the whole family can enjoy.

The SuperFriends Hour prominently features those purple-clad twins from Exxor, Zan and Jayna. These siblings possess some of the most mind-bogglingly bizarre super powers ever seen on TV. Simply by pressing their fists together and yelling, "Wonder Twin powers ACTIVATE!" the shape-shifting teenagers can trigger a seemingly infinite variety of transformations. Jayna can take on the form of any animal, bird or insect. She may choose to become a giraffe or a gazelle, a Billy goat or a butterfly...she might even turn into a prehistoric pterodactyl. Weirder still, Zan's changes are limited to either bodies of water or objects made of ice, such as an ice bridge or an ice ladder (both of which sound like slipping hazards). Most often, Zan elects to liquefy himself and fill a small bucket. That's where Gleek--the gibbering buck-toothed space monkey with the ridiculously long prehensile tail--comes in. Gleek is the keeper of the bucket. This is a big responsibility for a little blue primate. We certainly wouldn't want Zan to be without that bucket and wind up in an ordinary drinking glass, where he might accidentally be consumed by a thirsty SuperFriend. Holy un-cola, Batman!

This two-disc set contains seven complete SuperFriends Hours, each of which consists of four separate stories. That makes a grand total of twenty-eight super-powered adventures, including classic tales like these:

THE BRAIN MACHINE: Holy brainwaves! The well-meaning Dr. Cranum invents a machine that he hopes will advance mankind's mental evolution by one million years, but he develops a swelled head (not to mention bulging yellow eyeballs and pointed ears) when he uses the machine on himself. Can Wonder Woman and the Dynamic Duo stop this misguided scientist before he turns all of Metroworld Amusement Park's innocent fun-seekers into grotesquely deformed mental cases?

JOY RIDE: Although he doesn't have his pilot's license yet, Corky the bratty teenager takes his reluctant friend, Jeff, for a ride in a "borrowed" airplane with a bad carburetor and a broken radio. Fortunately, an eagle and a blue monkey with a bucket of purple water are there to save the day.

INVASION OF THE EARTHORS: Zan and Jayna foolishly decide to assume the forms of a puddle and a caterpillar, respectively, allowing them to be captured quite easily by an underground civilization of computer-savvy rock people led by the stone-hearted diabolical genius, Crag.

WILL THE WORLD COLLIDE?: Still sore at the Academy of Science for expelling him because of his supposedly unethical experiments, the vindictive Professor Fearo utilizes the gravitational Gyromagneto to wrench his fiendish alien friend Cleazor's home planet out of its orbit and bring it into a collision course with Earth. And--jumping jeopardy!--Cleazor's planet is composed of solid kryptonite!

TIME RESCUE: The foolhardy Professor Comstock uses his time machine to travel 2000 years into the future, where he soon finds himself in the clutches of a gang of short-statured desert slavers that look suspiciously like the Jawas from Star Wars. Lucky for him, his loyal assistant, Dr. Lau, has the SuperFriends' number on speed-dial.

DAY OF THE PLANT CREATURES: A red-hot meteor full of cosmic radiation splashes into a swamp in the Everglades and quickly turns all nearby Floridians into green leafy vegetable-men.

FIRE: Holy inferno, Batman! Escaped prisoners, Mike and Walt, steal a pickup truck and race through a forest fire and across a burning bridge with the Dynamic Duo and Rima the Jungle Girl in hot pursuit. Little do the fleeing fugitives know that the truck they're driving is loaded with dynamite!

VANDALS: Just for kicks, a juvenile delinquent named Spence and his weak-willed buddy break into Midland High and smash Old Man Morison's print shop to smithereens. Their destructive fun is soon to be spoiled by a gorilla with an ice pole.

SUPERFRIENDS VS. SUPERFRIENDS: Galloping gladiators! Fin-headed father and son fish-men, Bogan and Nerak, capture Aquaman in their toothy green submarine and use their invisible muscle control ray to force the Sea King to do battle with a giant two-headed turtle called Serpentine.

THE ANTIDOTE: An earthquake rocks a remote region of India, startling the area's abundant cobra population and sending the hissing hooded snakes slithering rapidly into a nearby village like a plague. Hundreds of villagers are bitten, and their supply of anti-venom is quickly exhausted. Their only hope is that Wonder Woman and Apache Chief can locate the hidden temple home of the giant king cobra, Cataro, and use his ample supply of venom to make a big enough batch of serum to save all of the suffering snakebite victims. Inuk-chuk!

And there's so much more! You'll learn how to make a rhythm instrument with dried beans and paper plates, and how to build a lovely model of a sailor's spyglass out of wooden thread spools and a drinking straw. You'll see Robin demonstrate the Heimlich maneuver on Batman; and Superman will show you how to treat a burn. You'll learn about the importance of a healthy diet and regular exercise, as well as the dangers of skateboarding in traffic and overloading your home's electrical outlets. Wonder Woman will even show you how to safely pet a stray dog! So don't delay, order your SuperFriends Hour DVD set today. Your health and safety may depend on it! And always remember the immortal words of Green Lantern, "The next time you're in a fix, try acting like a diamond. You'll come out shining under pressure."