There’s really no better way to describe the Plastic Man cartoon from 1979 than to give a brief plot synopsis of one particularly memorable scene` :
Plastic Man and his two completely hapless, powerless sidekicks are launched out of torpedo tubes into the undersea depths by a hyperintelligent pirate scallop who calls himself ‘The Clam’ (because scallops were more fun to draw, I guess), and are immediately caught by a giant squid. Because Plastic Man had just been sprayed by a plastic hardening spray, he is powerless – though all three characters can talk freely underwater and seem to be in no danger of drowning. Suddenly, the blonde girl remembers that she has a bottle of hot sauce in her shoe, which she extends Inspector Gadget-style to Plastic Man, who then drinks it with a straw (still underwater). This somehow negates the effects of the hardening spray completely and they are all rescued.
When you get this wacky, you’re not even talking about charming Silver Age weirdness anymore. You’re talking about writers who threw darts at index cards and grocery fliers and just wrote what stuck. Hanna Barbera is guilty of producing some exceptionally schizophrenic cartoons during their lifetime, but this is probably the most egregious I’ve ever witnessed – and I recall watching this at 6 AM when I was 5 years old and a very early riser.
To the best of my knowledge, Plastic Man’s criminal history or source of his powers isn’t explored, nor is his connection to the rest to the DC Comics universe. Instead, he’s saddled with a girl named Penny who is constantly fawning over him (who he later has a baby with), and a Hawaiian guy named Hula-Hula who can’t make a single statement without throwing the word ‘pineapple’ into it at random. Honestly, it’s borderline racist, but the whole cartoon is an amazing surrealist package of what-the-hell.
The villains are hilariously bizarre, even though they’re rarely funny themselves. Disco Mummy, Half-Ape (who is half man, half ape split perfectly down the middle), and a gang of tiny gangsters are just a few of the insane bad guys that Plastic Man battles against, and which would be perfect fodder for a modern revisitation of the series.
But wait : they produced a pilot for just such a thing in 2006. It’s completely ‘Freakazoid’ meets ‘Ren and Stimpy’, and just the kind of kinetic action that Plastic Man needs. It’s included here, but it’s obvious why it fell flat, despite the even more obvious potential for being something greater. Note that the bonus features are on discs one and two, and not all on disc four as the DVD notes describe.
It’s absolutely a nice set, but calling it ‘complete’ is a misnomer, as there are plenty of later episodes with the Plastic Man family that are left out. If you know your late-70s Hanna Barbera cartoons, you know what to expect – gaping plot holes, fuzzy animation, and general nonsense. And that’s probably exactly why you like them to begin with. The set can be purchased for around $30.
