Valley of The Dinosaurs!

[Jinzo Ningen]

Just saw this is now available from Warner Bros. Archive collection. I really LOVED this show, although many others from my generation don't remember it because it was totally overshadowed by the concurrently-running Land of The Lost in 1974. This was about as close to Johnny Quest as HB ever got again, IMHO. I cannot wait to order this, along with The Last Dinosaur. Cool!

They also have an old HB cartoon called Young Sampson. The description sounds an awful lot like the basic concept of He-Man! Anyone remember this? I am very intrigued by the show's synopsis posted on the W-B Archive website but I'm not too sure if I wanna spring for it or not, just to satisfy my curiosity.

[Xenorama]

Young Samson rocks. just ten minute episodes, a la Herculoids, but they move. I am going to have to get that. it's way better than Valley of Dinos.

I want to like Valley of DInosaurs, but it really does pale compare to Land of the Lost. I mean, I like it OK, but overall it's kind of disappointing.

David

[Jinzo Ningen]

It's too bad that HB didn't do more "realistic" animation stuff like JQ, Valley... and Godzilla. They look great and are pretty entertaining. I guess it's a matter of personal taste because, unlike a lot of fans, I also prefer the more realistically-proportioned marionettes & series from Gerry Anderson's later entries over the huge-headed character shows from his early years.

I loved Valley... just because I was at that magic age where I simply could NOT get enough dinosaurs to satisfy me. I will readily admit that I loved Land of The Lost far more though, simply because it was live action. That's one of the HUGE reasons why I love toku shows over anime'. You can do anything in animation, but it's a lot harder to pull off the same visuals in live action. So even though stuff doesn't look "realistic" some/most of the time, I am willing to suspend disbelief and enjoy it all the more because of the degree of difficulty it took to bring a particular scene or creature or whatever in live action. I don't know... does what I just wrote make any sense?? LOL

[The Shadow]

HB's Young Samson cartoons are great -- I've little doubt that the show would later be one of the influences for MOTU/He-Man.

You can sometimes catch Young Samson running on Boomerang -- I think I've even seen Valley of the Dinosaurs running over the last couple years.

For some reason I don't recall watching Valley in the 80s, I remember watching all sorts of other HB catoons but oddly not this one. Which is kind of strange, as I regularly watched Land of the Lost and would have undoubtedly watched Valley if I saw it.

[Jinzo Ningen]

I seem to remember David mentioned somehere in another thread about a show called Mighty Mightor, (or something like that), which featured a similarly-powered precursor to He-Man? I would be interested in picking that up as well.

EDIT: I just Googled Mightor. Hey, it does look like a pretty cool cartoon! Can't believe I never saw it as a kid. I would've certainly remembered the dinosaur/caveman aspect for sure! Gosh, I really hope they do release this on DVD one of these days! Looks like there were more than a few cartoons that stole the hero transformation concept from good ol' Captain Marvel "SHAZAM!"

Regarding these W-B Archive offerings... it's really neat to see some of these more obscure cartoons popping up, even if they aren't a mainstream DVD or Blu-Ray release. At least they're legit, good quality copies, rather than inferior, bottom-of-the-barrel bootlegs. And no matter how much some shows may seem dumb or boring, there are no doubt people out there who will remember them fondly as being their favorite toon when they were growing up. LOL.

[Tom R VanSlambrouck]