The Mighty Heroes
| The Mighty Heroes | |
|---|---|
| Genre | Animation, comedy |
| Directed by |
Ralph Bakshi Robert Taylor |
| Voices of |
Herschel Bernardi Lionel G. Wilson |
| Country of origin | United States |
| Original language(s) | English |
| No. of seasons | 1 |
| No. of episodes | 20 (list of episodes) |
| Production | |
| Executive producer(s) | William M. Weiss |
| Running time | 30 min |
| Production company(s) |
CBS Terrytoons |
| Release | |
| Original network | CBS |
| Audio format | Monaural |
| Original release | October 29, 1966 – 1967 |
The Mighty Heroes is an animated television series created by Ralph Bakshi for the Terrytoons company. The original show debuted on CBS, on October 29, 1966, and ran for 1 season for 20 episodes.
The stories were situated in Good Haven, a fictitious city that was continually beset by various supervillains. When trouble occurred, the city launched a massive fireworks display to summon a quintet of high-flying superheroes into action.
The team members were accident-prone bunglers who often found themselves in silly situations. A typical occurrence had them hopelessly tangled together offering each other stock apologies, often while falling en masse into an even worse situation. In combat, they continually got into each other's way until they were all captured by the villain. However, having escaped the villain's death trap in the cliffhanger, the team always managed to regroup and fight with proper coordination to win the day.
The series came about when the Terrytoons staff were pitching series proposals to the animation company's parent corporation, the CBS television network, only to have them all rejected. When the CBS representatives asked if there were any other proposals, Bakshi, at the time a former "boy wonder" animator who had been recently promoted to director and invited to the meeting, spoke up and improvised the proposed The Mighty Heroes on the spot.
The cartoons originally appeared as a segment of the long-running Mighty Mouse Playhouse during the 1966-67 season, which was renamed Mighty Mouse and The Mighty Heroes in recognition of the new segment. Some weeks during the network run, two complete Mighty Heroes segments would open and close the show with a classic Mighty Mouse cartoon in-between. In other weeks, one Mighty Heroes episode would be split in two to open and close the show, with two Mighty Mouse cartoons broadcast in-between.
The character voices were provided by Herschel Bernardi, who provided those of Strong Man, Diaper Man, and Tornado Man, and Lionel G. Wilson, who provided those of Cuckoo Man and Rope Man. Bernardi was also the original provider of the "Ho Ho Ho" voice of the Jolly Green Giant and of StarKist's Charlie the Tuna's voice in commercials. Wilson was also the voice of the title character in another famous Terrytoons series, Tom Terrific. Only 20 episodes were produced; the series came to an end when Bakshi left Terrytoons in 1967.
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