Saturday Morning's Forgotten Heroes: Super Stretch & Micro Woman (1978)

Here's the last component from 1978's Tarzan & The Super 7 anthology series.

Super Stretch & Micro Woman were a husband & wife team of heroes, the second such coupling on the show, along with Manta & Moray. The reason you won't see their adventures on DVD any time soon is largely because their powers are derivative of other heroes. In Micro Woman's case, she's a female version of DC's Silver Age Atom, who had his own short-lived feature for Filmation & CBS 11 years earlier. Super Stretch (Ty Henderson, ex-Space Academy) was simply an African-American variation on Plastic Man and/or Mr. Fantastic of the Fantastic Four, the latter of whom was back on the air that same season, over on NBC, while Plas would come along the following year on ABC.

Palitoy uploaded this sample, which has our married crimebusters taking on their evil counterparts, totally opposite in powers, from another dimension. This is the concluding portion of that story.....



The presence of the couple's pet dog, Trouble, as their sidekick, recalls Inch High using a dog as a sidekick 5 years prior, so there's another issue.

Rating: B.

Celebrity Toons: Wish Kid (1991)

As children, we've all got our favorite cartoons, but what child hasn't dreamed of being in his own cartoon?

Consider the case of Macaulay Culkin. Not yet a teenager, Culkin was a hot commodity in Hollywood coming off the success of "Home Alone", and before that, having appeared opposite John Candy in "Uncle Buck". Like Candy, Culkin was signed by DIC to star in his own animated series, but it would not be spun off from "Home Alone", although they might have been better off.........!

Wish Kid aired on NBC, the same network that was home to Camp Candy, for its one and only season in 1991, cancelled because the network had decided at the time to discontinue airing cartoons on Saturday mornings in favor of live-action, teen-centric sitcoms, a practice long since reversed. Culkin was the voice of Nick McClary, a typical kid who soon discovers that, thanks to a star that settled into his baseball glove, he can make any wish he has come true for a time. Now, what kid wouldn't want to let his imagination go completely wild?

Post-cancellation, Wish Kid got a second life in reruns on the Family Channel (now ABC Family), but there was only so much they could do with just 13 episodes.

Following is the show open, with the theme song composed to the tune of "Chantilly Lace", it seems, and uploaded by sounickmcclary......



Today, the series languishes in the vaults, having not been seen since its Family Channel run. A pity.

Rating: C.

Literary Toons: Mel-O-Toons (1960)

Mel-O-Toons first appeared in 1960, and remained in syndication through at least the 70's. I know this because in the early years of cable in my home district, WSBK out of Boston ran the series on weekday afternoons for a time.

Many of these shorts adapted classic literature, using a variety of narrators, including Art Gilmore (better known as an announcer for Red Skelton and a supporting player on Dragnet) and humorist Stan Freberg. I cannot be sure of the narrator for this sample piece, "Sinbad".



A few years ago, a selection of shorts were released on DVD in the public domain. Good luck trying to find them, but believe me, your kids will get a kick out of them.

Rating: B-.

It Should've Been on a Saturday: Green Tambourine (2001)

Disney's Recess ended production with the release of the 2001 feature film, "School's Out", which was quite the change of pace from the regular series. However, we're not here to discuss the film. Where Disney & ABC failed was not taking the occasion to air the movie in Recess' regular slot as part of the One Saturday Morning block during its final season (2001-2; it was renamed ABC Kids the following year).

The movie soundtrack included some classic pop-rock from the 60's, mostly thanks to flashback/dream sequences used in the film. Mostly, these were original tracks, but for a couple of covers. The Lemon Pipers' "Green Tambourine" was a classic by itself, but the producers decided to use it as a means of utilizing Robert Goulet as the singing voice of Mikey, one of the regulars (normally voiced by Jason Davis). Heh, they might as well have gotten William Shatner for this one, as "Tambourine" doesn't lend itself to Goulet's cabaret style. Need proof? Here it is, closed-captioned for the hearing impaired:

Animated World of DC Comics: The Atom vs. "The House of Doom" (1967)

One of the big differences in comics these days is that, back in the latter part of the Silver Age, DC treated virtually all of their heroes with equal care and importance. Not so today, as someone like The Atom would be considered a second or third string hero.

As it is, Atom (Pat Harrington) was one of the rotating middle features during Aquaman's half of the Superman-Aquaman Hour of Adventure, and also appeared in the Justice League of America shorts. In the comics, he was often teaming with Hawkman, but was usually partnered with Flash in the JLA stories on TV. Anyway, here's the Mighty Mite in a solo short, "The House of Doom", written by DC vet George Kashdan. Narrator Ted Knight also voices Prof. Simms and the evil Dr. Lokar and his alien master.



Rating: B.

You Know The Voice: Robert Ridgely (1975)

Actor Robert Ridgely began his association with Filmation when he was cast as Steve Exhaustion, the $6.95 Man (a parody of ABC's Six Million Dollar Man) on Uncle Croc's Block. He comes off sounding more like he's doing a John Wayne impersonation than trying to approximate Lee Majors' voice, but, well, you can't have everything.

Charles Nelson Reilly (Uncle Croc) had done some voice work, starting with the syndicated holiday special, The City That Forgot About Christmas, but it would be 6 years before he landed another voice-over gig, taking over the part of Frank Frankenstone on The Flintstone Comedy Show. I cannot be certain, but I think Reilly was on leave from Match Game when he took the Uncle Croc gig.

To complete our trifecta, Jonathan Harris, who gets to invoke his Lost In Space catchphrase as Basil Bitterbottom, had made his voice-over debut in The Three Musketeers, part of the Banana Splits anthology series in 1968, and was the lone cast member to reprise when Hanna-Barbera adapted Lost into a Saturday Superstar Movie in 1973.

Back to Ridgely. He would enjoy greater success in his voice work, starting with Tarzan, Lord of the Jungle, and followed up with Flash Gordon & Thundarr the Barbarian, but did you know his career had started several years earlier? One of his earliest live-action jobs was in an episode of Kraft Suspense Theatre in 1964, which was later repackaged as the feature film, "Nightmare in Chicago", co-starring Ted Knight.

Muttley16 supplied this 2 1/2 minute snippet of silliness.

Saturtainment: Hey Arnold! (1996)

There's a reason Nickelodeon has Hey Arnold! running during TeenNick's The 90's Are All That! late night block. It happens to be one of the most successful Nicktoons the network ever produced, lasting 8 years of production (1996-2004), in addition to a feature film that wasn't quite so hot at the box office. To think, though, that it all started with some claymation shorts on Pee Wee's Playhouse a decade earlier........!

Series creator Craig Bartlett was also responsible for the Penny shorts that aired on Playhouse, during which a prototype for the Arnold we know and love appeared as a minor character. Bartlett intended to spin Penny off into her own series, or so it would seem, but Nick suits were more interested in the little blond haired kid with a head shaped like a football. Hey Arnold! bowed in October 1996, and became a nightly staple on Nick, even though there really weren't enough episodes to warrant a steady weekday run, but then, this is Nickelodeon we're dealing with here, where they don't care about quantity of episodes, just the ratings.

Here's the intro:



While Nickelodeon made what some think was a mistake in creating a follow-up series for Rugrats, the failure of that project allowed them to think twice before trying it with, say for example, Arnold, Helga, and their friends. The series did spend a year or two on CBS' Saturday schedule, back when they were repurposing Nick reruns.

Rating: A-.