The second last of the popular Hanna-Barbera Super Friends cartoons, Super Friends: The Legendary Super Powers Show wasn't the best of the lot but it did enjoy some serious success and helped to sell a boat load of toys based on the characters from the show.

What makes Super Friends: The Legendary Super Powers Show stand out? Well, in addition to the regular line up of Superman, Wonder Woman, Batman and Robin, and Green Lantern the show also brought in a few new characters such as Firestorm - The Nuclear Man and more ethnic additions such as the native Chief Apache, the Japanese Samurai, the African-American Black Vulcan and the Hispanic El Dorado. Oddly enough, though Aquaman and The Flash show up in the show's opening credits, they don't appear in a single one of the episodes.

Also work noting here are the villains. Darkseid, the sinister Lord of Apokalips. Darkseid was aided by Kalibak and Desaad, and all the primary villains (who are definitely darker than many of the villains fought in the earlier incarnations of the show) were taken from Jack Kirby's trippy DC Fourth World comics. This time around, Brainiac has also been changed from the green-skinned egghead that was seen earlier into a spooky looking cyborg guy and Lex Luthor has a suit of robotic battle armor that allows him to wreak destruction wherever he goes.

Also worth noting is the voice work. Super Friends: The Legendary Super Powers Show not only featured Casey Kasem as Robin but it also featured the one and only Adam West as Batman! West and Kasem do seem to be having fun with the material, hamming it up as best they can whenever the opportunity arises.

The plots don't differ much from episode to episode and the heroes spend most of their time trying to stop Darkseid who is bound and determined to destroy them once and for all so that he and his evil cronies can take over the planet and enslave mankind. A few other, minor villains periodically pop up and cause problems, Mr. Mxyzptlk for one, but by and large the majority of the episodes concentrate on Darkseid with Brainiac and Lex coming in second and third. While this gets repetitive fast, Darkseid does make for a neat foe and often times he's cooler than the heroes we're supposed to be rooting for in the first place.

By today's standards the quality of the animation may seem a bit crude and even compared to older cartoons the visuals are a little on the rough side. That said, the series is certainly not without its own naïve charm though much of that charm comes not from the quality of the series so much as the nostalgia that many of us who remember this series from our younger days will no doubt feel upon revisiting the material as adults. Many of the plots are overly simplisitc but considering the series was geared towards a younger audience this is to be expected to a certain extent. The show remains a good bit of fun even if it isn't the best example of how good super hero cartoons can be.

1 - The Bride Of Darkseid (Part I)
2 - The Bride Of Darkseid (Part II)
3 - The Case Of The Dreadful Dolls
4 - The Case Of The Shrinking Super Friends
5 - The Curator
6 - Darkseid's Golden Trap (Part I)
7 - Darkseid's Golden Trap (Part II)
8 - The Island Of The Dinasoids
9 - The Mask Of Mystery
10 - Mr. Mxyzptlk And The Magic Lamp
11 - No Honor Among Super-Thieves
12 - Reflections In Crime
13 - The Royal Ruse
14 - Super Brat
15 - The Wrath Of Brainiac
16 - The Village Of Lost Souls

Video:

The 1.33.1 fullframe aspect ratio in which the series is presented is correct for this show and the quality of the picture isn't bad at all. There's a bit of softness in some scenes and some really minor print damage in a couple of spots but if you're not looking for it then it's unlikely that you'll notice it in the first place. Detail is as good as you'd expect from an older cartoon series and color reproduction is also fairly strong. There are no problems with mpeg compression artifacts and only some light edge enhancement can be seen.