Tooned In: Superfriends – Return of the Phantoms, Bully For You, and Superclones (1983)

This review is brought to you by Superman Peanut Butter:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73rf-3FCX5s&t=1s

…and can ANYONE here please tell me who is voicing Superman here? Everyone claims it’s still Danny Dark, but it sounds nothing like the Superfriends Man of Steel. To me it’s like a pitched down Chuck Woolery (happened actually, on one of the ABC Saturday Morning preview shows) or like the ‘80s Nickelodeon or USA Network announcer.

Also, referring to Will Rodgers’ excellent books on the show, apparently the Gleek vs. Monster Banana bit from my 1980 review was a recycled gag from the 1978 episode “The Incredible Space Circus.” Which I mention because for a brief time, after seeing that episode as a young one, and watching Wonder Woman and Aquaman being turned into monsters, I wouldn’t go near anything DC comics related. It was either that one or the one where Wonder Woman and the Wonder Twins turn into Hulk-like mutants.

But I came back, and that’s why I’m 40+ and reviewing Superfriends episodes still. Here, we’re taking one more trip to the “shorts” era, but this one is special because it’s from the vaunted “lost episodes” season: the one obviously made, but not aired by ABC, apparently for fear of competing with the syndicated reruns that were entering local markets. Never mind that Scooby-Doo was still on the SatAM schedule, yet his shows were crossing over to syndication as well.

Since the last set of shorts, we had a smaller second season of them (writer’s strike), but more importantly, the introduction of a new Superfriend: El Dorado, who joins the other Hanna-Barbera originals in adding diversity to the team.

Of course, he is representing the Hispanic audience, as you can tell from his mostly topless Aztec Warrior costume (revealing a disturbing lack of nipples, I might add), and his habit of sticking in stray Spanish words in his dialogue. Amongst his powers, he can teleport, create illusions, and reads minds. You may notice some of these abilities aren’t unlike Martian Manhunter. Actually, the H-B originals all seem like expies of other DC characters: this, Black Vulcan is obvious, I mentioned Samurai’s similarity to Red Tornado, and there’s loads of comic characters who could grow like Apache Chief.

Fun fact: of the reviews I did so far, this episode is the first to NOT feature Wonder Woman, outside of a speechless/actionless cameo.

Same shorts era opening, except El Dorado is included and gets to replace Hawkman and Hawkgirl in the title card photos. Atom still manages to squeeze between the Multicultural Pals.

Out first story?

RETURN OF THE PHANTOMS

Hello, how am I?

Traveling in a transparent, pyramid-shape craft, this alien watches the cosmos:

Could this BE more of a cliche character design?

This character also has a strange flat physique, like he’s a Gumby character. Wait, now I remember! He looks like the girl from the Halloween special Witch’s Night Out, after she turned into a ghost!

Regardless, this weird observer notices what can best be described as a space tornado. But it turns out to be the Superfriends’ version of the Phantom Zone, and he unwittingly re-releases the three Kryptonian criminals from the 1978 “Terror from the Phantom Zone” episode…in theory, because all three are drawn differently, and one apparently admired his brief time fighting Aquaman, because his outfit is in his distinct orange and green. The villains tell the alien “Be happy we don’t destroy you!” And boy have they used that word a lot in these shorts, like it’s a Fox superhero show from the ’90s. So the alien makes the mistake of mentioning his craft is actually a time machine, and so the three outlaws hatch the scheme of returning to when Superman was a boy (my Fan Service Sense is tingling…) and taking care of him before he can menace them in the future.

Fun fact #2: the year they return to is 1957, which the Kryptonians describe as “20 years” before they met Superman. And they’re almost correct, just off by a year! With Superfriends, you take whatever continuity you can get. Also, I wonder if they passed the Fonz and his gang getting zapped into Cupcake’s time machine while on the way to Smallville, where we see Superboy rescue a farmhand fixing Martha’s windmill. Another good detail they keep: Clark isn’t using his glasses yet, which in some continuities he only starts when he moves to Metropolis.

So after the rescue, the outlaws confront Superboy, who says, “I don’t know what you’re talking about, and I don’t need to!” After being overpowered, Superboy outdoes his older self by immediately realizing they’re from Krypton so they have his strengths AND weaknesses. To that end, he lures them to the farm house where he keeps a piece of Kryptonite…only he’s ambushed and the villains use the Kryptonite on him. “I didn’t do anything to you,” Superboy protests. “You would have,” he’s told in return, but luckily an apparently three-foot-tall Green Lantern appears and snatches the rock away…

Full-grown Superman is with GL, and of course the Kryptonian villains ain’t got nothing on them. Oddly Hal fights back making RED colored constructs with his ring, after which the Phantom Zoners form a volcano that GL literally sews up, receiving a “Thanks, green fella!” from a Smallvillian. So in Superfriends Continuity, Green Lantern was NOT a thing yet? We know Alan Scott technically didn’t exist there either, or at least was never acknowledged. After retreating to threaten the Continental Divide, the Phantom Zoners are stopped by Superman and Superboy having their big team up moment when they… bind them with their combined capes :

Are the Superpeople in a secret alliance with Rorschach? TUNE INTO NITRO TO FIND OUT!

Of course, it was the alien Gumby ghost thing that brought the Superfriends to the past, and as GL sends the Kryptonians back to the Phantom Zone, Superman gives Superboy cryptic messages about seeing him in the future. Well, this episode’s messing with the space-time continuum made more sense than the Challenge of the Superfriends version.

This review is also brought to you by the House of Hanna-Barbera, The Yogi Bear Show, and The Magilla Gorilla Show (which keeps the “dancing sticks” Screen Gems logo!) What were Yogi and Ranger Smith REALLY doing in Jellystone Park?

BULLY FOR YOU

Oh boy, this episode is somewhat of a meme between my friends and I. I’ll get to that in a bit. So this of course is the Teen Issues segment, meaning the Wonder Twins are also involved. On the campus of Gotham High School — high schools have campuses? — a jock named Benny hits on “Gorgeous Gloria,” who turns him down because he’s dating Ernie Wilcox, a clumsy football teammate who kind of looks like Hula-Hula from Plastic Man’s show. Oh, that’s coming eventually too. Despite his red and yellow uniform, he fails to Hulk Up after falling over the tackling dummy. Noticing the mockery from Benny and his friends, Ernie takes a page out of the Hulkamania Insult Book and calls them apes. This gets him de-shirted and noogied by the bullies, although this is kinda Karate Kid levels of “who is the real bully?” debating now. And Ernie “Wilcox”? Could he perchance have been related to the Colonel Wilcox who used to inform the Superfriends of trouble in the Wendy and Marvin Era? Surely his dad pulled a few strings to get his wimpy son on the Gotham football team. Don’t look at me, Ernie moans himself that he’s nothing but a wimp.

As opposed to the bimbos who tackled your grandmother? No wonder Benny is a bully, what other kinky scenarios did he walk into at home?

Switching to some superhero “action,” Batman and Robin are taking the Wonder Twins out on patrol duty, and speaking of the Wendy and Marvin shows, the Batmobile’s disappearing/reappearing back seat…reappears. Based on the dialogue between Batman and Zan, the Twins are STILL superhero trainees. For six years now! Unless what the Kryptonian Criminals said earlier actually meant they were going back to the past 20 years from NOW, and we’ve been living in 1977 for six years. But then again, video games and a Pac-Man clone exist in this season, so….

The Superfriends notice a group of window washers — no relation to the group of pill-pushers, er, well-wishers from Wheel of Fortune fame — about to fall off the side of the Wayne Enterprises building (hey Batman, you should really have a talk with the owner of that building about his safety standards), and during the rescue, Batman’s utility belt is loosened and falls off, and if you don’t believe that losing the belt is basically his Kryptonite on this show, Bats literally freezes up and lets the worker fall, and it’s the WONDER TWINS who save the day. I repeat: Wonder Twins: 1, Batman: 0. And of course, Ernie passes by and finds and recognizes the utility belt, and declares he’s going to use it to make a monkey out of Benny. I hope so, that would mean he’ll fill the one “make a monkey” quota this episode and we won’t get any Gleek comedy to end it. Second, Ernie, again you gotta stop following Hogan’s examples with these simian insults. I mean, Benny isn’t even b… um, barely, a monkey or ape. Yeah, he’s higher on the evolutionary scale.

So Ernie tries to use Bat Devices on the bullies, and ends up activating the Bat Molecular Destabilizer which causes earthquakes in the city. And why does Batman have such a dangerous device? Sheesh and people complained about Michael Keaton having machine guns and rockets on his Batmobile, and blowing up buildings and such. The SUPERFRIENDS Batman was way ahead of the curve! The Wonder Twins go 2-0 against Bats this episode when they avert the disaster as a blizzard — again, why didn’t Zan turn into powerful weather events more often, or did he? — and a spider…bah! A spider as a superhero? It’ll never work! Zan uses Superfriends Welding to freeze a collapsing building together, then everything is okay even after he changes back to humanoid form??? Never mind that, here comes why the personal memeing of this short. Ernie explains he just wanted to be tough like Batman, and Batman tells him…”Using my bat devices to destroy property…”

Frightening people doesn’t make him tough. Batman, whose disguise was meant to “strike fear in the hearts of criminals,” isn’t tough because he scares people. Okay, this is SF Batman so it’s probably a moot point, but come on now. I admit I misremembered it as just “using my bat devices and frightening people…” which would have made it funnier because look at this episode and like every time Batman or Robin loses their utility belt. I think we warped the quote at one point to include “wearing a scary mask” too.

Anyway, Batman just says Ernie has to believe in himself, and when he agrees, Benny is suddenly his friend now, or something.

Lastly is…

SUPERCLONES

You oughta be ashamed of yourself for looking like Aquaman…

A shark menaces a beach and puts one surfer in danger, but Aquaman saves the day. “You’re a super friend!” the surfer declares, giving Arthur more validation than any of the actual Superfriends did probably. But in the tangle with the shark, Aquaman appears to have wounded himself…

HE’S HARDCORE! HE’S HARDCORE!

In the Andes, mountain climbers are endangered when a hawk (complete with Zoar sound effects from He-Man, you know the one) chews the ropes, but El Dorado is here, and as sure as he has no nipples, he will save the day! He accuses the hawk of “not being simpatico,” and a fight breaks out. The hawk is clearly protesting El Dorado replacing Hawkman in the credits. Anyway, the bird is also chased off and all is well…only El Dorado gets scratched too. Sadly he doesn’t declare that he has a “rasguno.” But soon we see why. Brainiac, in his last appearance in his humanoid form, has taken skin samples from both Superfriends (blood AND dangling pieces of flesh! Yet no one could punch anyone on this show!). He uses them to make Aquaman and El Dorado clones to do his bidding. Aquaman faces his doppleganger, and they have a Talk to Fish war with an octopus, who ultimately chooses the dark side and takes the real King of the Seas in. Meanwhile, the El Dorado clone — and Brainiac couldn’t upgrade him to have any nipples — uses this episode’s second act of Cape Warfare to bind the actual El Dorado.

Si no soy yo, ¿quién soy? Y si soy otra persona, ¿por qué me parezco a mí?

The clones torment a passing ship with a hologram sea monster who fails to eat their ice cream. Clone El Dorado is so perfect he remembers to use Spanglish when they rob the ship of two small bags allegedly containing $100,000. Yet the evil Superfriends are somehow overpowered by the sailors and they are taken into custody and trial, where all the Superfriends cameo in the courtroom.

Now presiding, the honorable Judge Alex Trebek. (hey he needed to do something after the Malcolm pilot didn’t get picked up…)

The clones plead guilty and throw the rest of the Superfriends under the bus. Luckily at the same time, El Dorado re-uses the strategy Green Lantern used in the Fearians episode by making himself and Aquaman invisible to trick Brainiac into shutting off their energy cell. They fight off his security robots and escape with the villain in tow:

Boba Fett? Boba Fett? WHERE?

But it might be too late, as the judge finds the Superfriends guilty…

Black Vulcan: Why did he look at me when he said that?

Fortunately, the real Aquaman and El Dorado appear. “You’re not seeing double,” says El Dorado (“…cause I have no nipples!”). With Brainiac in custody and the clones found out, the Superfriends’ names are cleared, and I have to end on this…see, I thought I was being clever with the Trebek stuff, then this happened:

Superfriends: Beating The Simpsons by 7 years in predicting the future.