Kid Superpower Hour with Shazam!

"The Kid Super Power Hour with Shazam!" was a NBC Saturday morning cartoon produced by Filmation Studios in 1981. It contained two segments, "Hero High" (about a group of students in a high school for superheroes), and "Shazam!" (the adventures of Captain Marvel and his Marvel Family). From time to time the characters of one show would appear in the other. Isis from "The Secrets of Isis" also made a guest appearance in animated form on "Hero High".

The actors who voice the "Hero High" cartoon characters perform onstage as their characters each week in live-action song-of-the-week segments during the program. They also did three comedy sketches which mostly had corny jokes, in the style of "Laugh In" or "Hee Haw".

Main cast

*Christopher Hensel ... Captain California (voice)
*Rebecca Perle ... Glorious Gal (voice) (as Becky Perle)
*John Berwick ... Rex Ruthless (voice)
*Maylo McCaslin ... Dirty Trixie (voice)
*Jere Fields ... Mystic Misty (voice)
*Jim Greenleaf ... Weatherman (voice)
*Johnny Venocour ... Punk Rock (voice)
*Burr Middleton ... Captain Marvel/Billy Batson
*Alan Oppenheimer ... Dr. Sivana, Mr. Tawny, Uncle Dudley, and Mr. Mind
*Norm Prescott ... Narrator
*Barry Gordon ... Captain Marvel, Jr./Freddy Freeman
*Dawn Jeffory ... Mary Marvel/Mary Batson

Trivia

* Jere Fields' real-life sister is Kim Fields, of "The Facts Of Life" fame.
* Maylo McCaslin is now married to Willie Aames, and lends her voice to his direct-to-video series "Bibleman."
* Burr Middleton's real-life father Charles Middleton co-starred as Ming the Merciless in "Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe", opposite Buster Crabbe.
* Rebecca Perle and Johnny Venocour later co-starred with Linda Blair in her movie "Savage Streets."
* John "Rex Ruthless" Berwick is married to the daughter of this show's producer, the late Arthur H. Nadel.

DVD

The rights to the "Shazam!" portion of the program rest with Warner Bros. (due to the ownership of the Marvel Family cast of characters through DC Comics), who have no plans at this time to release those cartoons. However, "Hero High — The Complete Series" has recently seen a DVD release containing all twenty-six episodes (which includes guest appearances from Captain Marvel and Mary Marvel, as well as Filmation creation Isis). However, "Shazam!" is listed by Entertainment Rights on its website as having the "Worldwide Free TV" rights to the series, which means the company can license the series for broadcast on television. However, it is unclear whether it refers to the animated segments from this series or the live action series made by Filmation in the mid-1970s.

External links

*imdb title|id=0210425|title=Kid Superpower Hour with Shazam!