The All-New Super Friends Hour
From SuperFriends Wiki
| The All-New Super Friends Hour (1977) | |
| |
| Original Channel: | ABC |
| Originally Aired: | 1977 |
| Number of Episodes: | 15 regular plus 45 shorts equals 60 |
| Production | |
| Created by: | |
| Written by: | |
| Directed by: | |
| Creative Director: | |
| Produced by: | Hanna-Barbera |
| Executive Producers: | Joseph Barbera William Hanna |
| Chronology | |
| Previous Series: | |
| SuperFriends (1973) | |
| Next Series: | |
| Challenge of the SuperFriends (1978) | |
Contents |
[edit] Series Summary
Episode Lengths: 30 minute adventures, 7 minute shorts, 4 minute morality plays & 6 minute adventures
The fall 1976 – spring 1977 reruns of the Super Friends in a half-hour format proved successful enough to cause The All-New Super Friends Hour in the 8:00 AM timeslot. It ran from September 10, 1977 to December 16, 1977 the ABC Network. This was the big revival series that would help make the Super Friends a must watch series on Saturday mornings for the next few years. The fact that SUPERMAN: THE MOVIE was being filmed for release the following year, The NEW ADVENTURES OF WONDER WOMAN TV show with Lynda Carter airing Friday nights on the CBS Network, and The New Adventures of Batman, a new Filmation cartoon with the voices of Adam West and Burt Ward airing on CBS Saturday mornings, were probably some contributing factors to the Super Friends making their big comeback.
[edit] Notes
The hour differed from the previous show, in that it had a different format:
- First up were seven-minute adventures featuring two members of the main Super Friends’ team.
- Next were four-minute morality plays starring the Wonder Twins (who replaced the first series’ Wendy Harris, Marvin White, and Wonder Dog). These youthful trainees were aliens from Exxor: Zan (male) and Jayna (female) with their pet monkey Gleek. The twins also wore Teen Trouble Alerts allowing troubled teens to signal them.
- Next was a one half-hour adventure with all of the Super Friends.
- Last but not least were six-minute adventures teaming a Super Friend main team member with a guest Super Friend as they dealt with threats of nature or disasters such as volcanoes or storms. Several of the guest stars were three new network-created ethnic superheroes: Black Vulcan, Apache Chief, and Samurai.
- Along with these stories were several 30-second pro-social tips for the home viewing audience: safety tips, craft-building and magic trick tips, and decoders which gave kids the opportunity to guess a mystery work pertaining to that day’s half-hour adventure.
Two somewhat minor DC villains did appear in this series. Aquaman’s arch enemy, Black Manta, was watered down and simply called Manta in this series, and Hawkman’s arch enemy, the Gentleman Ghost turned up at the end of the season to battle the SuperFriends. In addition, the before mentioned, Filmation’s the The New Adventures of Batman, marked the first time any cartoon characters (namely Batman and Robin) ever appeared on 2 different networks on 2 different shows by 2 different companies, voiced over by 2 different pairs of actors at the same time. The SuperFriends also got a new narrator in the voice work of William (Bob) Woodson, who would narrate most of the SuperFriends series all the way to SuperFriends: The Legendary Super Powers Show of 1984. If you watch any episode of the SuperFriends between 1977 and 1984, you will definitely recognize that dramatic sounding narration.
More young children and teenagers than before tuned in, making The All-New Super Friends Hour a huge ratings success. The success prompted the ABC television network to plan a new and even more innovative series for the fall of 1978.
[edit] Intro and Cast
- Narrator – voiced by William Woodson (1977-1978)
[edit] Cast
- Superman – voiced by Danny Dark (1977)
- Batman – voiced by Olan Soule (1977)
- Robin – voiced by Casey Kasem (1977)
- Aquaman – voiced by Norman Alden (1977)
- Wonder Woman – voiced by Shannon Farnon (1977)
- Hawkman - voiced by Jack Angel (2 episodes, 1977)
- Wonder Twin, Jayna – voiced by Louise Williams (1977)
- Wonder Twin, Zan – voiced by Michael Bell (1977)
- Gleek – voiced by Michael Bell (1977)
[edit] Also starring
- Black Vulcan - voiced by Buster Jones (1977)
- Samurai - voiced by Jack Angel (1977)
- Apache Chief - voiced by Michael Rye (1977)
- Rima the Jungle Girl - voiced by Kathy Garver???? (2 episodes, 1977)
[edit] DVD / Media info
A two-part DVD set of all the series is available through Amazon. They are re-mastered, uncut and complete with their PSA and decoder segments, which were mostly edited out of syndication.
- Part 1: The All-New Superfriends Hour: Season One, Vol. 1 (DVD - 2008)
- Part 2: The All-New Superfriends Hour: Season One, Vol. 2 (DVD - 2009)
[edit] Episode List:
| Previous Series: SuperFriends (1973) | Next Series: new SuperFriends / Challenge of the SuperFriends (1978) |
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