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(Really) Lazy Saturday Cartoons

It’s the laziest of Saturdays — the Saturday of the August long weekend here in most of Canada — so here are the laziest of the old Saturday morning cartoons.

First, here’s an episode of the 1960’s Spider-Man cartoon in which he ends up having to save an alien civilization’s complete library of knowledge and escape a place called “Dementia Five”. It’s probably the trippiest episode of the series, full of psychedelic artwork (and probably quite weird for that era, at least on broadcast television).

Spider-Man in Dementia Five, Part One

Spider-Man in Dementia Five, Part Two

Here’s the title sequence for a lesser-known cartoon series from around the same time, Rocket Robin Hood. It’s the other North American animated series set in the year 3000 (and it predates Futurama by about 30 years), featuring the space-travelling descendants of the Merry Men.

Rocket Robin Hood Title Sequence

Rocket Robin Hood was produced by the same animation house that did Spider-Man, and in what was most likely a cost-savings move, there’s an episode where Robin and Little John have to save an alien civilization’s complete library of knowledge and escape a place called “Dementia Five”. Same trippy art, same story.

Rocket Robin Hood in Dementia Five

Joey deVilla

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Mike says:

August 4, 2012 at 8:29 pm

Actually, I think that this happened twice; the second time reused Robin's episode in one of Spidey's. Both episodes had giant mechanical beetles that fired rays from their eyes. In the Spidey episode, the dialogue wasn't even redubbed - the villain (from memory) was heard to say "they're getting closer", which referred to Robin & Will Scarlet.
A quick check of Wikipedia confirms it:
Rocket Robin Hood footage
The episodes "Phantom from the Depths of Time"[11] and "Revolt in the Fifth Dimension" were, for a large part, recycled animation from two episodes ("From Menace to Menace" and "Dimentia Five") of an earlier series, Rocket Robin Hood.[12] Therein, Spider-Man was substituted for Robin Hood on the animation cells.