Fantastic Four (TV series)
- This article is about the TV series. For the team, see Fantastic Four.
| Fantastic Four | |
|---|---|
 On-screen title card. | |
| Network | ABC |
| Production company | Hanna-Barbera |
| Distributor | Taft Broadcasting |
| Original release | September 9, 1967—September 21, 1968 |
| Run time | 20 minutes |
| Starring | Gerald Mohr Jo Ann Pflug Jac Flounders Paul Frees |
| Producer(s) | William Hanna Joseph Barbera |
| Music composed by | Ted Nichols |
| Writer(s) | Phil Hahn Jack Hanharan |
| Director(s) | William Hanna Joseph Barbera |
| Series navigation | |
| ← Previous | Next → |
| Second title card | |
 Alternate title card. | |
Fantastic Four, also known as The Fantastic Four and Fantastic 4, is an American animated action-adventure television series produced by Hanna-Barbera Productions for ABC's Saturday morning block. It ran from 1967 to 1968, airing nineteen episodes. It is an adaptation of the Fantastic Four comics published by the Marvel Comics Group.
The series revolves around the near faithful adaptations from the comic books, with the Fantastic Four, a superhero team (consisting of Mister Fantastic, the Invisible Girl, the Human Torch, and The Thing), who live together in their Manhattan headquarters of Baxter Building. From there, they work to defend the island as well as the world from native despots to otherworldly beings only they can defeat.
In 1973, Hanna-Barbera would find more success with adapting stories from DC Comics, although they eventually did do another cartoon based on a Marvel Comics property in 1979, again based on Fantastic Four, although wildly different from the source material, which now only revolved around The Thing, who could revert back to being human, but could only in a regressed teenage body, called Benjy Grimm, by using special rings, none of which makes any sense, yet had 26 nonsensical episodes about it.
The series was not released on VHS, and has yet to be released on DVD or even be made available to purchase through Video on Demand sites like Amazon, or even the streaming subscription service Disney+, due to the simple fact of legal ownership of the singular show versus the property as a whole, which is owned by Warner Bros. Discovery (aka the enemy), and The Walt Disney Company, respectively.
Production
Development
Music
The score was composed by Ted Nichols.
Episodes
| Episode | Original air date |
|---|---|
| 1x01 | September 9, 1967 |
1x02
|
September 16, 1967 |
| 1x03 | September 23, 1967 |
| 1x04 | September 30, 1967 |
1x05
|
October 7, 1967 |
| 1x06 | October 14, 1967 |
| 1x07 | October 21, 1967 |
| 1x08 | October 28, 1967 |
| 1x09 | November 4, 1967 |
| 1x10 | November 11, 1967 |
| 1x11 | November 18, 1967 |
| 1x12 | November 25, 1967 |
1x13
|
December 8, 1967 |
1x14
|
December 16, 1967 |
| 1x15 | December 30, 1967 |
| 1x16 | January 6, 1968 |
| 1x17 | January 13, 1968 |
| 1x18 | September 14, 1968 |
| 1x19 | September 21, 1968 |
Release
Dates are in order of release:
- United States: September 9, 1967 on ABC
- United Kingdom and Ireland: November 9, 1968 at 6:05 pm on ITV
Cast
- Gerald Mohr as Mister Fantastic/Reed Richards
- Jo Ann Pflug as Invisible Girl/Sue Richards
- Jac Flounders as Human Torch/Johnny Storm
- Paul Frees as The Thing/Ben Grimm
