Only the combined superpowers of Earth's greatest heroes can stop the unthinkable dangers that jeopardize humanity in these 16 episodes from the beloved animated TV series! Superman, Batman and Robin, Aquaman, Wonder Woman and Zan and Jayna battle villains from the darkest regions of outer space to the depths of the ocean in their fight for truth and justice. They face extraordinary perils at the core of the Earth and defy the laws of nature to shrink to microscopic size to defeat a radioactive monster. Even Dracula returns from the grave to challenge the Super Friends to a showdown! And with this exciting compilation that boasts cool extras, you can join the Super Friends for the ultimate victory celebration!
Warner Bros announced the release of
SuperFriends - The 2nd Season for
May 24. These are all 16 episodes from the 1978 run of the show featuring Zan & Jayna: The Wonder Twins! This 2 disc set (365 mins) carries a suggested retail price of $26.99, so expect to pay around $20 when Amazon and other e-tailers start taking orders. Running time is 365 minutes. The release will sport a full frame (1.33:1) transfer, and English mono audio, with English, French and Spanish subtitles. Two bonus features were announced:
- Pajama-Rama: Super Friends Retrospective - A group of pop culture enthusiasts and fun celebrities share their memories of the world's greatest team of '70's super-heroes, The Super Friends!
- The Ballad of Zan & Jayna - A wild and wacky music video celebrating the Wonder Twins, and of course, their pet primate Gleek!
We'll post the cover art when it's available.
Warner Bros will also lower the price of
Challenge of the Super Friends - The 1st Season from $29.98 to $26.99 on the same day, and you can purchase both sets together for a $53.92 SRP.
UPDATE:: For the confused among us - and we include ourselves in that number! - we have compiled a brief history of the various
Superfriends shows, mostly based on the Internet Movie DataBase (IMDB.com) and TVTome.com. We think this is pretty accurate, but if you know of an major errors, point us toward info that can back you up.
SHOW HISTORY:
1973 saw the original
Superfriends show, featuring the heros followed by non-powered kids Wendy & Marvin, and their pet Wonderdog. There are not too many cartoons in that series, and they were repeated quite a bit on and off until 1977's
All-New Superfirends Hour came along. That is the show where the tag-along teens were first replaced by the Wonder Twins, Zan & Jayna, and their space-monkey Gleek. In 1978, the show continued, retitled as simply
Superfriends. That season is the one which aired the episodes announced today for DVD release. At the same time,
Challenge of the Superfriends was running adjacent to this, featuring the episodes of the Justice League of America vs. The Legion of Doom. All 16 of *those* episodes are already on DVD in
Challenge of the Superfriends - The 1st Season. Since they call that "the first season" and the new title "the second season," we honestly can't tell if Warner means to ignore the 1973 Wendy/Marvin/Wonderdog installments totally.
Zan, Jayna, & Gleek continued in 1979's
World's Greatest Superfriends, with a few new episodes mixed with repeats of the older ones. 1980 saw more than 60 new shorts (under 10 minutes each in length) made featuring just the heroes, with no teenage sidekicks, and those were combined with old episodes into a new
Superfriends Hour show. But then that show was shortened to a half-hour for 1981-83 and the show went under various names, accompanied by maybe about two dozen more new shorts...some of which were never aired in the original rotation, but which aired later in syndication. Then, in 1984, ABC wanted to revitalize the series, and that's when they did
Super Friends: The Legendary Super Powers Show, using the new DC Comics name from the action figure lineup that was being marketed at the time. The cartoons mainly featured the heroes from the toy line, so now Cyborg (from the "Teen Titans" comics) and Firestorm (from "Firestorm: The Nuclear Man") were on the team. There were only 15 episodes produced under that name, and then they finished up the SuperFriends' TV run with
The Super Powers Team: Galactic Guardians. That 1985 show had more of the heroes who hadn't been seen the previous year, especially fan favorites who had mostly been missing since
Challenge, like Flash, Green Lantern, and Hawkman. There were approximately 10 episodes of that show.
