The Herculoids

Received my colletion of The Herculoids: The Complete Series from Warner Archives. What's not to love? Every episode is the same: Invaders arrive and are repelled by the animals using their powers, sometimes in creative ways. It's pure, mindless, un-PC superhero violence with no lessons being taught except "You do not want to mess with The Herculoids!!!" The '60s were a great time to be a kid.

I have that DVD, as well as all the other superhero cartoons from HB. And I agree wholeheartedly that there were no animated heroes more original than The Herculoids.

Verily. The Herculoids were straight-up, flat-out awesome. There's the leader, Zandor. Shoots energy rocks with a slingshot and flings his shield like Captain America. We told in the character bios that Zandor is a "king." Never seemed all that kingly, just massively heroic. Has his lovely blonde wife, Tara. Hollywood must have its blondes. Son Dorno, too. They're these noble savages that live in a giant mushroom-thing. Their whole house is al fresco, and nobody cares.

Then there's Igoo, the rock ape, who is almost indestructible, much like Ben Grimm, but less articulate. And Tundro the Tremendous, who is likewise indestructible with all that armor plating. Tundro has how many legs? That can extend to twice his height. And he can shoot energy rocks out through his horn. He's a living heavy tank. And there's Zok the laser-ray dragon, who's big, cute, agile, and flies. And shoots lasers from his eyes, and his tail, just in case the baddies aren't getting blasted enough. And Gloop and Gleep, the whatever they are. Gelatinous blobs that can morph into any shape, much like the T-1000 terminator. Only cuter, sort of like cuddly ghosts.

Pardon me, I must squee now... 🍌

Tundro The Tremendous has often been argued about by the purists. Some say he's a rhino. Others say he's a ceratopsian. I think he's a little of both. What do you think?

The rhino is my favorite animal, so I vote rhino, though in truth, he's probably more of a ceratopsian.

I enjoyed the Herculoids as well...created by Joe Ruby and Ken Spears for Hanna-Barbera Productions.

The character designs (by Alex Toth) were great and the alien animals were clever and battled side by side well. The stories always had some hostile alien invader or native creature wreaking havoc and King Zandor and his family and animal allies would band together to fight the enemies to the finish...but the action and variety of stories kept things interesting.