"The Plastic Man Comedy/Adventure Show" (1979) TV series 1979-1981

User Rating:

6.2/10   

Directors:

Rudy Larriva
John Kimball

Writers:

Larry Alexander (story) (1979)
Creighton Barnes (story) (1979)

Genre:

Adventure | Animation | Family

Plot:

The adventures of the original stretchable superhero and various other characters.

Plot Keywords:

Superhero | Punctuation In Title | DC Comics | Slash In Title | Based On Comic

Cast

Michael Bell	...	Plastic Man (voice)
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Jack Baker	...	Sunstroke (voice) (as John Anthony Bailey)
Melendy Britt	...	Penny / The Chief (voice)
Johnny Brown	...	Splashdown (voice)
Peter Cullen	...	Mighty Man (voice)
Bobby F. Ellerbee	...	Cosmo (voice)
Al Fann	...	Rickety Rocket (voice)
John Stephenson	...	Additional Voices (voice)
Dee Timberlake	...	Venus (voice)
Frank Welker	...	Fangface / Fangpuss (1979) (voice)

Runtime:

USA:120 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

USA:TV-G | USA:TV-Y7 (some episodes)

Company:

Ruby-Spears Productions

Trivia:

Although the origin of Plastic Man was never related on the show, his name is Eel O'Brien, and he was a thief who broke into a plastic factory with a few of his friends for a heist and was doused in experimental plastic.

Movie Connections:

Referenced in Teenage Superhero Pregnancy Scare (2005)

THIS is Plastic Man? Not by a longshot!

Anybody fooled into thinking that this show is the adventures of Plastic Man-think again!!! First, some vital info: Plastic Man was created in 1941 by Jack Cole and first appeared in Police Comics #1 (August 1941), published by Quality Comics (itself later purchased by DC Comics). He was crook Eel O'Brien, who while trying to rob a chemical company, fell into a vat of experimental acid after being shot. Running away from the building, he fell unconscious, and was found and revived by a group of monks; while recuperating, he found out that he had these amazing stretchy powers, and decided to do good instead of doing bad. After getting Woozy Winks as a sidekick, he fights crime in a series of quirky, offbeat and surreal slapstick adventures-NOT the idiotic and dumb ones as seen in this TV show. He also did not ever meet or have adventures with Penny (although I must admit, now that I know that the current Plastic Man is the son of the original character seen in this show, having Penny as a girlfriend/wife doesn't seem like a bad idea!) or Hula-Hula (an insulting slur on Polynesian people), nor did he have a Plasticmobile or a Plastiplane. It would have been better if the writers had actually tried to read the original stories-they were reprinted up the yingyang since 1965, for frack's sakes-but they didn't, and we have this silly show that's not as funny as the original comic books, complete with a sidekick that makes Woozy Winks look like Dr. Watson.

Let's hope that Warner Bros. Animation can create a new show based on the original characters, situations, AND quirky, offbeat and surreal slapstick the character is known for, and not the nonsense seen in this show.