The Mighty Heroes - History

History

The team members are clumsy accident-prone bunglers who often find themselves in silly situations. A typical occurrence has them hopelessly tangled together offering each other stock apologies, often while falling en masse into an even worse situation. In combat, they are even worse, continually getting into each other's way until they are all captured by the villain (who almost always has enormous V-shaped teeth). However, having escaped the villain's death trap in the cliffhanger, the team always manages to regroup and fight with proper coordination to win the day. In an episode of Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures, also produced by Bakshi, the Mighty Heroes retired and became accountants with a firm called "Man, Man, Man, Man & Man."

The series came about when the Terrytoons staff were pitching series proposals to the animation company's parent corporation, the CBS television network, only to have them all rejected. When the CBS representatives asked if there were any other proposals, Bakshi, at the time a former "boy wonder" animator who had been recently promoted to director and invited to the meeting, spoke up and improvised the proposed The Mighty Heroes on the spot.

The cartoons originally appeared as a segment of the long-running Mighty Mouse Playhouse during the 1966-67 season, which was renamed "Mighty Mouse and The Mighty Heroes" in recognition of the new segment. Some weeks during the network run, two complete "Mighty Heroes" segments would open and close the show with a classic Mighty Mouse cartoon in-between. In other weeks, one Mighty Heroes episode would be split in two to open and close the show, with two Mighty Mouse cartoons broadcast in-between.

The character voices were provided by Herschel Bernardi, who provided those of Strong Man, Diaper Man, and Tornado Man, and Lionel G. Wilson, who provided those of Cuckoo Man and Rope Man. Bernardi was also the original provider of the "Ho Ho Ho" voice of the Jolly Green Giant and of StarKist's Charlie the Tuna voice in commercials. Wilson was also the voice of the title character in another famous Terrytoons series, Tom Terrific. Only 20 episodes were produced; the series came to an end when Bakshi left Terrytoons in 1967.

Reruns of The Mighty Heroes were eventually syndicated by Viacom now CBS Television Distribution in the 1970s as part of the Mighty Mouse package. There have also been licensed VHS releases of some episodes and bootleg DVD releases of the entire series, but there has never been an authorized DVD release of the show. Episodes of The Mighty Heroes also appeared in movie theatres for a time, with an episode shown to audiences, preceding the main attraction.

Their last appearance in animated form was as guest stars in the episode "Heroes and Zeroes" of the late 1980s series Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures, produced by Bakshi, in which they had all retired and were running the accounting firm of Man, Man, Man, Man and Man. Even Diaper Man had grown up, evidenced by his wearing a moustache.