
I was inspired by a Facebook profile photo event -- change your pic to a favorite childhood cartoon -- to revisit The Mighty Hercules, an animated series which started in 1963 and utterly captured my imagination back then. Starting out with an exciting theme song sung by pop singer Johnny Nash, and featuring the exploits of mythological hero Hercules -- always one of my favorites -- The Mighty Hercules was plenty thrilling to a kid and we all loved it.
I was a nut for Greek mythology; I first got turned onto it from the entry in The Golden Book

Then along comes an amazing cartoon on weekday afternoons that ties right into my fascination with mythology! The Mighty Hercules had just enough characters straight out of mythology to satisfy my classical bent, and enough crazy powers to feed my science fiction/monster gent. Perfection! (The series was made by Trans Lux who also did Felix the Cat, so you might recognize some voices.) Here's the catchy theme song!
And here just a little taste of the excitement in every episode -- Hercules' girlfriend Helena gets stuck in some quicksand, thanks to the evil powers of chief baddie

We're not the only ones who love The Mighty Hercules; there are some terrific places on the web with great TMH info: The Cartoon Scrapbook page, on the A Dispensable List of Comic Book Lists, Infinite Coolness has a great TMH article (scroll down to it), Toon Tracker, and others, including a great episode listing here on TV.com. plus there are some full episodes on YouTube though it doesn't look like there is an official DVD release yet. Long overdue, that! Okay, the animation is primitive and it's hardly Disney, but the show was wonderful!
So, as Hercules used to say as he flew off up to Mt. Olympus...Olympia!!!!
2 comments:
The main thing I remember about this animated show IS the annoying little centaur. "Hi Herc!, Hi Herc!" I used to drive my sisters nuts doing Newton impressions all day long. Good show, but never a favorite for me like Gumby, Davey and Goliath, Felix and the very obscure but wonderful "Krazy Kat". Remember that terrible mouse Ignatz? And I think she had a crush on him!
So many mice fall for cats! Or Kat!
I can never forget and also love Gumby and Felix, but there's an Olympian place in my heart for Hercules!
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