YMMV / Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends

• Audience-Coloring Adaptation: This is the first adaptation where Norman Osborn and the Green Goblin are depicted as a Jekyll & Hyde character, unlike the comics where Norman was always a nasty piece of work regardless if he's himself or the Goblin.
• Complete Monster (includes Spider-Man (1981)'s "The Capture of Captain America"): Johann S(c)hmidt, Red Skull himself, from "Quest of the Red Skull", is an ex-Nazi official who seeks to initiate World War III. After stealing the Scorpio engraving, an artifact containing information regarding the whereabouts of hidden Nazi weaponry, from Professor Hiawatha Smith, Skull attempts to feed him to a python after declaring victory. When the Spider-Friends get involved and join Smith in South America, where the stash is hidden, Skull has them trapped underground and ambushed by a Drill Tank. Finally capturing the heroes at Skull Island, Skull reveals his plans to launch missiles at American targets, tricking the US into attacking the Soviet Union in response, resulting in millions of lives lost and Skull seizing control of what's left of society by anointing himself the "next Hitler", using stolen treasure to project legitimacy. When Smith rescues the Spider-Friends and Firestar redirects the missiles to Skull Island, Skull tries to rescue the treasure, even when Spider-Man offers to save him. After surviving, Skull kidnaps his arch-nemesis, Steve Rogers, intending to take over his superhuman body while trapping Rogers into Skull's disfigured body forever. When Spider-Man rescues Rogers, Skull tries to kill them both with a giant laser.
• Fair for Its Day: Given the show was made in the early 80s there are several aspects that were arguably progressive by the standards of the time but have not aged well from the perspective of the viewers. One notable episode would be Sunfire, which was the titular hero's only episode. Sunfire, as presented in the show, is a Japanese Mutant hero who knows akido, speaks in a somewhat heavy accent (which may be justified due to English being his second language), and has a stereotypically dressed Evil Uncle who is a Corrupt Corporate Executive and invokes the Yellow Peril trope. However, Sunfire himself is otherwise portrayed as a genuinely heroic Nice Guy character who was tricked into not only fighting Iceman but also into summoning a fire monster, and who then proceeded to help the Spider Friends stop what he inadvertently helped cause. Also of note, his and Firestar's mutual crushes for each other are treated as being perfectly acceptable, with the fact that they're respectively Japanese and White never once coming up. This is somewhat progressive even by today's standards given there's still parents/adults in the US who dislike the idea of their children/relatives dating outside their race.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • Their appearance in Spider-Verse ends on a particularly ugly note. Fortunately it was retconned to be a similar but completely different universe.
  • In "Spidey Goes Hollywood," all of the actors playing Spider-Man quit the film because production became too dangerous. Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark experienced similar troubles, resulting in at least 6 people becoming injured.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Wolverine is Canadian, but in his only speaking appearance on this series, British-American actor Neil Ross used an Australian accent. Fans reacted badly to the very idea of this, but twenty years later a bona fide Australian would play the mutant hero.
  • Norman Osborn physically transforming into the Green Goblin in the first episode. Stark contrast to 616-Marvel, but fits in much better with Ultimate Spider-Man a couple decades later. Perhaps Brian Michael Bendis was watching back in the day.^note Considering Bendis would later write the 'And His Amazing Friends' arc where Liz Allen turned out to be Firestar and teamed up with Peter and Bobby, it seems more than likely.
  • Another show features a redheaded heroine with an Alpha Bitch Rival named Bonnie.
  • Video Man’s third appearance involves a malfunctioning arcade machine giving a complete dweeb the ability to transform into a superpowered alternate self and back. In other words, it's almost the exact same concept as Freakazoid!.
  • The Sandman's episode ends with him growing to massive size and fighting our heroes at a construction site. Sound familiar?
  • In April 2015, in issue 40 of All-New X-Men Iceman is "outed" as being gay, so seeing Iceman having a romantic infatuation with Firestar on the show could be seen as this. Although his admitting to Spider-Man that he wouldn't pursue a relationship because "Fire and Ice don't mix" and his awkward attempts to turn down the advances of Zerona, queen of the Ice Giants, could be read as someone who is in the closet.
  • "Origin of the Spider Friends" reveals that most of the group's technology was supplied by Tony Stark. Wouldn't be the last time Tony Stark would help Peter Parker technologically.
  • Electro's costume is colored blue instead of familiar green, like in later interpretations.
• Jerks Are Worse Than Villains: While Bonnie's friends have outgrown from their bullying towards Angelica when they were kids, Bonnie continues to make her life a living hell. Because she bullied Angelica for years and would even go as far as to frame Angelica for theft purely out of unmotivated spite, she comes off more hateable than the main villain of the episode.
• More Popular Spin-Off - On purpose. Amazing Friends came about after Spider-Man (1981) (which was actually quite good, for what it's worth), produced largely to get the big networks' attention. It worked.
• Narm: Wolverine loses his fight against the Juggernaut by getting his claws stuck in a wall.
• Narm Charm: Makes the "Swarm" episode one of the greatest things produced by man. "SWAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRMMMMMMMM!"
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • Most of the episode featuring the Juggernaut consists of him doing his Implacable Man impression, wading through everything the heroes throw at him, even when Firestar, the last thing standing between the Juggernaut and his target Prof. X, created a wall of fire to stop him. The Juggernaut walks right into the fire, creating this large silhouette in the flame as his voice echoes, "I'M COMING FOR YOU, CHARLES XAVIER!" The utter look of fear and helplessness on Prof. X's face as the Juggernaut gets closer really sells it, and if Spider-Man hadn't pulled the Professor out of the way at the last second, they make it clear that the Juggernaut would have carried out his threat and killed Charles right there.
  • The episode in which Video Man appears and traps Iceman and J. Jonah Jameson in a video game, knowing that when the plug is pulled they'll vanish totally from existence.
• Pandering To The Fan Base: "Origin of the Spider-friends", which came out in the third season, was, according to the opening narration, requested by the fans and meant to explain how the group met and how three struggling college students, superheroes or not, can afford their crime-stopping equipment.
• Strangled by the Red String: Peter and Ariel, from Spidey Meets the Girl From Tomorrow. How bad is it? Peter's willing to go to the future to be with her after having known her for maybe half a day, tops.
• Villain Decay: Doctor Doom, especially in comparison to the previous Spider-Man cartoon in which he was the Big Bad.

---