Super 7 Part 1: TARZAN, LORD OF THE JUNGLE

[captain-slinky.livejournal.com]

Kicking off our week of in-depth investigation of the Frankenstein Monster of Saturday Mornings known as "The Super 7",we have the earliest of the cartoons featured: TARZAN LORD OF THE JUNGLE.

Starting in 1976, this half-hour adventure offering from Filmation was by far the most faithful adaptation of Edgar Rice Burroughs' Tarzan, and featured a number of "lost cities" from the novels. The rotoscoped animation is based upon the work of Burrough's favorite Tarzan artist, Burne Hogarth. Tarzan is intelligent and well spoken, rather than the "Me Tarzan, You Jane" of many films. His sidekick is N’kima the monkey (since the chimpanzee "Cheeta" was an invention of the movies but kids were expecting to see a monkey dag-nabbit).

There were 6 seasons of this cartoon stretching from '76 to '82. First season was 16 episodes. Next year they added 6 more. Then 6 more. Then they said "Y'know what? Kids don't know the difference" and just kept shuffling the existing episodes in to shows like "Batman & The Super 7", "The Batman/Tarzan Adventure Hour", "Tarzan & The Super 7", "The Tarzan/Lone Ranger Adventure Hour" and for the final season, "The Tarzan/Lone Ranger/Zorro Adventure Hour".

And so it begins...

Comments

[captain-slinky.livejournal.com]

That's awesome :) As the years went on, the odds of seeing a Tarzan cartoon in the Super 7 line-up became more and more rare. 52 Saturdays a year, 2 half-hour segments in which you could have any one of the Super 7... that's an *average* of 14 potential times per year you could have seen this cartoon. HOWEVER, you were MUCH more likely to see a New Adventures of Batman cartoon in these time slots than anything else. The other 6 out of the Super 7 all had maybe half of a chance.