The Batman/Superman Hour was a Filmation animated series broadcast on CBS from 1968 to 1969. Premiering on September 14, 1968, this 60-minute program featured new adventures of DC Comics superheroes like Batman, Robin, and Batgirl alongside shorts from The New Adventures of Superman and The Adventures of Superboy. This series marked the first animated Saturday morning cartoon for Batman and his classic enemies.
At the time the show was ordered by CBS, the live-action Batman TV show was at its ratings peak on ABC. Due to a licensing oversight by the live-action show's producers, Filmation secured the cartoon rights to Batman and produced the series for CBS. This series introduced Olan Soule and Casey Kasem as the voices of Batman and Robin. When The New Adventures of Batman was produced in 1977, Adam West and Burt Ward reprised their roles from the live-action TV series. Soule and Kasem would return several times for The New Scooby-Doo Movies, Super Friends, The All-New Super Friends Hour, Challenge of the SuperFriends, and The World's Greatest Super Friends. Kasem would later voice Robin alongside Adam West's Batman in The Super Powers Team: Galactic Guardians.
In 1969, the series was repackaged into 30-minute episodes without the Superman segments and renamed Batman with Robin the Boy Wonder. Batman would next appear in The New Adventures of Batman in 1977. Warner Home Video released five selected episodes on VHS in 1985 as part of the "Super Powers" video collection. These videos were re-released in 1996 but are now out of print. Episodes were also included in The Superman/Batman Adventures on the USA Network and later aired on the Boomerang Network.
This series marked the animation debut of Batman, his supporting cast, and classic enemies like Joker, Penguin, Riddler, Catwoman, Mr. Freeze, Scarecrow, Mad Hatter, plus some villains exclusive to the series. The success of The Superman/Aquaman Hour of Adventure in 1967 had prompted Filmation to produce a Metamorpho pilot and develop other similar series. These plans were cancelled when CBS secured the Batman animation rights following ABC's success with the live-action series.
Going into production close to the start of the 1968 TV season, Filmation had to pull additional animators from other projects to meet deadlines. In Lou Scheimer's book "Creating the Filmation Generation," he recounts how one background painter mistakenly included the ABC logo on a wall in an early Batman segment, though the cartoon aired on CBS. CBS executives were not amused, and Filmation redid the scene for subsequent broadcasts. After production ended in 1969, Filmation produced two new Superman spots and three Batman spots that were incorporated into early episodes of Sesame Street (1969).
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