Rating: 
Summary: I wanted to marry Race Bannon!!!
Review: As a girl growing up one of my first major crushes was on Race Bannon (until my mother explained the difference between cartoons and real-life, how sad!!!). I was also a major tomboy and I read magazines like Popular Science and National Geographic. This show was for me!!! For years I have fondly remembered how exciting cartoons were when I was a kid. I couldn't wait for Saturday and would volunteer to scrub the kitchen floor if it meant that I could be guaranteed of staying in and watching my shows!!! Now as a mom of two very active boys I mentioned Jonny Quest to them as a favorite of mine. They told me they knew about the show. Turns out all they knew of was the "New Adventures"!!!! What a travesty!! Buying this collection is the best entertainment money I have spent in a long time. One particular bonus is how refreshingly NOT politically correct they are!! Yes there was a time when one could shoot gigantic crocodiles in the Amazon without a bunch of animal right activists jumping out and clubbing you!!!
Rating: 
Summary: Like You Never Saw It!
Review: The most remarkable thing about this DVD set is that you get a full 25 minutes in each episode. I've watched the first 7 so far, and I thought I had seen them all a million times. But I hadn't.The thing is, when you see them rerun on TV, you see maybe 20 minutes - maybe less. Let's see, if we cut this episode to 19 minutes, we can add 2 more 30 second commercials. And what's more, most of those "restored" minutes have some of the best dialog and scenes that flesh out the characters. And finally, you get a cartoon you can show your son, that has guy characters doing guy stuff. As opposed to modern day role-reversal cartoons, where the guys get rescued by the girls, or there are no responsible male characters (don't get me started). I took away one star for the cheesy packaging - why can't they give you a decent box for these things? The episodes, of course, get five stars.
Rating:
Summary: This is a great DVD set
Review: Okay, first the bad news. They mucked up the series opener. They cut the JONNY QUEST art card from the end of the opener, also forcing them to truncate what may be the best TV theme song ever. Okay - that's the bad news; and that's ALL the bad news there is. This is a great DVD set. It comes in a cute package with a clear outside meant to look like an animation cel, with uncolored outline art on the inside package itself. The transfers are beautiful. They're so sharp they have antialiasing problems, but still have all the original animation defects, which I applaud. It must have been tempting to go in and fix some stuff like that cel moire flutter on Anubis from the series opener, but they didn't, and so we get Jonny Quest at the best we could have hoped to have seen in a pristine print back in 1964. It's got some nice extras - a featurette interviewing contemporary people in the biz like Steve Rude and Alex Ross and Brad Bird about how JQ influenced them, and telling of the series origins as Jack Armstrong the All-American boy (not a mention of any Tom Swift or Doc Savage influence is to be found); an episode presented with pop-up trivia (although I find it hard to believe 'Double Danger' was produced before 'Mystery of the Lizard Men' which is so CLEARLY the pilot); a 'video handbook' with fun features on the cast, villains, gadgets, etc.; and an excellent PF Flyer commercial. Despite the fact that they're advertising this as 'season one' this is ALL the episodes of the original Jonny Quest there are - any others will be ill-conceived revival series attempts with altered casts. This is all the JQ you need, and the set to get.
Rating:
Summary: Brilliant adventure series; beware of PC edits?
Review: These classic Jonny Quest episodes have been remastered brilliantly; the quality is as good as we're ever likely to see, and it's a joy to watch them without commercial breaks or transmission glitches. However -- I haven't seen all the shows yet yet, but they may have been edited for PC-ness. There is a point in the "Pursuit of the Po-Ho" episode where Race is trying to frighten the Po-Ho Indians of South America by appearing in purple dye as their water god, and during one of his tirades the sound cuts out while his lips keep moving. If you turn on the subtitles, you can see that he is supposed to be saying "... you heathen monkeys!" (they forgot to edit the subtitles). I hope they don't keep doing this in other episodes. Come on, Hanna-Barbera, leave the Quest adventures alone; they can't help being of their time.
Rating:
Summary: Still Great Despite The Carping...
Review: Although I will agree with some of the negative comments found in many of the reviews here, I also don't think any of them are all that significant. People are only commenting about the set, not the shows themselves, which are pretty much unassailable in my view. The small flaws in the set surely don't qualify as deal-breakers, not even close. If you love Jonny Quest, this set IS an improvement over your old VHS set taped off of TV. Geez, what Jonny Quest fan honestly WOULDN'T want these DVDs? Some of the complaints have merit, but I think they only serve to show just how much people love Jonny Quest and wanted the "permanent" release to be perfect. No release will ever be perfect enough, the fans who truly love the show could always do some things better. I can't argue with those who find it shameful (and a bit suspicious?) that the only episode whose credits DON'T include creator Doug Wildey's name are the credits that were selected to be used for EVERY episode's end titles, even though rotating teams of different personnel worked on each individual show. As for the cutting of two lines of dialogue from PURSUIT OF THE PO-HO, that does irk me quite more than anything else, and it is just what the previous reviewer called it: "PC a-- covering". Never mind that the show went out over the airwaves on Cartoon Network with that dialogue INTACT. You, the individual viewer who has shelled out part of your paycheck to enjoy the program in the privacy of your own home, cannot be trusted with subversive language such as Race Bannon (a cartoon character!) speaks -- you might become overnight skinheads or join the Klan, to say nothing of what would happen to your children if they ever heard such a thing. Ridiculous, but not too surprising in the current climate. Meanwhile, Tarantino can direct the words "dead (expletive deleted) storage" to Samuel L. Jackson, a black man, and get high fives from Hollywood. Somehow, I doubt that PULP FICTION hit the shelves with that line cut out...and I'd have been mad about that too, if it had! But like I say, this is a small matter, just like the amateurish cover art they chose for the box. It's something that kind of annoys you at first, but once you're basking in these great shows in BEAUTIFULLY restored prints, you remember the reason you WANTED this set in the first place, and those little mistakes just doesn't seem important anymore. To paraphrase Dr. Quest: "Bandit, I have just one thing to say, and you can quote me: GOOD DVDs!"
Rating:
Summary: The best we're gonna get, considering our era...
Review: The era of timid, PC a__ -covering, that is. I refer of course to the dialogue edited from the PO-HO episode, tho' apparently Pygmies can muster no relevant pressure groups which would deluge Time Warner with choreographed protests, so it's still okay to note that they were not "warm and friendly people." Actually, I'm a bit surprised that this set was released at all, cognizant as I am of the number of spare-timers in the world these days whose sole occupation is waiting to be offended, and if the stimulus doesn't come, seeking it out. That said, there are just four very minor beefs about this set which any sane person (i.e. any person whose all-time favorite show wasn't Jonny Quest, and who has not been waiting since the 70s for a release like this) can safely ignore: 1. The aforementioned censorship. Cheap, low-class, sniveling -- more offensive than what Race actually said, in the sense that it was a cartoon character saying something about a far-remote and imaginary jungle tribe DURING the mid-1960s IN prime time. Meanwhile, the cut is REAL. So you thought you could toss your VHS copies when this set came out, eh? 2. Of all the grand artwork produced in conjunction with this series in the Sickles/Caniff/Toth/Wildey mold, the good folks at Time Warner went to great pains to dredge up a hack image which appears to have come from the mid-1980s version of the show -- the existence of which most Jonny Quest fans refuse to recognize -- and slap it on the box cover. 3. Remastering is a fine thing where film and video are concerned (it is death to original analog sound recordings, but that's another topic), but the saturation of these colors is a little blatant, seemingly in line with the idea of making the show look as if it were produced yesterday. Film prints age like wines and cheeses, and take on a velvety richness which is quite subtle. This subtlety is steamrolled in cranking up the colors to an extent which they never really possessed (anyone who has seen original cels or early film prints of JQ will acknowledge this to be the case). Again, a minor quibble, and certainly not something I expected a DVD reissue campaign to even consider. 4. Extras, schmextras. Aside from the P.F. Flyers ad, I'd rather all that space went to just two things: Hoyt Curtin's musical cues (as many as could be found and cleared -- note the bootlegs currently up on for auction), and all the original model sheets, , presentation boards, promotional art, storyboards and layouts that H&B archivists could lay their hands on, be it from the vaults or by putting a call out to happily-obliging collectors. Most of this material has never been reprinted in books satisfactorily -- imagine the ability to bring it up nice and sharp on your TV screen! There you have it, the rants of a nitpicker. Suffice it to say that the CONTENT of this show cannot be ruined no matter how many heathen monkeys or ignorant savages at Time Warner get in on the act.
Rating:
Summary: Baby Boomer Nostalgia
Review: If you grew up in the 1960's, unless your parents did not own a TV, you'd be hard pressed not to know of any body who didn't watch "Jonny Quest". From the heart pounding drums of the opening theme to the final frame of the ending credits featuring Race and Dr. Quest on rocket packs looking for "Turu The Terrible", Jonny Quest captured every young boy's (and some girls') zest for excitement and adventure. I always found the show entertaining and educational. The premiere episode about the lizard men featured the concept of laser technology. It's where I first heard the term laser! Now lasers are a permanently part of our lives. How ironic that this very DVD set will be played on a machine based on laser technology. My favorite episode was "Terror On Monster Island" The adventures of Jonny, Hadji, Race, Dr. Quest and of course "Bandit" have entertained generations. I was able to share these shows with my son when he was a youngster. He couldn't believe that I watched this show when I was his age. This series is a timeless testament to a gone by era. Enjoy! Enjoy!
Rating:
Summary: THANK YOU!!
Review: You have no idea how long I've waited for this. VHS only lives so long, you know. All of the favs are here. Turu the Terrible, the Q Missile mystery, Monsters in the Monestary, all of them! And even tho I'm 45, my 11 year old and I will really enjoy them.
Rating:
Summary: THANK YOU!!
Review: You have no idea how long I've waited for this. VHS only lives do long, you know. All of the favs are here. Turu the Terrible, the Q Missile mystery, Monsters in the Monestary, all of them! And even tho I'm 45, my 11 year old and I will really enjoy them.
Rating:
Summary: Oh Boy, this is GREAT. Finally it's out.
Review: This 4-disc DVD set includes all the episodes from "Season One" of Jonny Quest. By this I presume they mean all of the original 1960's episodes. The 26 episodes fill the first 3 and a half discs, with filler on the 4th disc.
The bonus material is confined to an interesting series of interviews with current animators telling how Jonny Quest came to be and how it affected their own careers. They credit Doug Wildey with bringing sci-fi comic book sensibilities to the project, including the great artwork and "just over the hill" technology we'd all thought we'd have by now. (Where's my hydrofoil and video-walkie-talkie??) The images are bright and clear, and the sound is excellent. This is the DVD we 60's kids have been waiting all our lives for!
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