The Mighty Heroes

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[1]

The Mighty Heroes was an animated television series created by Ralph Bakshi for the Terrytoons company.

The series is set in Good Haven, a city that is continually beset by various supervillains. When trouble occurs, the city launches a massive fireworks display to summon a quintet of high-flying superheroes into action.

The five heroes are:

  • Strong Man: The "Superman" of the group, who has incredible strength (if not invulnerability). He speaks with a friendly southern farm-boy type accent and holds a civilian job as a mechanic. His favorite fighting move is his "Jet-propelled blow" where he flies into a villain fist-first.
  • Rope Man: A Sailor who works at the Docks. A very erudite fellow, Rope Man's body is a seemingly unending length of rope. He can use his hands like lassos, and can even weave himself into a net. The drawbacks to his powers are that he often gets tangled up or knotted, not rarely around his own teammates. He also tends to talk too much.
  • Tornado Man: A TV weatherman who can spin himself into a tornado. He often sucks the villains into his vortex then shoots them out towards the nearest solid wall. He speaks in a wheezy voice.
  • Cuckoo Man: A bird shop owner whose powers are simply bird-based. Unlike the other heroes, who can fly with no effort, Cuckoo man must near-constantly flap his arms in order to keep aloft. Cuckoo Man changes into his costume by jumping up through the bottom of his store's cuckoo clock and popping out through the little door. He may be the least effectual of the heroes, but he's not useless.
  • Diaper Man: (pronounced by the announcer, "...and Di-ah-per Man") A red-headed, diapered, yet fully articulate baby as well as the leader/brains of the group. His main weapon is his bottle, which by holding on to the rubber nipple, he can swing (or shoot like a slingshot) around forcefully. The bottle can also shoot high pressure streams of baby formula. In emergencies, Diaper Man (and often Strong Man) will drink some formula from the bottle when extra strength is needed.

Almost each of the 21 series' episodes was named after the enemy encountered in it by the Mighty Heroes :

  • Chapter 01 - The Plastic Blaster
  • Chapter 02 - The Frog
  • Chapter 03 - The Junker
  • Chapter 04 - The Shrinker
  • Chapter 05 - The Ghost Monster
  • Chapter 06 - The Stretcher
  • Chapter 07 - The Monsterizer
  • Chapter 08 - The Drifter
  • Chapter 09 - The Shocker
  • Chapter 10 - The Enlarger
  • Chapter 11 - The Toy Man
  • Chapter 12 - The Dusters
  • Chapter 13 - The Big Freeze
  • Chapter 14 - The Timekeeper
  • Chapter 15 - The Scarecrow
  • Chapter 16 - The Time Eraser
  • Chapter 17 - The Return Of The Monsterizer
  • Chapter 18 - The Paper Monster
  • Chapter 19 - The Raven
  • Chapter 20 - The Bigger Digger
  • Chapter 21 - The Proton Pulsator

The team members are clumsy accident-prone bumblers who often find themselves in silly situations. A typical occurrence has them hopelessly tangled together offering each other stock apologies, often while falling en masse into an even worse situation. However, after escaping the villain's deathtrap in the cliffhanger, the team always manages to prevail in the end. In an episode of Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures," also produced by Bakshi, the Mighty Heroes retired and became accountants with a firm called "Man, Man, Man, Man & Man."

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, a young animator 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.

Voices were provided by Herschel Bernardi (Strong Man, Diaper Man, Tornado Man) and Lionel G. Wilson (Cuckoo Man, Rope Man). Bernardi was also the "Ho Ho Ho" voice of the Jolly Green Giant and StarKist's Charlie the Tuna voice in commercials. Wilson was also the voice of the title character in another famous Terrytoons series, "Tom Terrific".

Reruns of "The Mighty Heroes" were eventually syndicated by Viacom in the 1970s as part of the "Mighty Mouse" package. There have also been licensed VHS releases of some episodes and bootleg DVD releases of the entire series, but there has never been an authorized DVD release of the show.

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