The Shmoogenheim Shmooseum!

Shmoos exploded! Crazes come and go and some are more explosive and more lasting, but all fade in time. Shmoos were big, much bigger than Al Capp ever imagined, but not so much that he was not able to take advantage of the massive public interest in the pudgy little somewhat phallic critters.

He had gone independent in the nick of time. Taking Li'l Abner away from the syndicate, he and his brothers formed their own company to handle the marketing, and then came the Shmoos and life was good Capp clan indeed.

Here are just some of the many many many Shmoo items I've gathered up from across the wilderness of the internet. 

The Shmoos made a come back in the late 70's when Hanna-Barbera took a turn a trying to make them into TV stars on The New Shmoo Show.  He even went to Bedrock for a time. Weird. 

And that's "Shmoo"  business everybody. This way to the Egress as P.T. Barnum once directed.

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The Super Powers Team - Galactic Guardians 1985-1986!

This series broke the mold, almost literally as all of the character designs done by Alex Toth so many years before were ejected in favor of new ones with a nod to DC artist Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez, who at the time was giving all of the DCU a facelift with sleek modern looking idealistic presentations. Also gone were the Wonder Twins, replaced to some extent by the buddy team of Firestorm and new addition Cyborg. Much is made of Cyborg's reluctance to join the League, but within a few episodes he's on board and in most all the stories.

Those stories focused even more on Apokolips and the schemes of Darkseid and his minions. Parademons and fire pits create a dark threatening world and it takes a somewhat more determined and gritty batch of "Super Powers" (no longer called "Friends") to dispatch these threats. These shows are meant to do two things, entertain as cartoons and to promote the toy line from Kenner and to that end we get attacks on the team from such as Scarecrow and the Penguin. There's a nifty variation of the ever-changing Royal Flush Gang led by the Joker and Lex Luthor is around in his armored super-suit.

Good stuff, a cartoon fit for its time but also the end of the line for the "Super Friends". The Justice League of America would not find a way onto the small scree for many years until Cartoon Network decided they wanted to see what might be done with them.

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Super Friends The Legendary Super Powers Show 1984-1985!

Super Friends Challenge of the Super Powers marks a major shift in the focus and tone of the series as a new Kenner toyline is now part and parcel of the storytelling decisions. It does serve to give the stories a bit more dramatic heft, most of that delivered by the appearance of new villainy.

Darkseid and his minions Kalibak and Desaad are welcome additions to the rogues gallery of the Super Friends. Darkseid here is not quite the debased dictator of his comic book appearances, but the gravity of his presence does give his threats a grimness heretofore unseen in the series. He wants Wonder Woman as his bride and queen and that is running story through the season. He's not the only villain the team faces as a new deadlier Brainiac is also on hand.

But the big shift is the addition of Firestorm, a young hero who utterly changes the way the team functions. The Wonder Twins are still around but while Firestorm is a bit goofy at times, he's not just comedy relief as had been Gleek. With the ethnic heroes Apache Chief, El Dorado, Black Vulcan and Samuari sill very much in evidence the show becomes a really nifty version of the Justice League.

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Super Friends - The Lost Episodes 1983-1984!

Apparently these episodes never aired during the original run of the Super Friends shows, but were kept back and showed up later when the Super Friends show became a staple of syndication and such. Not much change really here, more of the utterly fantastic, more of the focus on outer space and wild sci-fi themes. The Legion of Doom returns in small ways with several stories featuring them, some in very creative ways. The influence of the Superman movies is felt in the look of the Fortress of Solitude as well as the appearance of some Phantom Zone baddies. Actually one gets a feeling sometimes that the series has taken a bit of a  "World's Finest" quality with Batman and Superman often the focus of the stories. Aquaman continues his fade appearing only rarely.

One character who is a solid performer season after season though is the Fifth Dimensional imp Mr. Mxyzptlk whose penchant for zany and somewhat less lethal threats is rather ideal for the tone of a this more light-hearted version of the League.

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Super Friends 1980-1983!

These seasons of Super Friends are all about bombastic adventure. Both years saw some new adventures added, still in the classic vein established upon the arrival of the Super Twins. But increasingly the adventures seem to deal with outer space threats, which is a natural setting for Superman and even Wonder Woman, but hardly so for Batman and Robin. The Dynamic Duo seem to spend most of their time in these adventures patrolling the solar system on the alert for all sorts of threats. Also getting less and less attention is Aquaman. The show had done a really good job of getting him screen time early on but the focus definitely shifts to the "Trinity" in these cartoons. That is when they don't feature the characters created just for the the Hanna-Barbera shows such as Samurai, Black Vulcan, Apache Chief and a new addition, the Hispanic El Dorado.

Perhaps emblematic of the wild and crazy nature of the storytelling is the episode in which Superman discovers a Black Hole (lots of nods to movies of the era too) and ends up with the Earth inside it. But the Man of Steel in a flabbergasting moment is able to push the entire planet out of the grim vastness. This kind of impossible power is hokey and fun, but makes Superman utterly invincible. Adherence to science is not something I expect in a classic superhero story but there have to be imaginative limits or it becomes whimsy and loses its dramatic edge. These cartoons verge on that narrative weakness.

Still and all they fun, because seeing comic books get off the page and come to life, even animated life, is always fun.

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The Banana Splats!

There always seems to be a backlog of movies around here waiting for me to get the time or to get into the proper mood to completely enjoy them. One such is The Banana Splits Movie, a Halloween offering I'm just now clearing off the DVR. I was actually too old to thoroughly grok the Banana Splits who showed up on TV in 1968 following on the offbeat popularity of rock group / TV shows like The Monkees and The Archies.

The Banana Splits are a pop-rock band made up of Snorky an elephant, Fleagle a dog, Drooper a lion and Bingo an ape. Now none of these anthropromorphic critters is going to found in the wild, but such a conglomeration does suggest something about the weirdness of the time. Both Hanna-Barbera and Sid and Marty Krofft are responsible for this oddball band, with the latter designing them and the former using their antics as the frames for other shows, some live-action cliffhangers and others animated. The Banana Splits Adventure Hour was more than the faux critters seen above, and an interesting attempt to showcase some slightly different storytelling.

But that's not what's going on here. This is a horror movie and the setting is "Taft Studios" where the last episode of The Banana Splits Show is being recorded for broadcast in the dingiest and most forlorn looking studio you can imagine. Our doughty protagonist, a youngster who loves the Splits goes to the taping with his family and all too soon the deadly mayhem gets underway. The Splits are actually highly refined robots and something in their programming or perhaps the news that the show is being cancelled causes them to go "Westworld" on the unfortunates who came to see the show.

This is tagged as a horror-comedy and I see that, but for my money there's too much gore and a little too much blood, and not enough pure terror and it really could use a bit more humor. There are some neat twists, but the body count is too high for the giggles to linger erupt much or linger long, and the fact that really young kids are threatened and not the usual cadre of annoying teens makes this outing a little hard to watch in places.

But it was nice to see the old gang again, though I am very glad it was not in person.

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The World's Greatest Super Friends 1979 -1980!

The World's Greatest Super Friends is the title of season four and to my eye it's the season in which the show begins to jump the shark just a bit, though it does it with some style and aplomb. We have longer episodes again and each one seems to have a specific inspiration. Lex Luthor returns, this time with a partner named "Orville" who is clearly inspired by Ned Beatty's "Otis" from the Superman movie, and Luthor's lair seems to owe a nod to that film as well.

(The Super Enemies)

The shows feature one with a distinct Arabian Nights feel, another borrowing from Tolkien, another in which they visit Oz, and yet another set in a variation of Camelot. The team meets up with Frankenstein's monster as well. My favorite episode provides a multi-dimensional encounter with an evil version of the Justice League dubbed the "Super Enemies". I'm a huge fan of the Crime Syndicate of America, and it was nifty to see this Hanna-Barbara variation on that classic theme.

We are getting fewer episodes each season to freshen what already exists and as I said these tales are longer. I'll take a look at the fifth and sixth seasons together next weekend as well glimpse what are dubbed "The Lost Episodes". One thing about the Super Friends I've noticed is that the show only ever gets wilder and wilder.

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Challenge Of The Super Friends 1978-1979!

Challenge of the Super Friends might be my favorite of the classic iterations of the show, though they do get creative toward the end. It's in Challenge of the Super Friends that the true comic book geek gets to drink deeply as the Super Friends are at long last a full complement of Justice League members with Green Lantern, Hawkman, and Flash being regulars alongside newly fashioned Apache Chief, Black Vulcan,and Samurai to some much needed ethnic diversity to the team. (I assumed Black Vulcan replaced Black Lightning and Samurai replaced Red Tornado in so far their roles and powers went.)

The real thrill is the Legion of Doom filled with legit bad guys and gals from the dark recesses of the comics themselves. Lex Luthor (decked out in his then current super suit) leads Brainiac, Toyman, Cheetah, Black Manta, Captain Cold, Scarecrow, Giganta, Sinestro, Gorilla Grodd, Bizarro and the always entertaining Solomon Grundy. And in every episode some scheme was hatched and these baddies fought the Super Friends for riches, power, or something else. Great stuff to see so many familiar characters jumping around on the small screen.

Alongside each of these was more of what had come the previous year with the core group of Super Friends still saving the world with the help of the Wonder Twins. It's very odd how these shows were part of the same package yet not and their dvd presentation shows that in spades. I didn't immediately know I didn't have all of the season until research of the series tipped me off. Luckily I was still able to grab hold of these more typical Super Friends adventures which themselves seem to be inspired by specific movie genres and in fact specific films. The classic Toho feature Rodan is revised and retold and westerns and horror flicks get a new take.

We also get a look at the Supermobile which shows up several times when Superman has a Kryptonite problem.  Pretty fun all said and done.

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