SATURDAY MORNING CARTOONS-1967

I was in the mood to read something different comic-book-wise yesterday afternoon so I looked through one of my long boxes and found the comic pictured above. It's TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED #103, published by DC Comics. The issue has a cover date of November 1967 but it actually went on sale in August of that year. The book itself is fairly routine with three six-page science fiction stories. But what caught my eye was a two-page spread advertising the upcoming Saturday morning line-up of animated cartoons for the CBS television network. 

 

I know it's a little blurry. I could probably find a sharper image somewhere on the Internet but I wanted to scan it quick while it was still fresh in my mind. Besides, this shows that it came straight from a real comic book.

What a fantastic line-up of cartoons! Moby Dick! Mighty Mightor! Shazzan! The Herculoids! Jonny Quest! The Superman-Aquaman Hour of Adventure! And more. The exact line-up (shown in the yellow box at bottom right) reads like this (all times Eastern Time Zone):

 

8:00 a.m. Captain Kangaroo

9:00 a.m. Frankenstein Junior and the Impossibles

9:30 a.m. The Herculoids

10:00 a.m. Shazzan!

10:30 a.m. Space Ghost

11:00 a.m. Moby Dick and The Mighty Mightor

11:30 a.m. The Superman-Aquaman Hour of Adventure

12:30 Jonny Quest

1:00 p.m. The Lone Ranger

1:30 p.m. The Road Runner

 

The small print at the bottom of this book encouraged kids to "Tear this out and carry it with you everywhere so you'll remember all of Saturday's super heroes on CBS. All in color."

 

This was nirvana for me when I was a kid. I was eleven-years old at the time. September of 1967 puts me in the sixth grade. I was still young enough to enjoy Saturday morning cartoons, but that pleasure would only last a couple of more years.

 

I've always thought it was interesting and somewhat odd that Aquaman was chosen to co-star with Superman in their hour-long show. He wasn't exactly an A-lister at the time and his share of the program was later replaced by a more familiar DC super-hero, Batman. Also of note in the Superman-Aquaman hour were the stand-alone cartoons that featured for the first time ever, animated versions of such varied DC characters as The Flash, The Green Lantern, Hawkman, The Atom, The Justice League and The Teen Titans.

 

All of these cartoons have been released on DVD. I have the complete JONNY QUEST series but I have yet to acquire MOBY DICK/MIGHTOR, HERCULOIDS and SHAZZAN! (all of which were produced by Hanna-Barbera). The Superman, Aquaman and solo DC hero cartoons (all of which were produced by Filmation) have all been released on separate DVD collections and I'm proud to say I own them all.

 

This ad appeared in every DC comic book that was on sale in August 1967. But it didn't appear in any Marvel Comics. Instead, Marvel ran an ad promoting the ABC-TV Saturday morning lineup which featured animated adventures of both Spider-Man and The Fantastic Four.

 

Yep, it was a good time to be a kid.