Argue with me at your own peril, but cartoon #20 is the best animated Spiderman series ever. Once you saw Spidey climbing across your screen, you knew you were in for thirty minutes of Marvel merryment.



Spiderman and His Amazing Friends came to children's television sets in the fall of 1981 courtesy of NBC. It was meant to be a follow up to the 1981's Spiderman series, a show which has a similar start to it's opening, but no mention of any amazing friends. Truth be told, I had no knowledge of this prior series until it appeared on Disney+. To be fair, I was 3 when it originally aired and I don't recall ever seeing it in reruns while Amazing Friends ran for years later on various channels.

And the greatest gift Amazing Friends gave us was, of course, Videoman, I mean, Firestar. And to think that almost didn't happen. The original plan for the show was to have the Human Torch, but the character was unavialble at the time, similarly to 1978's The New Fantastic Four TV show that replaced Johnny with HERBIE because the character's rights were apparently tied to a television movie by Universal Studios that never actually happened. So Johnny was replaced by a new character named Angelica Jones, and the rest, as they say, is history. Various names were tossed about for the character including Firefly, Heatwave, and Starblaze. The character proved to be so popular that she would eventually force her way into the comic Marvel Universe by way of 1985's Uncanny X-men 193. A perennial top-10 want in the Fwoosh polls until her Marvel Legends figure was finally released, Firestar has gone on to be a founding member of the New Warriors and a valuable member of the Avengers.



I know, I know, but isn't the 1990's Spiderman Animated Series really the best Spiderman series ever? Eh, it's hard to reconcile that with this...



Don't break my wings,
my achy breaky wings,
I just don't think they'd understand...



"A mullet? Noooooooooooooooooooo!"

To this day it's a wonder comics survived the xtreme 90s full of mullets and soul patches and pouches and over-compensating firearms, but I digress. How does Rob Leifeld still get work? Okay, now I really digress. Honest.

Spiderman and His Amazing Friends was everything a child of the day could hope for in a superhero cartoon. It had Spidey voiced by Dan Gilvezan (who would later voice Bumblebee on the Transformers and Cooler on Pound Puppies and it always made me marvel that Spidey and Cooler sounded the same!), great villains, and amazing superhero guest stars...it all started with the Triumph of the Green Goblin (an amazing costume party--LOOK! There's Medusa!) and everything else after was just ice cream on top of ice cream. One week you might have the Uncanny X-men and the next it might be a weirdly colored Black Knight, but it was Black Knight nonetheless!



Nothing says Black Knight like a giant yellow helmet, great work animation team!

Plus, season two added the voice of Stan Lee himself to narrate episodes. Did the 90s cartoon have that? Did it? I rest my case, your honor.

Ok, so you're not quite convinced? I give you...



Videoman was originally created by Electro using electronic data from a video arcade (it's science!) but once Electro was defeated, and Videoman contained inside an arcade console, the console was sent to the landfill where it was struck by lightning and Videoman would live again! Only to be defeated once more. But in season 3, Farncis Byte was in an arcade when an explosion granted him the ability to transform into Videoman and thus, Videoman lived again again! Only this time VD (maybe not the best nickname?) would help Spidey, and he'd go on to join the X-men.

"But wait, if an explosion gave him his powers, he's not a mutant, how could he join the X-men?"

Shutup, never question Videoman!



But that's not all, SAHAF also gave us great characters like Iceman's half sister, Lightwave!



Arachnoid!



Tharok, I mean, Cyberiad!



Mr. Frump



And best of all, Ms. Lion!



Despite airing three season, Spiderman and His Amazing Friends only clocks in at 24 episodes (season 2 was only 3 episodes eachan origin of one of the main characters) but it would air for two more seasons on Saturday mornings as straight reruns but you'd never hear me complain!

Seriously, though. Whereas shows like the Superfriends gave us some villains with the Legion of Doom, and other superhero shows were just godawful in name only messes like The Thing, Spiderman and His Amazing Friends was like the Marvel Team-Up of television, each week was another great guest appearance by a hero and/or Marvel villain...

Captain America, Thor, Namor, Sunfire, Doctor Strange, Shanna, Iron Man, Daredevil, and the freakin' X-men with Aussie Wolverine!



And villains! Oh, sweet Yancy Street, the villains! Green Goblin, Red Skull, the Kingpin, Magneto and the Brotherhood of EVil Mutants, the unstoppable, unpantswearable Juggernaut, Scorpion, Shocker, the Beetle, Swarm, and even Dracula and Frankentstein!

And they somehow did this in 24 episodes (take that, Jack Bauer!).

If you were a kid, and you wanted true to comic portrayal of superheroes, well...



Unless you wanted MJ. Mary Jane Watson never appeared on screen (though Firestar did bare an uncanny resemblance!)

I could go on and on about this show and how great it is but I think most of us have seen it, and if you haven't, and you happend to have Disney+, then you're in luck, my friend, because you can see the whole series there. Well, almost the whole series, because the Red Skull episode is unavailable because in our current climate we can't see a cartoon that has a depiction of HItler because we're all fragile or something. Mean tweets!

But go watch the rest of the series. I still do on occassion!

packerbacker180 wrote:Argue with me at your own peril, but cartoon #20 is the best animated Spiderman series ever. Once you saw Spidey climbing across your screen, you knew you were in for thirty minutes of Marvel merryment.

The BEST Spider-Man cartoon hands down for me, it was the best part of my Saturday morning along with the biggest bowl of cereal I could make!!! Stan Lee intro's and narratives along with a guest hero in practically every episode not to mention some more lesser used characters by today's standards. I have the Marvel Universe 3 pack of Spidey and his Amazing friends and now for Marvel Legends I have Firestar and Iceman to go along with my Retro Legends Spider-Man. whenever I look at them I hear "Spider-Friends, GO FOR IT!" in my head... good times with good friends.

I am still trying to formulate an articulated, flat version of Videoman in my head.

Someday...someday....

Man, I loved 90s Spidey and it blew my mind at the time that Hobgoblin was Joker and Luke Skywalker.

Hobgoblin was Ned Leeds.

Hey Mister Wilson, cartoon #21 comes to us from DIC in 1986...



Dennis the Menace began as a comic strip by Hank Ketcham and then came to tv in 1959 as asitcom and aired for four seasons until Jay North, who played Dennis, got a little too old for the part and the show was cancelled. That show was on Nick at Nite back in the day but it wasn't something watched.

But the cartoon aired weekday mornings so it was kind of the cereal before school show for a year or two, so it was something I watched often.

Dennis the Menace was about a boy name Dennis Mitchell who often got into escapades with other neighborhood kids often to the exaperation his neighbor, Mr. Wilson, who often times called out to him with a "Hey, Mr. Wilson!", leading to a sudden look of dread upon the neighbors face for fear of what trouble was to come.



No, that wasn't the cartoon, that was actually from the vastly underrated show, The Critic.



Interestingly enough, the 1986 cartoon lasted two season, but while the first season aired weekdays in syndication, the second season aired Saturday mornings on CBS. I had to double check this because I honestly have no memeory of it being on Saturday mornings, but there it was at 11:30 on CBS complete with a new intro I have no recollection of. But the Flinstone KIds were on ABC at the same time, so if by some chance I was still in the house at that time, I was probably watching ABC (or playing video games). In fact, we had just moved into our new house in August of '88, so having gone from the city to the suburbs, chances are I was already outside by then.

Goodbye, city life!



But for season one at least, the voice of Dennis' father, Mr. Wilson, and Ruff the dog were done by none other than Phi Hartman best known for his role as Captain Carl on Pee Wee's Playhouse...



Waitaminute, I don't think that aired on Saturday mornings. Oops. Man, I miss Phil Hartman. Too soon, gone too soon.



Anywho <sniffle sniffle>, Dennis was voiced by Brennan Thicke, son of Mr. Seaver himself, Alan Thicke (ok, he's another good thing to come from Canada, eh. Show me that smile again.) and the show ran for 78 total episodes (65 in syndication, 13 on CBS) and usually contained two to three short stories to each show involving Dennis and one or more of his friends getting into all sorts of adventures. For the time it was a pretty innocous show, but decent enough to have on while getting ready for school. Looking back, I see a lot of similarities between it and Clarence, a show I'll get to later on in this sequence, so I'm curious if it was an influence on the creators of Clarence though I couldn't find any mention of it in a quick search.



You won't find Dennis the Menace amongst my favorite shows, but it was decent enough to where, like the previously discusses Fantastic Max (nice callback!), I didn't mind watching it if no other cartoons were on. To think back then that was a concern, whereas now Spongebob is probably on somewhere 24 hours a day and there's 10+ channels that air mostly cartoons.



Though I am glad to see Looney Tunes, Pink Panther, Tom and Jerry, etc. coming back locally in the mornings on a great show called Toon in with Me.



There was also a live action movie of Dennis the Menace in 1993, and you'd think with Walter Mathau and Lea Thompson involved it would be decent, but you'd be wrong. But hey, Grumpy Old Men came out the same year so we can give ol' Buttermaker a pass. Or maybe at the age of 15 I just wasn't the target audience. Maybe.





Amazingly enough, you can get the entire 78 episode series of Dennis the Menace on Amazon for the low low pirce of $13! Order now and we'll throw in absolutely nothing for free, but you won't have to pay a separate processing and handling fee.

Act now!

RIP John Paragon, best known for his role as Jambi the Genie and the voice of Pterri the Pterodactyl on Pee Wee's Playhouse. Paragon came up with the Groundlings in LA alongside Paul Ruebens and Phil Hartman.



Mekka lekka hi mekka hiney ho. Mekka lekka hi mekka chiney ho.

Hellooo Mr. Wilson!

What now, Dennis?

If you weren't alive, it's hard to fathom just how big a star Lawrence Tureaud was in the early 80's. Working as a body guard and a bouncer, Tureaud took part in several tough-man competitions before getting his big break while appearing on NBC's "America's Toughest Bouncer" competition. Tureaud would go on to appear in a box office smash, a Nielsen's television ratings success, as well as guest starring in several popular shows of the day. Unbelievably, he would also headline the first two WrestleManias and even had his own cereal! But you might just know Lawrence Tureaud by a different name...



While appearing on NBC's tough-man competition, Mr. T was spotted by Sylvester Stallone and brought on for what was originally intended to by a minor role in Rocky III, but eventually grew into T being the main protagnist of the film, Clubber Lang.



Mr. T would go on to appear on Silver Spoons and Diff'rent Strokes...




...before landing the role of Sergeant Bosco "B.A." Baracus on the A-Team. If you have youtube, if no one else is bothering you, and if you search for it....maybe you can watch the intro to...The A-Team! Or just click below. You're welcome.



I ain't getting on no plane!

This is all well and good, you say, but what does any of this have to do with cartoons? Well, I'm glad you asked. I pity the fool who's never seen cartoon #22 on our list that could only simply be titled...



Mister T debuted on NBC in the fall of 1983 and would go on to air 3 season totalling 30 episodes. What does Mr. T have to do with gymnastics? Hell if I know, but it couldn't possibly be a simple coincidence that this show debuted in 1983 and just one year later Mary Lou Retton became the first American female gymnast to bring home the gold medal for all-around at the 1984 Summer Olympics. Or maybe it was. "Mister T." told the story of Mr. T as he travelled the world as a gymnastics coach/bus driver and helped solve mysteries such as "The Hundred Year-old Mystery", the "Ninja Mystery", and "Mystery of the Panthermen" which had nothing to do with Huey Newton and Bobby Seale. Surprisingly this show was produced not by Hanna-Barbera, but by Ruby-Spears (if it were Hanna-Barbera one would have to assume Bulldozer the dog would be able to talk, probably stand on his hind legs, and break the fourth wall). Alongside Mr. T were his students Jeff Wilson, Robin O'Neill, Woody Daniels (voiced by Phil Lamarr), Kim Nakamura, Skye Redfern, Garcia Lopez, Vince D'Amato, and Courtney Howard, thereby covering just about every ethnic background you can think of (decades before ABC appeared to attempt the same feat with their primetime comedy lineup), and Robin's little brother Spike, who sought to culturally appropriate Mr. T's heritage.



Hell, they even had their own cereal!



Is that not the worst commercial ever? If I weren't alive back then and didn't recall actually eating the cereal I would swear that was a spoof because that song has to be the most generic song ever written. That sounds straight out of Southpark. Tell me that's not Trey Parker's voice.

And even that sugary goodness made guest appearances in pop culture!



I pity the fool who don't love Pee Wee's Big Adventure. Tell 'em Large Marge sent ya!

Mr. T became a cultural tour de force in the 80's even garnering his own Dean Martin Celebrity Roast. Alongside Hulk Hogan he would main event the first ever WrestleMania as they faced Rowdy Roddy Piper and Paul Orndorff, and the following year he'd box Piper as the main event of part one (the show was broekn up into three separate cities). Heck, in 1983 Mr. T even appeared at the White House as that jolly old not-so-fat elf himself...





So yeah, back then Mr. T was like Chickenman (he's everywhere, he's everywhere).

But back to the cartoon, it was decent enough while also being nothing to write home about. Similar to the dreadful ProStars, Mister T would begin with a live action Mr. T talking about a problem kids might have, and then the cartoon, and then Mr. T again to discuss the moral or lesson of the episode.



While kids today might roll their eyes at such things, it was pretty prevalent back then. Yeah, parents might complain that many cartoons were just toy commercials, but we also had messages like this, like in GI Joe, or even segments like One to Grow On or the ABC After School Specials, so I think we had a good balance. Oh, and Mr. T would like you to treat your mother right.



Mr. T's motivational VHS Be Somebody...Or Be Somebody's Fool would feature segments on various topics facing children such as anger, friendship, peer pressure, roots, and shyness, and included works by young artists suchs Ice-T (no relation), Martika (1988 hit song "Toy Soldiers"), New Edition, Shanice("I Love Your Smile"), and Stacy Ferguson ( better known these days as Fergie).

The Mister T cartoon would later be wonderfully spoofed in an episode of Saturday Night Live back when SNL was actually funny.



But enough jibber jabber, Mr. T's popularity would ebb and wain, but he's made a bit of a comeback in recent years with voice work in the Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs films, a 2017 member of Dancing with the Stars, and AA-Team commercials for Aaron's stores. But you can find episodes of Mister T on DVD and as part of the 80's Cartoon DVD collection. And you better sucka, you wouldn't want to upset T.