Rating: 
Summary: Classic Jonny Quest - Why so long to put this on DVD??
Review: I clearly remember there were a few things that inspired me on T.V. in the 1960's and 70's. Couple this with some really great comics, boyhood adventures, tunes from the oldies, and you have some wonderful memories to share with your children. Classic Quest may have been simple science fiction plots or they may have set the ground work for some really great movies or T.V. episodes, who's to say? Nevertheless, they were good, clean fun and way ahead of it's time. It had a single working parent (Father at that), the spirit to pull together (including Bandit) and a little cultural diversity which Rush Limbugh would be hard pressed to criticize. Whoever is waiting to release this piece of Americana, please wait no more. I'd hate for another Christmas or Birthday to go by without sharing the fun and excitement of Jonny Quest.
Rating:
Summary: Please don't let these classics be lost!
Review: Please don't let these classics be lost to another generation!
The few of the original series that have been made available on VHS from Hanna-Barbera and Turner have been smash-hits with both my nephew AND my nieces. Ian, at five, wanted us to be Dr. Quest and Jonny, and we spent many hours running about the house and yard with walkie-talkies on Quest adventures (my wife got to play Roger "Race" Bannon). Kate and Kris (5 and 7) love to dance to the theme music I was fortunate enough to find on Napster in its heyday. Mary Madison (4) wants to know: "Is Hadji a girl or a boy?"
Turner Home Entertainment has done a very poor job of releasing and supporting this great series -- the few they have done are so filled with promotional crap for its Cartoon Network that it's nearly unbearable. It takes five minutes of fast-forwarding just to get to the feature. And any "Classic Quest" fan will tell you the new "Real Adventures" just don't cut the mustard (more like the cheese).I urge all fans to review here and sign up for release notification to help pressure Turner into properly re-mastering and releasing the entire 1964-65 series (26 episodes).
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Rating:
Summary: happiness is all the rage
Review: First of all, let me say tha Im very happy that he classic Hana Barbera cartoons are finally getting some dvd time. Im excited that as a fan of anything produced by the Barbera studio diring this time, Im cant express how wonderfull such masterpieces are being imortilised in such an archival media.
I highly recomend anyone with any faint impulse of nostalgia, to consider aquiring these tittles, as it will not only boost anyones collection, but motivate the studios to put out more of the classic stuff.
This review refers to all the Hanna Barbera DVDs being released.
Rating:
Summary: Finally...
Review: I remember, at the tender at of 9, switching between the 5 channels I had available to me on my family's little black and white television set, and coming across this cartoon that, from that first second, held me in awe. The show was Jonny Quest, and the episode was Mystery of the Lizard Men! It had high adventure, incredible suspense, thrilling music, wonderful comedy- and most importantly, a young boy right in the middle of it all. (Was his dad irresponsible? Eh...whatever.) From that moment on, I was hooked. So much so that, on a weekly basis, the show simply had to be enjoyed from the first frame of the opening titles, to the very last "This has been a Screen Gems presentation" closing (as spoken by Race Bannon!) And when those opening titles played, boy, were we thrust into adventure! That thrilling music! Those incredible visuals. Maybe it was my age, but no show before or since has quite had that kind of impact. It's so nice to see it finally arrving on DVD. My favorite episodes: Mystery of the Lizard Men
The Curse of Anubis
The Pursuit of the PoHos
The Robot Spy
Shadow of the Condor
Dragons of Ashida
Turu the Terrible
The Invisible Monster
House of the Seven Gargoyles
Rating:
Summary: Finally availlable
Review: I see that Jonny Quest is right at the top of sales on Amazon. That shows that many of us have good taste. I was an impressionable age of 7 when JQ came out in '64 and it was one of my favorities. I recall it was on during prime time, like many classic cartoons in the '60's. The villains and creatures where very menacing and left me with vivid images. Great plots and cliffhangers.
Rating:
Summary: Don't Be Fooled By The Subtitle!
Review: Despite the fact that this set is billed as "The Complete First Season," it's actually the complete, classic series. Johnny Quest was a single season that aired in the 1964-1965 television year. It consisted of twenty six episodes, and this set contains them all (I have it, and it does). There is no second season (apparently the manufacturer is reckoning a sequel series produced over twenty years later, in 1986, as the "second season"), so if you buy this, you'll be getting ALL the classic Johnny Quest episodes you remember from your childhood. The series is far more dynamic, tense, inventive--and even scary--than typical Saturday morning fare. Refreshingly realistic for an action/adventure cartoon, particularly when compared to the wimpy, politically correct pablum served up in cartoons today. Great to see on DVD what made the series special (and has kept its memory alive for FORTY years now), and great to share with your own kids.
Rating:
Summary: It brings back memories
Review: I enjoyed the jonny quest series as a kid (Im 47) and always tried to find reruns of the orginal. It always seemed that there only six episodes that I could ever see on tv. After viewing the DVD, it was amazing that almost half of the episodes were like a new cartoon to watch which was very nice. If you havent had a chance to watch the entire series in a long time, do yourself a favor and get this.
Rating: 
Summary: Advenutres For Boys
Review: I was four years old when this was on Television, yet I remember several episodes plain as day. That was how exciting I found young Jonny Quest to be and how enveloping the inventions and science fiction to be, even as a preschooler. I also remember being excitedly scared by some of the more fantastic elements of the show...like "Turu the Terrible" and "The Invisible Monster!" This was the kind of stuff an eventual reader of Hardy Boys, Tom Swift and Danny Dunn books craved before books began to seep into my life. Now that these DVD's have been issued, it's a safe bet to say they will have a permanent space on my DVD shelf. So why not a perfect 5 starts? We'll get to that. First the plusses. These were, more than anything else, adventures for boys. Jonny and Hadji were always there when the brilliant Dr. Benton Quest got a call to rush from Quest Laboratories in the Florida Keys to some far off country, travelling on the most recent invention. Lasers and Space Flight were frequent resources for story lines, and as a 4 year old want-to-be astronaut, it made it seem like anything was possible. Of course, this was the era of cold war politics, so the villains were often foreign guys with creepy accents. (Think Dr. Zin.) One of the frequent reasonings for Dr. Quest to have to go out on one of his missions was to make sure that these innovations didn't fall "Into the wrong hands." But it also meant that Jonny (and, by proxy, I) were able to visit Tibet, the Arctic Circle, South American rain forests and other exotic (and real!!) locales before I even entered school. Looking at these 40 year old episodes anew, it's amazing that Jonny looks like he could be drawn today; an inquisitive eleven year old in black shirt, blue jeans and sneakers, he could be from anywhere USA even now. And who wouldn't want to have an extended family with a cool an adoptive brother as Hadji (one of animation's -- or, for that matter, all of prime time's -- minority main characters), a tutor as devoted as teacher/bodygaurd Race Bannon or a dad as equal parts brilliant to understanding as Dr. Quest? Add that the animation was far more real looking than the club footed dopiness of "The Flintstones" or the animals acting like people of "Top Cat," (Bandit never suddenly started to ask for treats...) etc, and the world of Jonny Quest was something that we all could slip in to. In the pre PC world, Jonny could react exactly as a kid could when first confronted by an inquisitive girl (in "The Dreadful Doll"). No matter how you slice it, a kid his age would be flustered and annoyed by a female his age making inquiries. By the time the "New Adventures" came out, Jonny had to have a female foil, and my response was just what Jonny's would have been had he been a typical (read: real) 11 years old..."Ick!" And can you imagine a show today with a broad base of young watchers where the Father character smokes? (Dr. Quest enjoys a pipe in one of the episodes.) Which leads to my short list of minuses. Coloration throughout the set is really good, but sometimes oversaturated, and in "The Werewolf of the Timberland," White Feather's skin is in two different colors! Also of dubious note, what happened to Doug Wildey's credit? It seems to only show up during "Double Danger," otherwise I seem to get the impression that the end credits were remastered from one episode then taped onto the end of all the episodes for DVD transfer. And the worst offense...what heathen monkey was responsible for editing the dialog out of "Pursuit Of The PoHo"? Is this from the same brain trust that wiped out explosions and gunfire from classic Warner Brother cartoons and then blacklisting Speedy Gonzales for being stereotypical? If I emerged unscathed from that kind of language as a 4 year old, why am I expected to be offended by it now? If that was the root case, why not edit out the smoking, the shooting, the animal cruelty and the really obvious stereotypes from the Cold War era? It's enough to make me want to wave my hands while muttering "Sim Sim sala Bim" and to thusly wipe all of you ignorant savages of the face of the Cartoon Network. OK, end of rant. Those are all just me carping. If you were at all enthralled by "Jonny Quest" in 1964 or its countless repeats on Saturday Mornings, you need to have this. As soon as the exquisitely James Bond-ish musical theme comes up (Hoyt Curtain's music for this series was light years beyond most TV shows, and even today's), you'll be back in your PF Flyers and ready for more adventures for boys.
Rating:
Summary: Just Glad the DVD is out!
Review: I totally agree with everyones negative comments. But hey, we do have one over the wonderful folks at PETA. Where else can you see crocs getting blown away with rifles by two men and two boys? And you know why? Because it's just a CARTOON from forty years ago! And a damn good one too. I vote for The Invisible Monster as my overall favorite. I also vote for The Curse of Anubis as sadly, still the most contemporary episode. Doesn't seem like much has changed in the Middle East. As Akim say "Borders are a fluid affair". Pretty much on target for a 40 year old cartoon.
Rating:
Summary: A Wonderful Hanna-Barbera Original!
Review: In the early 60s, Hanna-Barbera was among several companies trying to establish animation shows in prime time. Other companies tried to revive Amos and Andy and Alvin & The Chipmunks, but those were only on for one season. Hanna Barbera had a hit with the Flintstones and two strikes with the Jetsons and Top Cat going for only one season. This was thier fourth and most ambitious try. It is unlike any other prime time animation series because it alone did not rely on laughs, instead it pursued a suspenseful course. No other animated prime time series ever tried this, in fact the closest anyone else came to Jonny Quest was the various Supermarionation series made by Gerry and Sylvia Anderson. It's a shame that nobody else ever tried this in prime time. The animated series that comes closest to Jonny Quest was the Star Trek animated series, but that was never shown on prime time, instead it was relegated to the Saturday morning ghetto. I was 8 years old when the series premeired, and my ABC station at the time (WTAE in Pittsburgh) pre-empted the first run on their station by showing something else. When the time slot changed in the middle of the season (from Friday to Thursday), well, I caught the reruns and I was hooked on the series. When Jonny was cancelled in prime time, oh that was a sad day for me. I haven't seen the episodes in years, when I got the set, a bunch of friends had an extended lunch and we watched the pilot episode on my Powerbook. There were several complaints about Jonny's Title card being cut from the introduction of the shows and the original Screen Gems (Columbia) tag eliminated at the end of the episode. Oh, I consider those very minor. I give the set 4 stars because of 1) some of the episodes have color inconsistencies, but that is probably with age. and 2) some of the language has been cut or modified (especially in the Po Ho episode). After I spent the weekend watching these episodes, well, I now understand why Captain Kirk said "I feel young again" at the end of the Wrath of Khan. They help me remember happier times in my childhood! Thanks Bill and Joe!
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