Powered by eBay Turbo Lister
The free listing tool. List your items fast and easy and manage your active items.
WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW;
Customer Service:
Super Friends is an American animated television series about a team of superheroes, which ran from 1973 to 1986 on ABC as part of its Saturday morning cartoon lineup. It was produced by Hanna-Barbera and was based on the Justice League of America (JLA) and associated comic book characters published by DC Comics.
The name of the program (and the JLA members featured with the Super Friends) have been variously represented (as Super Friends and Challenge of the Super Friends, for example) at different points in its broadcast history. There were a total of 109 episodes and two backdoor-pilot episodes of The New Scooby-Doo Movies, with Batman and Robin appearing in "The Dynamic Scooby-Doo Affair" and "The Caped Crusader Caper."
produced by Filmation, and voice talent from these prior programs was brought in to work on the new show. Shortly before the Super Friends series was developed, Superman and Wonder Woman also guest-starred in two episodes of The Brady Kids, while Batman and Robin appeared in two episodes of The New Scooby-Doo Movies.
In addition to the superheroes, a trio of sidekicks was introduced, each of whom were new characters not drawn from the comic books: Wendy and Marvin (voiced by Sherri Alberoni and Frank Welker) and Wonder Dog (also voiced by Frank Welker), none of whom had any special abilities (save the dog's unexplained ability to reason and "talk"). Inspired by the Scooby-Doo gang, the trio—or at least its human members—were depicted as detectives and/or superheroes-in-training.
Each episode began with the heroes responding to an emergency detected by the massive TroubAlert computer in the Hall of Justice, which served as the headquarters of the team. Colonel Wilcox, a U.S. Army official, was a recurring character who would act as a government liaison with the Super Friends during emergencies. Colonel Wilcox was voiced by John Stephenson. Conflicts were usually resolved with the antagonists persuaded to adapt more reasonable methods to achieve their aims (with the assistance of the heroes). Natural disasters triggered by human (or alien) activity were often shown, and environmental themes featured strongly in the program. Three other DC Comics superheroes were featured as guest stars during this season: the Flash, Plastic Man, and Green Arrow.
This first run of Super Friends, consisting of 16 one-hour episodes which were rerun several times, concluded on August 24, 1974. At this point, the series was cancelled. However, interest in superheroes among ABC's prime-time viewers (with the success of The Six Million Dollar Man and the live-action Wonder Woman series) caused the network to revive Super Friends.[9] The original 16 episodes of the series were rebroadcast as a mid-season replacement, running from February 7, 1976, to September 3, 1977.[9] These episodes were edited into half-hour versions. At the same time DC Comics published a Super Friends comic, which used Wendy and Marvin from issue #1 (Nov 1976) to #6 (Aug. 1977). In the meantime, Hanna-Barbera began production on a revamped version of the show.The first segment of the program featured the established group of heroes: Superman, Batman and Robin, Aquaman, Wonder Woman, the Wonder Twins and Gleek. They were rerun with intro from the All-New Super Friends Hour when in syndication in the early 1980s, but they are seldom seen in syndication since then.
The second half-hour of the show introduced the Legion of Doom, a team of 13 recurring foes who are the Super Friends' worst enemies. They used a swamp-based mechanical flying headquarters, the Hall of Doom (resembling the helmet of Darth Vader), as a contrast to the Super Friends' gleaming Hall of Justice. A total 16 episodes were produced.
Additional heroes who had previously appeared as guest stars were added to the roster as well, to make a total of 11. These included The Flash, Green Lantern and Hawkman from DC Comics and three Hanna-Barbera creations: Black Vulcan, Apache Chief, andSamurai. Despite the Riddler showing a set of playing cards with (from left to right) Gleek, Zan, Aquaman, Wonder Woman, Robin, Batman, and Superman (which he then burns to ashes in his introduction in "Wanted: The Super Friends"), the Wonder Twins and Gleek did not appear in Challenge. Enthusiasts have expressed the view that the storylines for the Challenge episodes were the Super Friends era's best portrayal of the DC heroes.[citation needed]
The Challenge of the Super Friends segment was expanded to 90 minutes mid-season, with reruns of earlier episodes filling out the last half-hour.[10]
Mego was founded in 1954 by D. David Abrams and Madeline Abrams. The company thrived in the 1950s and early 1960s as an importer of dime store toys,until the rising cost of newspaper advertising forced Mego to change its business model. In 1971, the Abrams' son Martin, a recent business school graduate, was named company president.
Under Martin Abrams' direction, the company shifted its production to action figures with interchangeable bodies. Generic bodies could be mass-produced and different figures created by interposing different heads and costumes on them.Mego constructed their figures primarily in an 8-inch (200 mm) scale. Sixty percent of their products were manufactured in Hong Kong.
In 1972 Mego secured the licenses to create toys for both National Periodical Publications (DC Comics) and Marvel Comics. The popularity of this line of 8" figures — dubbed "The World's Greatest Super Heroes" — created the standard action figure scale for the 1970s.
Mego began to purchase the license rights of motion pictures, television programs, and comic books, eventually producing action figure lines for Planet of the Apes, Star Trek, and the Wizard of Oz. Mego also obtained licenses from Edgar Rice Burroughs for his creations, such as Tarzan.
Beginning in 1974 Mego released the Planet of the Apes action figures, the first such toys sold as film tie-ins. 1974 also saw the release of figures from Star Trek: The Original Series, which was steadily gaining fandom in syndication. The Planet of the Apes and Star Trek figures proved popular and inspired the rise of action figure series based on popular culture franchises.
During this period, Mego was known for the lavish parties the company threw at the annual New York American International Toy Fair. In 1975, Mego launched its Wizard of Oz film dolls with a gala whose special guests were every surviving member of the film's main cast. Mego's party at the Waldorf-Astoria with Sonny and Cher introducing their dolls drew a thousand people.Both dolls were formally unveiled on The Mike Douglas Show.The Cher doll was the number-1-selling doll in 1976,helping to make Mego the sixth-ranked American toy manufacturer, based on retail sales.
In 1976, Martin Abrams hashed out a deal with the Japanese toy manufacturer Takara to bring their popular lucite 3" fully articulated Microman figures to the United States under the name "Micronauts." David Abrams, meanwhile, rejected a deal to license toys for the upcoming motion picture Star Wars, reasoning that Mego would go bankrupt if they made toys of every "flash-in-the-pan" sci-fi B movie that came along. This decision seemed of little consequence to Mego at first, because the Micronauts figures initially sold well, earning the company more than $30 million at their peak.On the other hand, the Star Wars film was extremely popular and competitor Kenner Products sold substantial numbers of Star Wars action figures.
Following Star Wars' huge cultural impact, and Kenner's great success with its action figure line, Mego negotiated licenses for the manufacturing rights to a host of science fiction motion pictures and television shows, including Moonraker, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, The Black Hole, and Star Trek: The Motion Picture. Although these lines of Mego figures were of much higher quality than Kenner's 12" Star Warsfigures, none were as successful.The widespread success of Kenner's Star Wars 3-3/4" toy line soon made the newer, smaller size the industry standard, shifting sales away from the 8" standard popularized by Mego.
In the late 1970s, Mego was earning about $100 million in sales.Around this time, Mego began shifting their focus toward electronic toys like the 2-XL toy robot and the Fabulous Fred hand-held game player, but sales were not commemsurate with the company's investment, and Mego went deeply into debt.In the fiscal years 1980 and 1981, Mego reported combined losses of $40 million.In fiscal year 1982, the company reported losses of between $18 and $20 million.
In February 1982 the remaining staff was let go and the Mego offices were closed. On June 14, 1982, Mego filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy; the company officially went under in 1983.
In 1986, Martin Abrams co-founded Abrams Gentile Entertainment (AGE),in order to retain and manage Mego’s licensing contracts, rights and deals. In October 1995 AGE attempted to reclaim the Mego trademark.In March 2002, they abandoned the effort.In early 2009, Martin Abrams announced that AGE had reclaimed the rights to the name Mego;no specific future plans for Mego products have been disclosed to date.
