[identity profile] captain-slinky.livejournal.com


Okay, this one is difficult... bear with me as we travel all the way back to 1977 (again).

"The Young Sentinels" was a Filmation cartoon that debuted on Saturday mornings in 1977 and was quickly renamed "Space Sentinals" in the middle of their very short 13-episode first-and-only season. In this series, a racially-diverse assortment of Roman mythological figures Hercules (white as white could be) and Mercury (Asian) and Astrea (Black), a character created specifically for the series, to form a superhero team to protect mankind from their base on... the moon? I want to say the moon. Maybe it was a spaceship. Their main bad-guy was the "sinister" villain Morpheus, who is also an Earthling given powers in the same manner as Hercules, Mercury, and Astrea, but far earlier. However, those who had given Morpheus his powers had erred by giving him a variety of powers rather than one specific power; he had rebelled and turned to evil.

In 1978, they made 5 more episodes (so it could fit in to the "Super 7" line-up) and changed things up a bit. Same basic story, only they ditched Mercury and Astrea, and the team was now assembled by an animated version of the live-action super-heroine "Isis". Added to the team now were Merlin the Magician, Sinbad the Sailor and... SUPER SAMURAI!!!

I love the Super Samurai character :)

Super Samurai was a small Japanese boy who could become a giant steel (robotic?) suit of glowing, flying Samurai armor! HOW COOL IS THAT???

So when the "Freedom Force" segment and opening credits came up in the Super 7 line-up, you never knew if it was going to be Freedom Force or Space Sentinels...
[identity profile] captain-slinky.livejournal.com


Through the late 1970's and early 80's, CBS filled up to TWO HOURS of their Saturday Morning line-up with what I like to call "The Filmation Fill-Ins". These were cartoons that had no real home. I have no idea where they came from, I have no idea what their original purpose was, all I know is that they didn't have enough of any one cartoon to make an entire season worth of cartoons, so they slapped them together in the most random ways to fill up that programming wasteland. In the video above I thionk you'll see The Super 7, Web Woman, Manta and Moray, Freedom Force and Super stretch & Micro Woman. But the headliners for these mash-up cartoon blocks were really Batman, Zorro and/or Tarzan.







I have some fond memories of this cartoon dump... I was a big fan of ACTION cartoons :) If this is one of your favorites too, then leave some comments and then head on over to our Best of 1981 Poll to vote for it :)

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