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Show:		7.0
Picture:		4.0
Sound:		4.0
Extras:		5.0
Score:		6.0

Director(s):	Arthur Davis • Charles A. Nichols • Joseph Barbera • William Hanna
Writer(s):	Chuck Couch, Larz Bourne, Tom Dagenais
Starring:	Adam West • Burt Ward • Daws Butler • Don Messick • Frank Welker • George O'Hanlon • Janet Waldo • Julie Bennett • Paul Winchell • Penny Singleton
Genre:	Animation • Children & Family • Television
Release Date:	May 26, 2009

List Price:	DVD - $19.99
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Ever forget to turn off your Monday-Friday alarm on the weekend’s eve? Beep beep…Beep Beep…BEEP BEEP…“Oh man. Work.” You exhale a long sigh and as you start to sit up, a suspicious feeling comes over you. Your brow furrows as your sleepy fog cloaks clear thinking—ahh yes. It’s Saturday. Two choices: either go back to sleep or get your day started off any way you want. When you’re a kid, the choice here is easy: flip on the morning’s cartoons. As an adult, the decision becomes tougher. Unless of course you were a child of the 1970s and have recently acquired the new box set, Saturday Morning Cartoons:1970s Volume 1. If so, the nostalgia will beckon you from catching a few more Z's and you’ll probably end up in the kitchen pouring a bowl of cereal to eat in front of the television. Odds are your TV set has changed—no antennae or big round knobs—but the cartoons will be exactly the same.

In order to do the cartoon collection justice, I knew I couldn’t watch it on a Monday night or a Wednesday afternoon. I watched the 17 episodes of 12 different cartoon series on a Saturday morning. I know you shouldn’t judge something (usually books, but it applies to other things) by its cover, but this one is a great one. The various well-known cartoon images drag you right in. Scooby-doo, Yogi Bear, Josie and her fellow Pussycats, and the Batman.

Offering a variety of different television shows, the collection is bound to have something you remember getting up early to watch. While the selection of the shows is good because of its broadness, the specific episode choices could have been better. The first episode of the set is one from The Jetsons called, “The Space Car.” This particular episode was the fourth ever made and originally aired in 1962—meaning they’re reaching here, but perhaps Warner Brothers’ thinking was that its reruns in the next decade warrant a nod on this particular set. The Jetsons also nabbed a spot on the 1960s set. Perhaps they should’ve left it there as to not confuse the viewer.

“The Space Car” was a reasonable choice, but the episode from The New Adventures of Batman left desires hanging. The episode called, “The Pest,” focused too much on Batman’s tagalong Bat-Mite, instead of the other side of the story—their battle with the Joker. While Batman has evolved some over the decades of remakes, the Joker has clearly changed the most, making it a good choice to choose an episode he appeared in—just maybe a different one, without so much Bat-Mite. The mini-hero annoyed Batman and Robin throughout the episode, not to mention the audience.

The collection also featured some shows that fell a little more on the cheesy side of the line, but were probably only mildly popular. For instance, we’re offered a few six-minute episodes of Wheelie and the Chopper Bunch, a show that aired for only one season. The animation isn't as good as the rest of the series, and the characters consist mainly of cars and motorcycles who cruise around looking for and getting out of trouble. Again, the spread was nice, but the set could’ve done without the 1974 car-toons. Its producers were probably able to shake it off when Wheelie didn’t last, because Hanna-Barbera Productions made almost all of the shows on the set including but not limited to: Yogi’s Gang, Hong Kong Phooey, The Funky Phantom, Speed Buggy and Goober and the Ghost Chasers. (Goober is essentially the same show as the popular Scooby-Doo Where Are You! also produced by Hanna-Barbera.)  Not only were most of the cartoons produced by the same company, there is lots of cross-pollenation in voice casting.  For instance, Janet Waldo played Judy Jetson and Josie of the Pussycats.  Or Daws Butler who played Elroy Jetson and a member of the Yogi clan.  Or Don Messick who was the voice of a character on The Jetsons, The Amazing Chan and the Chan Clan, Josie and the Pussycats, Wheelie and the Chopper Bunch, Yogi's Gang, Hong Kong Phooey and many of the Scooby-Doos.  Messick was very talented and could play almost anything, so long as you only heard his voice.

Scooby-doo was the favorite of the compilation, as usual, in an episode from a spin-off series, The New Scooby-doo Movies, where the gang meets the Harlem Globetrotters. The show is the quintessential 1970s cartoon as shown by the characters' clothing and hairstyles. The various spin-offs had different names but were basically all about the gang and their scaredy-cat dog having multiple close-encounters (or so they think) with the supernatural.

Cartoons have the unique capacity to create a world where anything goes, so long as someone can think it up. Whether it’s a family living in outer space, a crew of talking motorcycles, or a group of young adults and their dog meeting the Globetrotters in a dark forest and fearing a pirate ghost ship cruising the swamp. The 1970s had it all and the compilation is a good grouping that should please its nostalgic Saturday morning viewers.

DVD Bonus Features

The extras are pretty minimal on the two-disc set since the television shows are decades old. All they really offer other then two re-cap segments that give a summary of the episodes, are two "making of" type featurettes. One covers the show The Amazing Chan and the Chan Clan, a show about a family who reveals how crimes were committed. The segment features interviews with the writers as they reveal their intentions with creating the show and its stories. The other featurette is another similar type of segment that contains interviews with the writers and producers of The Funky Phantom.

Unfortunately, the two main extras are with shows that only lasted one season a piece, and therefore are less well known and interesting than the others on the compilation. Had the format of interviews and clips for these shows been used for the more popular shows, the extras would’ve been pretty cool. Hopefully for Saturday Morning Cartoons: 1970s Volume 2 they can include some testimonials from the creators of the hit-shows.