Hanna Barbera take a lot of crap for making generations worth of horrible cartoons. The usual excuse ain’t that bad. Seems they had once been Academy Award winning directors of the MGM Cartoon Division. They had dozens of employees, a huge yearly budget, and the respect of the world; and then came television… Suddenly the studios didn’t see much use shelling out so much money on creating quality cartoon to lure children into the theatres when nobody was going to the movies any more because of the advent of the boob tube. Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera were stuck. They had a huge overhead, employees that were dependent on them and no idea what to do, until it occurred to them to go over to enemy. If TV had destroyed their livelihood that TV could give them a new one. Unfortunately, TV was never going to give them the same size budget, so the gold standard of animation started churning out the cheapest possible animation. Their excuse was that now, they could focus on story and character and so Yogi Bear, Huckleberry Hound, Snagglepus, Touche Turtle, Quickdraw McGraw. Cheap cartoons for an animation starved generation of Baby Boomers. In the 60’s they branched out to primetime with their “Honeymooners” rip off “The Flintstones” and then “The Je”sons". Around the same time they hired Alex Toth came over from comic books and strips to do some character design. Created was the amazing “Johnny Quest”, the greatest animated series ever.

In the mid-60’s both Marvel and DC comics impinged on the Hanna Barbera turf by licensing out their characters for Saturday Morning Cartoons. Suddenly the HB juggernaut was on the ropes and so they returned to Toth and asked him to design a bunch of super-heroes for cartoon series. Space Ghost, the Herculoids (my personal favorite”, Dino-boy, and also “Birdman and the Galaxy Trio”. For kids like me that grew up with these series, they were the haunting rhythms that traced around the memories of all of our lives.

On the surface every one of the characters created by Toth were knock-offs of already existing comic book characters; Space Ghost was “Green Lantern”, Birdman was “Hawkman”, The Galaxy Trio was “the Fantastic Four”; yadda yadda, yadda… They were packaged together in pairs and then three cartoons were linked together to make up a half hour show. Three 71/2 minute cartoons, in the Birdman series they were always a Birdman, Galaxy Trio, Birdman combination. The animation is cheap, the music is great, but incredibly repetitive, and the storylines, well, the storylines are like the worst Gold Key Comic Books you’ve ever read. In other words they’re crap. Even the set-ups are so basic that I was immediately distracted by all the untapped story potential. After the third episode, my brain actually began to hurt. I mean, I can see how they would be exciting to a 5-8 year old boy, but after that any enjoyment that you get from the series is just pure nostalgia.

For that reason, I can’t recommend the set.

VISUAL/AUDIO

They’re 60’s cartoons and they look like 60’s cartoons…

SPECIAL FEATURES

A cute couple documentaries; one about the creation of the character of Birdman and another about the contributions of Alex Toth to the Hanna-Barbera stable. Both are really short and both were nice to watch, but both left you wanting a little more. More disappointing than intriguing…

FINAL WORDS

My wife isn’t from the United States and really doesn’t understand why I collection comic books, but at the same time, the very first time I mentioned by collection she asked if I knew who Birdman was. Seems she had a vague memory of the series as a girl and even went so far as to do the signature “Biiiiirdmaaaan” cry. One year when I dragged her to the comic book convention she saw a Birdman action figure and bought it. It now sits in my daughter’s bedroom and she also can do the cry.

Obviously this is why I asked to be given the opportunity to review this set and why I’m typing this now. Even though I can’t recommend the series, I think that this story does say a little bit about the staying power of the character…

I’m gone…