A Fantastic Effort.

1. The Fantastic Four weren't the first Marvel Comics superheroes to become cartoon characters. But they were, and still are, the only ones to be animated by Hanna-Barbera. Of course, there were later FF cartoons from other studios, but that's beside the point.

The only episode I saw during the show's network run was "Rama-Tut." I caught it right at the part where a passing comet changed Ben Grimm back into human form-one of the few times that this happened. But he quickly became the Thing again. But I liked him that way, even if he just wore blue briefs. At that time, I was too young to know that the episodes were merely animated versions of the comic book stories. The only exceptions were "The Terrible Tribunal," and "The Deadly Director." I learned all this later, along with the fact that the Submariner's name was changed for two episodes, since he was owned by Grantray Lawrence" in the '60's. Spiderman crossovers were also prohibited, for the webslinger had his own animated series back then. Many of the villains and allies were featured on the show. In fact, I saw a clip from"The Way It All Began" on November 24, 1977,-Thanksgiving night, when "Yabba Dabba Doo: The Happy World Of Hanna-Barbera " aired. A year later, I saw this origin story all the way through, and man, was I ever shocked! At least HB made sure no one saw Victor Von Doom/Dr. Doom's face after the failed experiment. He was shown from the back, or when he had to be seen from the front, his face was blotted out. They knew his "new look" would probably scare little kids. So just as well that he donned the iron mask.

Hanna-Barbera didn't animate any of the team players again until 1979. That year, they produced "The Thing," in which Ben Grimm not only went solo, he became a teenager! But at least he was back in human form. Using a "Thing Ring" and saying, "Thing Ring, do your thing!!" wasn't totally remarkable, but it worked.
Although this Thing did go after bad guys like Manfred Von Wreckenstein, and Decepto The Great, most of the episodes had him and fellow teens Kelly and Betty Harkness and Ronald Radford dealing with the Yancy Street Gang. For this series, they were a trio of teenage bikers consisting of Spike Hanrahan(probably named for Jack Hanrahan, a collaborator on the 60's version), and the aptly named Stretch and Turkey. Most of these episodes had the youngsters competing in a bike race, straying onto a movie set, going to a carnival, taking part in a photography contest, helping Miss Twilley, their teacher locate the rare Yankee Doodle Bird(The Thing lost his memory in that one), or spending the night on a ship that was "haunted" by the Yancy Street Gang,and later, Benjy and company, disguised as ghosts.

So "The Thing" wasn't all that bad. But it would have been better if there had been more supervillains. Even an unexpected visit from Dr. Doom at the high school would have been thrilling with a capital T.

As the narrator of the 60's series said, "Fantastic Four! Fantastic!"

Trivia Question 85: What did Super Skrull permanently change himself into in order to be peaceful and contented?

Trivia Answer: Super Skrull became a cow--a female one, go figure.