Challenge of the Superfriends

Challenge of the Superfriends
Network	ABC
Production company	Hanna-Barbera DC Comics
Distributor	Taft Broadcasting
Original release	September 9—December 23, 1978
Starring	Danny Dark Olan Soule Casey Kasem Shannon Farnon Norman Alden Michael Bell Louise Williams Bill Woodson
Executive producer(s)	William Hanna Joseph Barbera
Producer(s)	Don Jurwich
Music composed by	Hoyt Curtin
Writer(s)	Jeffrey Scott
Director(s)	Ray Urbano Carl Urbano Don Jurwich (voices)
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Challenge of the Superfriends is an American animated superhero television series produced by Hanna-Barbera and DC Comics for ABC's Saturday morning line-up. It ran in 1978, airing 16 episodes that spanned one season. It was the third Super Friends series after the original 1973 series of the same name.

The Super Friends/Justice League are finally allowed to square off against their nemeses who have formed their own group, the Legion of Doom. But they are still certainly not allowed to fight, although the opening sequence does have them all fly into each other aggressively at the end.

Each episode was made up of two segments: A regular Superfriends segment, and then the Challenge segment.

Music

The music was composed by Hoyt Curtin, with musical supervision from Paul DeKorte.

Episodes

Episode	Original air date
1x01 "Rokan: Enemy from Space" "Wanted: The Superfriends"	September 9, 1978
1x02 "The Demons of Exxor" "Invasion of the Fearians"	September 16, 1978
1x03 "Battle at the Earth's Core" "The World's Deadliest Game"	September 23, 1978
1x04 "Sinbad and the Space Pirates" "The Time Trap"	September 30, 1978
1x05 "The Pied Piper from Space" "Trial of the Superfriends"	October 7, 1978
1x06 "Attack of the Vampire" "Monolith of Evil"	October 14, 1978
1x07 "The Beasts Are Coming" "The Giants of Doom"	October 21, 1978
1x08 "Terror from the Phantom Zone" "Secret Origins of the Superfriends"	October 28, 1978
1x09 "The Anti-Matter Monster" "Revenge on Gorilla City"	November 4, 1978
1x10 "World Beneath the Ice" "Swamp of the Living Dead"	November 11, 1978
1x11 "Invasion of the Brain Creatures" "Conquerors of the Future"	November 18, 1978
1x12 "The Incredible Space Circus" "The Final Challenge"	November 25, 1978
1x13 "Batman: Dead or Alive" "Fairy Tale of Doom"	December 2, 1978
1x14 "Battle of the Gods" "Doomsday"	December 9, 1978
1x15 "Journey Through Inner Space" "Superfriends: Rest in Peace"	December 16, 1978
1x16 "The Rise and Fall of the Superfriends" "History of Doom"	December 23, 1978

Cast

• Olan Soule as Batman
• Casey Kasem as Robin
• Shannon Farnon as Wonder Woman
• Danny Dark as Superman
• Norman Alden as Aquaman
• Michael Bell as Zan and Gleek
• Louise Williams as Jayna
• Bill Woodson as the Narrator (uncredited)

In popular culture

• In the That 70s Show episode "Ramble On," Kelso has a fantasy sequence of the kids as the Super Pals, who receive a threat from Red as Doctor Bald, a doppelganger of Lex.
• The fourth season premiere of Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends is called "Challenge of the Super Friends."
• The star transition music was used for when Wonder Woman used her invisible jet to jump from the Earth to the Moon in the film Lego DC Super Hero Girls: Brain Drain.

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Merchandise

Home media

In 2003, Warner Home Video released four of the Challenge segments on VHS and DVD with the titles of Attack of the Legion of Doom and United They Stand.

Warner Home Video then continued with DVD, separating the two segments into their own two-disc sets, first with the Challenge segments on Challenge of the Super Friends: The First Season on July 6, 2004, then the Superfriends segments on Super Friends: Volume Two on May 24, 2005.

On September 10, 2024, Warner Home Video included the season on the 21-disc DVD set of Super Friends!: The Complete Collection, and in an upscaled 1080p version on a sixteen-disc Blu-ray set of the same name.

Toys and games

On April 17, 2019, Cryptozoic Entertainment released Challenge of the Superfriends Card Game.