Rating:  -
As a die-hard Spider-Man fan who came of age in the 1980's, I only saw this show on reruns as a kid. However, I bought this set, and it's awesome! Really brings back those memories. The shows themselves look crisp and really nice...they obviously cleaned them up nicely. The writing and animation is as cheesy as ever, but if you ever watched this as a kid, you'll still love it. And it's complete...what more could you want? Snag this, the complete MTV Spider-Man cartoon from 2003, and hopefully they'll release the entire Fox 1990's Spidey series soon!
Rating:  -
I'm glad I bought this box set. I used to buy poor quality videos at conventions. Now, everything is here in one complete collection.
I love the colors, style, and especially the jazz tinged, rock fusion music. I love the psychedelic watercolor skies, alien green trees, and purple killer vines. I love New York being turned upside-down, under-water, and inside out. I love buildings falling through their foundations into an underworld ruled by Morlock-like beings.
However, there's no need to repeat the Spidey theme on every single episode. Let the jazz improvs in each story grab more of the sonic spotlight. Also, a few stories are repeated, but under different titles. For example, "Down to Earth" is identical to "Neptune's Nose Cone".
As corney, dated, and limited as it is, I still enjoy it, no matter how many times they repeat Spidey swingin' through the city. The combination of increasingly eccentric villains, watercolor horizons, and surreal antics (love the movie theater audience's valuables being sucked into the movie screen!)ensures its timeless appeal. I prefer this over today's animation, although I have to admit that the new MTV Spiderman looks pretty decent.
Ralph Bakshi, where are you, man?
Rating:  -
The show is good, but the packaging of the discs leave the discs scratched. I ordered this item and 4 out of 6 discs were scratched. I returned and received another through amazon and 3 out of 6 discs were scratched. This is not amazon's fault, this is the manufactures poor quality of how the disc rests in it's case. Where the disc lays there is a small pimple bubble when creating the disc rest so when via shipment the disc slides on it and scratches. I bought this dvd again at Costco and the same issue, 4 out of 6 discs were scratched.
The show is great for a collection though, unfortunately the manufacturer produced poor quality packaging.
Rating: -
THE BOX SET IS WONDERFUL, BUT DOES ANYONE ELSE NOTICE A PROBLEM WITH THE QUALITY OF THE EPISODES? WHEN I WATCH MY COPIES, THE PICTURE IS JUMPY AND UNSTABLE AT TIMES, ALMOST LIKE A VHS TAPE WHEN THE TRACKING IS NOT PROPERLY ADJUSTED. I HAVE ALSO NOTICED THAT AT TIME THE BRIGHTNESS OF THE PICTURE SEEMS TO LIGHTEN AND DARKEN, FADING IN AND OUT. I HAVE VIEWED THESE DVDS ON OTHER PEOPLE'S PLAYERS AND T.V.'S AND HAVE NOTICED THE SAME THING! I KNOW IT'S NOT A PROBLEM WITH THE HARDWARE, IT MUST BE THE DVDS. HAS ANYONE ELSE HAD ANY PROBLEMS?
Rating: -
For the past 2 years, Buena Vista has given us tiny morcels of classic Spider-Man on their DVD releases: "Ultimate Villain Showdown" (Origin of Spider-Man), "Return of the Green Goblin" (Terrible Triumph of Dr. Octopus/Magic Malice) and "Spider-Man VS Daredevil" (King Pinned). These DVD releases showcased the newer 1994-1998 Spider-Man animated series, but many fans (such as myself) bought these exclusively for the bonus episodes of the original 1960s series.
What a treat it was for us fans of the original series when Buena Vista released all 52 episodes (or 77 stories) into a 6 disc DVD set. Most of the episodes have been restored by removing the scratches and imperfections. Although some episodes were not restored, I think that this is a good thing because it gives us the chance to see the episodes as they were most likely viewed while the series was broadcast on syndicated TV. Now that the episodes are in DVD format, they will not degrade as they normally would if they were recorded on VHS cassettes. There's no need to worry about your VCR chewing up your tapes!
Although I give this DVD set a 5 star rating, I do have some minor complaints:
-The graphics depicting Spider-Man on the packaging are not from the TV series. In the TV series, Spider-Man's costume only contains web patterns on his mask, gloves and boots whereas on the packaging, the web pattern appears on the full body of the costume.
-The title "'67 Collection" gives the impression that this series only lasted for 1 year on network television while in fact, it lasted for 3 seasons between 1967-1970.
-Although all of the episodes are in the collection, disc 3 contains episodes from seasons 1&2 and disc 5 contains episodes from seasons 2&3, creating overlap. To avoid this, I would have only included 1 instance of the opening sequence and closing credits on each disc, so that season 1 could easily fit on discs 1&2, season 2 on discs 3&4 and season 3 on discs 5&6.
-Lack of bonus features. If Buena Vista used my idea above, there would have been a lot of room on disc 6 to include many bonus features (season 3 only had 13 episodes). Bonus features such as "next week", TV commercials advertising the series, interviews with those involved with the production of this series would have made this DVD set even better.
-Paul Soles (the voice of Spider-Man) had offered himself to Buena Vista to provide voices for the DVD menus. Buena Vista declined probably because they wanted to keep costs down. But I could imagine the expanded possibilities for this collection had Mr. Soles been used, perhaps even a fake "new" bonus episode as a hidden easter egg? (Imagine re-using footage from earlier episodes with Paul Soles providing new dialogue!)
-Although the DVD menus allows you to easily pick and choose which episodes you want to watch, this feature is called "Scene Selection". I think the more correct term should have been "Episode Selection".
I admit that the above complaints are nit-picks on my part. The good stuff: Discs 2-5 contain images of characters that appear in the series. The book-like format of the DVD case is very well done. The opening sequence of the menus is awesome. Buena Vista could have broken up this collection in several parts but instead, they chose to release it into 1 great-looking package. Overall, I'm extremely pleased with this collection!
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