YMMV / Superfriends

• Accidental Innuendo: "The Time Trap" reveals that one of the devices on Batman and Robin's utility belt is "Bat-Lube", which they use to slip out of Solomon Grundy's grip. Lube certainly has other uses, but "Batman and Robin carry around Bat-Lube at all times" certainly doesn't sound the same way to modern audiences.
• Audience-Coloring Adaptation:
  • The series had crippled Aquaman as a character for quite a long time. Give him a harpoon hand, replace it with a magical water hand, point out how life at the bottom of the ocean has made him stronger, faster, and more resilient than most humans...and everyone will still be like, "He's just some guy who swims fast and talks to fish." The comic and various other adaptations have been trying to combat this for years (for instance, Justice League followed the comics of the time and gave him features of a Barbarian Hero, while Batman: The Brave and the Bold made him a Boisterous Bruiser and Large Ham), but while these versions each had their share of fans none seemed to permanently stick in the public consciousness until he was featured in the DC Extended Universe (which also went the barbarian look route), where he's played by Jason Momoa. Between Ronon Dex, Khal Drogo and Conan, if there was one person in the world who could rescue Aquaman's reputation as a stone-cold badass, it was him. Based on how his solo movie's turned into a billion-dollar success, it's a fair bet to say he's succeeded.
  • Actually this series, together with Batman (1966), was largely responsible for the impression of mainstrean audiences that the whole genre of superheroes was infantile, campy, thrashy, and unworthy of being enjoyed non-ironically, with even the occasional well-respected adaptation like Superman: The Movie being seen as exceptions to the rule, causing the whole of Superfriends to be something of The Scrappy for committed superhero fans. The ironclad view of Superfriends and Adam West as the ultimate symbols of superheroes only began to be chipped away when Batman: The Animated Series began and was definitely exploded with the mainstreaming of superhero adaptations in the 21th-century. So now superhero fans are more able to sit back, relax and enjoy this show So Bad, It's Good charms.
• Awesome Music:
  • Anything can be said about the series: Badly animated? Maybe. Bad voice acting? Maybe. Plots that were so thin as to be anorexic? Maybe. But the theme song... man, the theme song was epic!
  • This remix ramps up the awesomeness even further.
  • Also in play was The Super Powers Team variant: more pounding and drum-driven, to fit with the more serious feel.
• Condemned by History: Largely because of the cartoon's status as an Audience-Coloring Adaptation for the entire superhero genre, the show was fairly well-regarded among general audiences for many years and was one of the most popular Hanna-Barbera Cartoons. However, as time went on, and especially as the Superhero genre evolved (particularly in animated television, along with the genre achieving mainstream success in the 2000s), the flaws of the show have become more apparent. It was very campy with razor-thin plots & non-existent characterization, had poor animation,^note  Even by Hanna-Barbera standards it relied on a lot of Captain Ethnic Heroes that pervaded some negative stereotypes, had Wonder Woman frequently sidelined and often only depicted flying her invisible plane rather than doing any real action, and Aquaman was consistently depicted as a joke-character to the point it took decades for his reputation to improve. Nowadays, Superfriends is regarded as So Bad, It's Good at best, but otherwise seen as damaging to the reputation of the superhero & comic-book genres, and is widely disliked by many DC Comics Fans.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Apache Chief, apparently. When Justice League Unlimited and Young Justice (2010) updated the Superfriends' Canon Foreigners, his Captain Ersatz characters ("Long Shadow" and "Tye Longshadow," respectively) are front and center. Another Expy, Manitou Raven, briefly joined the Justice League of America in the comics, too.
  • Also, Medulla, because she turned Wonder Woman into her brainwashed slave. Yuri fans rejoiced.
  • Even the people who use the show as joke fodder usually admit that Bizarro was a damn fun villain.
  • The Wonder Twins tend to border either this or Memetic Loser.
• Genius Bonus: El Dorado, a particularly subtle example. El Dorado's best known power is the ability to teleport in a cloud of golden sparkles. The original El Dorado of legend was not a city, but a man, el hombre dorado, who would be ritually coated with gold dust in a regular ceremony.
• Growing the Beard:
  • The first season is notoriously seen as the worst one by far, due to hour-long episodes making already thin plots even more padded, the presence of Marvin and Wendy, the censorship being at its most prominent, and the incredibly lame antagonists. Later seasons shortened the episodes considerably, leading to better pacing, replaced Marvin and Wendy with the Wonder Twins (which was probably the only time their presence would be considered an upgrade), and started introducing more DC characters, as well as actual villains. Challenge of the Superfriends, which kicked off in 1978 and introduced the Legion of Doom, is generally seen as the show's most iconic period, both by people who genuinely like the show and people who love to make fun of it.
  • Did it again toward the end with the additions of Firestorm, Cyborg, and Darkseid, making a rare Long Runner whose final season is widely regarded as one of its best.
  • Really, if there was any episode that could be seen as the series finally having grown the beard and not looking back, it was "The Fear". Who would have thought in 1973, when the Justice League was hanging out with Wendy and Marvin and fighting Harmless Villain after Harmless Villain, that the show eventually would have the first televised depiction of Batman's origin, and even more, not shy away from the fact that his parents were murdered? And treat it as the serious and traumatic experience it would have been for Bruce (and getting that poignant and compelling performance out of Adam West, to boot)?
• Harsher in Hindsight: An episode of The Super Powers Team deals with the death (and return) of Superman. This would be played far more seriously in the comics a decade later.
• He Really Can Act: "The Fear" has Adam West giving one of his best performances as Batman as the episode, especially at the time it was made, shows Batman struggling with his origins and past once the Scarecrow triggers flashbacks to his parents' murder.
• Heartwarming in Hindsight: Episode 5 of the final series isn't the last time a DC show featuring the Royal Flush Gang casts Ten as the Forced into Evil Token Good Teammate who eventually turns good.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • The first episode of The Super Powers Team, "The Seeds of Doom", has Lex Luthor using a giant mechanical spider against Superman and the others. The idea of Supes fighting a giant spider would later become a byword for Executive Meddling, as Kevin Smith has repeatedly recounted his experience with Jon Peters on the ultimately unmade Superman Lives and Peters' apparent obsession with having a giant spider (which wound up in another Peters film, Wild Wild West). It gets even funnier when the 2007 DTV film Superman: Doomsday had Supes battling a giant spider, with Smith making a cameo and snarking about it.
  • Some people have noticed that Darkseid's characterization in this series, with his fixation with marrying Wonder Woman, essentially makes him similar to Bowser, before he even existed.
  • Cheetah's Eartha Kitt Catwoman-esque personality becomes this when their modern comic book counterparts are rivals.
  • The season five episode "The Make Up Monster" revolves around the leads on the set of a film about their exploits with a director named Mr. Snyder. Four decades later...
• Memetic Loser:
  • NONE of the Super Friends are particularly cool in hindsight, not even the ones based on agreed upon badasses like Batman, even if they were all busy saving the world Once an Episode. It's common in parodies for the Super Friends to be portrayed as overly friendly, old-fashioned, cheesy heroes that wouldn't be able to hold a candle to the Darker and Edgier later interpretations of the Justice League and what they go up against.
  • As noted in his page, Aquaman gets this a lot because of his Super Friends version. Unlike the other heroes on the show though, for a long time it tainted the public's perception of him in other media as well (hence why he also gets his own mention in his own page).
  • The Wonder Twins are often mocked and parodied for having a cheesy power set. Zan, the one that could take the form of water, gets this twice as hard because of how his power looks next to Jayna's ability to turn into any animal. As pointed in a Cartoon Network spoof commercial, he could be beaten by a sponge...and not even an evil sponge.
  • The original wonder duo, the powerless kid sidekicks Wendy and Marvin (and Wonder Dog!) also get this often because of their percieved uselessness and unexplained presence (the powerless kids get to hang out with the all-powerful grown-up heroes, why exactly? The comics explain it, but not the show itself).
  • The Super Friends versions of Hawkman and Hawkgirl are often mocked for having the ability to fly... on a team with an overfilled Flying Brick quota that already has that covered and then some. In the Fairly OddParents episode that spoofs comic book heroes, "The Big Superhero Wish!", Veronica, as the Hawkgirl parody Hawk Gal, had "all the powers of a hawk and a gal!" She was also the last to arrive at a fight each time because of how slowly she flew in comparison to the others...and then had her butt handed to to her once she actually got there. When the other superhero parodies lose their powers, she doesn't lose hers because, as Chester points out, "She wasn't much of a hero anyway".
• Memetic Mutation:
  • "Meanwhile, at the Hall of Justice!" and the scene-switching "whooshing" sound.
  • Superman's Catchphrase ("Fight for justiiiiice") was this in Latin America, due to the very hammy delivery by the late Mexican voice actor Maynardo Zavala.
  • "Solomon Grundy want pants too!"
• Narm: The final season is generally viewed as a Surprisingly Improved Sequel, but its decent plotting, new characters, and action scenes are all undermined by the team being renamed "The Super Powers Team", which sounds even more cartoony and immature than the Superfriends.
• Narm Charm: There's something oddly sweet with in regards to the PSA featuring the Friends. As a kid, you'd feel that they were sorta looking out for you despite not being "real".
• Never Live It Down:
  • Aquaman is commonly haunted by his portrayal as a guy whose only real powers are swimming and talking to fish he was (almost) always useless, to the point of Memetic Mutation. This has actually worked out for him a little, as later iterations of the character usually go to great (and awesome) lengths to subvert this image.
    Aquaman: King of the seas, remember?
  • Unfortunately for Aquaman, this image of him continues to perpetuate via parodies of him in other works, most notably Mermaidman and Barnacle Boy.
• The Scrappy:
  • Marvin, Wendy and Wonderdog, two ordinary teenagers and their pet who dressed in superhero drag and whose roles in the series (especially Marvin's) were to do stupid but plot-enabling things. The characters were so annoying to even the pre-teens who were the primary audience of the show that they were replaced by the only marginally more acceptable Wonder Twins, a pair of teenaged alien superheroes and their pet space monkey Gleek, who filled the "get captured by the Monster of the Week" and "cause trouble through abject stupidity" roles until the series finally dumped them too and redid the format into a more traditional superhero show. Marvin and Wendy were brought into the main comics by Geoff Johns in his Teen Titans run... only to brutally kill them off when Wonderdog turned out to be a murderous hellhound sent by Ares.
  • In the "Power Hour" of Superfriends comes El Dorado, a one-Spanish-word-a-sentence hero with vaguely defined powers; Samurai — a one-Japanese-word-a-sentence fellow who had a horribly stereotyped personality; and Firestorm, who is considered a Scrappy thanks mainly to his status of always being the fellow to yank the Big Damn Heroes moment from everyone (especially from a badly Chickified Wonder Woman). Like Apache Chief and the Wonder Twins (who are well liked by fans), Samurai would have Captain Ersatz counterparts that fared better with fans in both Justice League Unlimited and Young Justice (2010) (as for the latter show, Samurai would get a Gender Flip version in form of Asami Koizumi) and the latter series gave a much better showing for El Dorado.
  • Mixed with Never Live It Down and Audience-Coloring Adaptation, Aquaman due to most of the time, his powers are useless owing to the series' extreme Cast Speciation limiting him to aquatic abilities in a land-based series.
  • Hawkman didn't fare much better than Aquaman. On this series, his powers was flight... and that's it. All the situations that made the comic book Hawkman heroic were entirely absent, leaving him basically useless. The all-time low in the Scrappy department probably came in the episode "Secret Origins of the Superfriends", which showed Superman getting erased from history in the middle of a "Superman Day" celebration... and replaced it with "Hawkman Day".
• So Bad, It's Good: Super cheesy! It really hasn't aged well! And yet you can't stop watching — especially due to the camp!
• So Bad, It Was Better: A common opinion of the last few seasons of the show: the series was now more straightforward and competent, and a pretty average Saturday morning cartoon by the standards of the early 80s. Which was much less fun than the days when the series was wildly nonsensical and utterly incompetent.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: At the end of "The Universe of Evil," Superman asks his teammates to return with him to the alternate dimension he just escaped from to help liberate it from their evil counterparts. Most kids were tuning in the next week eager to see the battle royale surely to come, but it was never shown (onscreen, anyway).

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