I'm more into older cartoons, and felt like giving the 80's a spotlight thread. Nothing methodical planned in terms of content, more just nostalgia I find interesting and thought I'd share. Anybody wanting to join in is very welcome of course!

My earliest days as a tike watching cartoons was in the late 70's, reruns of old stuff like 60's Spider-Man, more contemporary to that time shows like Super Friends, New Adventures of Batman, etc. But the 80's really were "prime time" as I was growing up, so many great memories.

I'll start with one of the two Spider-Man cartoons that launched in 1981, Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends (the other was just called Spider-Man, I'll talk about that one at some point in the future too).

While the 60's Spider-Man cartoon may have one of the catchiest superhero theme songs of all time, this opening is certainly memorable to me as well:



Even as a kid, I remember thinking it was a bit of an odd approach to pair him with Iceman of all people, and who the heck was Firestar? She wasn't in the comic books. But the show was generally fun, and I just rolled with it. What I didn't know at the time was that Iceman was supposed to be joined by the Human Torch, but apparently the television rights issues to that character that were a problem for the 1978 Fantastic Four cartoon (hence the introduction of H.E.R.B.I.E. as a replacement) were still an issue. Hence we got a brand new character, "Firestar", but with similar powers. I was glad she eventually did make it into the actual comics, she ended up being a neat character in my opinion.

There were 24 episodes aired during the original run from 1981-1983, and I have them all on a Region 2/PAL DVD set (we get shortchanged here in the USA sometimes with these old shows, thank goodness for UK sellers). I was just re-watching the second to last episode of the series that was particularly notable to me because the X-Men appeared (a rarity in the cartoon world at this point). Here was the line-up from the show (that's a young Kitty Pryde as Sprite to the right of Thunderbird):



It's kind of goofy storytelling, a step up from the more primitive 60's Marvel animation, but about on par still with the late 70's aforementioned Fantastic Four and also Spider-Woman series from that time. We're not remotely in the territory of the 90's Spider-Man or X-Men series that would come later. But it really was the best we had at the time (though I'll give the other 1981 Spider-Man series more of a nod towards a straighter take on the character even though the animation and overall writing/production were comparable).

But that opening I posted above still whisks me back to classic Saturday mornings with a bowl of sugary cereal sitting on a brown patterned sofa from the 70's and watching Spidey and his, well, amazing friends.