Oh, the memories. Sitting in front of the television on the Saturday mornings of my youth, a big bowl of sugary cereal in hand. This is something that must seem alien to today's kids. Honestly, what happened to the concept of the Saturday morning cartoon? Sure, there are a couple, but by and large you have to tune into the Cartoon Network to catch them, and even then they have some live-action stuff on occasion. It used to be that you could turn on the television, and whatever channel you tuned in to, it would be all cartoons all the time. Anyway, Space Ghost was one of the characters that I had an attachment to, and now Warner Brothers has delivered the complete Hanna Barbera series that ran from 1966-1968.
As I watch this series, something came immediately to mind, I think I have fonder memories of the character than I do for the series. The reason for that, I do not remember any of these stories, nor do I remember the accompanying show, Dino Boy in the Lost Valley. This is probably because I was more of a kid in the 1980's, and saw more of that run, with the likes of The Herculoids in tow. I wasn't alive during this run. Still, this is a fantastic collection of old school toons from the early days of Saturday morning animated excursions. What is even better is watching the show the way it was originally presented, with each episode being comprised of two Space Ghost shorts with an episode of Dino Boy in between. Both shows were created by top animator Alex Toth.
Space Ghost delivers plenty of action as he patrols the galaxy with his sidekicks, the brother/sister team of Jan and Jace, along with their pet space monkey Blip (I could have sworn it was Gleek, perhaps he was renamed for the 1980's series). Wherever they went, they were met with trouble, including recurring villains like the praying mantis Zorak, and the cat-like creature Brak, as well as an assortment of one-offs. The show had its share of humor, but it was predominately space-faring science-fiction themed action.
The titular character was designed with a sparse superhero costume. Primarily white with a black cowl and red arm bands and belt. His powers were delivered courtesy of the so-called power bands on his wrists, equipped with three buttons apiece, different combinations resulting in a variety of attacks, freeze beams, stun beams, fire beams, and all sorts of other uses. In addition to that, he has a force field, and an invisi-belt that gives out hero the power of invisibility. Additionally, Jan, Jace, and Blip have jet packs and their own invisi-belts. They cruise around in the Phantom Cruiser and are based on the Ghost Planet.
Squeezed in between each episode of Space Ghost was Dino Boy, a character that I had no prior knowledge of. There is also a strong reason why they never tried to revive this character. While the episodes are kind of fun, I found the characters to be much less interesting than their companions. The series is kicked off by a young boy, Todd (aka Dino Boy), parachuting from a crashing plane and landing in this hidden valley of anachronism. It is populated with dinosaurs, cavemen, and all manner of other creatures (and most of them are not very nice). Shortly after landing, Todd is attacked by a saber-toothed tiger, only to be saved by a caveman named Ugh, and his pet dinosaur Bronty.
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