Supercar: The Complete Series

It’s hard to believe they are puppets. They’ve got real personalities. I feel like I know them, and want to meet them in person. It seems each episode has a good storyline and even a moral to the story. The only problem is I’m getting to the end of the series. How did I not know about this when I was a kid? After this, graduate to “Thunderbirds”. It’s the next evolution, in color, and almost an hour episodes (Supercars half hour). These were done by Gerry Anderson and there are more series after Thunderbirds also. His special effects are so good that he was hired to do special effects on the James Bond films.

When I was a seven years old back in the mid sixties this was my favorite show. For years I was looking for it on VHS to no avail. One night a cable access show played an episode and it brought me back to that time in my childhood. That was the first time in about fort-five years that I saw an episode. A couple of years ago I saw the box set DVD on Amazon for about $85. Not sure if I would still like the show for that price I decided to wait to see if the price would drop. Well it did an I just finished watching all 39 episodes for the first time in over forty-five years. The video quality is very good, but sometimes the volume drops for Jimmy and for several "guest characters". This is only a problem when watching late at night when I keep the volume down so I don't bother my neighbors. This is probably due to the fact that the show is old and might not have been preserved properly. If you remember this show and liked it then I highly recommend getting this set of the original Supermarionation. I believe this was the first show of it's kind followed by other shows by Gerry Anderson and company like Thunderbirds and Stingray. Yes you can see the strings but that's fine with me. Yes it is in black and white but that's Ok also. This was a time when there was no doubt who the good guys were. I love the fact that you never see any one getting into Supercar, they are standing next to it then they cut back and they are in Supercar. They can stand by a doorway but can't go through it because of the strings. The plot lines are simple, Supercar is needed to save someone so off they go. Today plot lines in TV shows aren't much more complicated. Mike Mercury is the American, Dr. Beaker is "most excellent" as the English scientist and is my favorite. Mitch the monkey can be a little annoying due to his screeching. Prof. Popkiss is the other scientist with a German accent. Jimmy is a kid they saved in the pilot episode who stayed with the Supercar team. They made this show on a shoestring budget and you can see the love and sweat that went into it. The other shows that followed are in color but this was the one that caught my imagination. I enjoyed watching these shows and was happy to see them for the first time in forty-five years. A must have for fans of original early TV before computers started to replace scenery with drawings.

Appreciated seller's due diligence; contacted me prior to actually shipping the order to advise that it would not play on most players in the U.S. Although this was clearly stated in the product listing, it often goes unnoticed. I had read the disclaimer before ordering but was impressed by the seller's desire to go above and beyond what most vendors are willing to do and reach out to new customers to confirm they're aware of the format being purchased, even at the risk of potentially losing those new customers. Product arrived earlier than expected, in excellent condition. Haven't made it through the entire series yet, but the episodes already watched did bring back some pleasant childhood memories. I found the bonus, behind-the-scenes commentaries interesting as well. Very satisfied with this purchase.

I have fond memories of this series from when I was about nine or ten (viewing it again I realize that I probably actually saw no more than eight or ten of the segments), and I was surprised and delighted to see it available on DVD. In an isolated laboratory in the desert at Blackrock, NV, an easy drive from Batesville and a couple of hours' bus time from Carson City, a three-man team has labored for five years to produce the vehicle of the future. The men are the craggy, bedroom-eyed American test pilot, Mike Mercury; jolly, bespectacled German, Prof. Adolf Popkiss; and the brilliant but terminally absentminded Britisher, Dr. Horatio Beeker, whose eccentricities often land him (and sometimes the rest of the team as well) in trouble. The vehicle, Supercar, is, as Mike says, "like an airplane, only better": she can fly from Nevada to New York City in 15 min. (not only super- but hypersonic), or loaf along at 1000 MPH ("low safe cruising speed")--2500 MPH at an altitude of 50,000' provides best fuel economy; she can operate at 4 1/2 miles below the surface of the sea, or in low earth orbit (100-1240 mi. up); she's even been known to travel the British motorways, though her altimeter keeps insisting she's going to crash if Mike doesn't put another 150 feet under her belly plates, and her armor is so stout that she shrugs off bullets without so much as a dent. On her first mission following the completion of testing, she rescues Bill Gibson, his 10-year-old brother Jimmy, and Jimmy's beloved pet monkey Mitch (much more intelligent than the average monkey, but equally mischievous) after their light plane ditches in the Pacific and their life raft goes astray in a heavy fog, and for reasons never fully explained Jimmy and Mitch are invited to stay at the lab with the team while Bill goes on to operate his small indy trucking business and later enter the astronaut corps. Thereafter Supercar and her team assist people in trouble (from a Chinese oldster threatened with the destruction of the temple he cares for, to a deposed political leader) and tackle criminals, spies, and assorted other baddies, most notably the fat and sinister Masterspy and his cowardly cohort Zahrin (who, though they're Russian, are eventually revealed as freelancers, stealing secrets and devices to sell to the highest bidder, and occasionally doing a job for hire, as in "Hi Jack") and the British white-collar criminal Harper and his Cockney muscleman Judd. The team is also very much aware of being a team, and willingly goes the extra mile for one another: once when Mitch becomes ill, Mike flies Dr. Beeker to the Amazon jungle in search of a plant that may cure him; when Prof. Popkiss has an appendectomy and needs a transfusion of blood from a rare group, Mike takes his doctor to an isolated research station in the Arctic to obtain plasma from a fellow scientist.As other reviewers have observed, the strings of Supercar and the puppets all too often show (apparently invisible thread hadn't been invented yet), body proportions aren't always right, there are various cartoonish explosions that leave people smoke-stained and dishevelled but uninjured, and the lab and control consoles are implausibly simple, but for what it is, the special effects are surprisingly good (especially when Supercar's jets fire), and there's a good deal of creative use of stock footage--artillery against the horizon, African wildlife in its native habitat, a Naval ship at sea, a nuclear blast. There are also some implausibilities of plot, notably in "Island Incident" (how did the deposed General get from his island nation to the California desert, and once there, in those days before cell phones, how was he able to contact the Supercar team for help?) and in the fate of the recurring bad guys (why, once the team has them in its power, don't they end up securely in prison?). The violence quotient, however, is very low (though there's occasional shooting, particularly in one segment where the team is besieged at the lab by Masterspy and cohorts and Dr. Beeker shows himself to be a determined marksman with a machine gun, nobody is ever killed), and there's a lot of humor, some of it rather subtle, some more kid-friendly (as when Mike, testing his new pilot-ejector seat, twice ends up atop a cactus). As an adult I can still enjoy and appreciate this series and wish it could have lasted longer. (Believe it or not, somebody online is working on a full-video continuation!) Kids, even today's sophisticates, should like it too, especially with Jimmy as a focus for their own fantasies (as he once says, "I bet lots of kids would love to be where I am").