If you are a "thirty-something" today, the early 1980s period was probably your last for watching after-school and Saturday-morning cartoons as anything other than a guilty pleasure, or as entertainment for your children. Before you were old enough to watch Miami Vice, you were checking out MASK, G.I. Joe, Scooby-Doo, and a host of cartoons that included Super Friends. At a remove of almost 30 years (yikes!), this collection of Super Friends: The Lost Episodes looks incredible quaint, saying a lot about the relative innocence of youth programming then compared to now. About the only thing that plays better today than thirty years ago is the brevity of these episodes, packed into several short segments that fit the frenetic pace of today's young viewer. Don't get me wrong: There's huge nostalgia in Super Friends: The Lost Episodes, but that alone won't earn this a place on your tween's most-played list, even with the two comics available for download.

Collecting 24 episodes sounds huge in our era of 30-minute shows, but Super Friends: The Lost Episodes showcases a shorter seven-minute format, so you'll be surprised at how quickly each one rolls past. The notion of these being "filler" episodes isn't exactly correct; they were just packaged in sets of three to occupy the usual 30-minute slot. The historical record shows them as only being "lost" in the sense that they were produced during down times for the show. It's not that they weren't aired, but they were definitely aired out of sequence, and combined with other formats being carried over from earlier years of Super Friends. Basically, you would have seen these bundled along with rerun 30-minute episodes or broadcast much later, creating some serious lack of continuity. You could think of this as representing a "season" in some sense, but Super Friends wasn't really exploring a lot of deep storytelling, in the way we now think of it.

Super Friends: The Lost Episodes is filled with several cartoon equivalents of the Public Service Announcement. Kids in the show are constantly having their bacon pulled out the proverbial fire by the Super Friends, after engaging in unsafe driving ("Space Racers"), caving to peer pressure ("Bully for You"), or playing where they shouldn't ("Roller Coaster"). Adults also need rescuing, whether from alien threats ("Invasion of the Space Dolls"), dangerous science ("Attack of the Cats" and "The Malusian Blob"), mythological gods ("Prisoners of Sleep"), or angry spirits ("Once Upon a Poltergeist" and "Terror on the Titanic"). There are also plenty of threats unique to the Super Friends featured here, such as Mxyzptlk, Brainiac, and the entire Legion of Doom at one point.

Entertaining, funny in both a "laughing with" and "laughing at" way, and completely nostalgic for today's thirty-somethings, Super Friends: The Lost Episodes is ideal for adults that want to introduce their children to a cartoon antiquity. Like all antiques, The Lost Episodes has to be handled with kid gloves, and isn't exactly industrial-strength product by today's standards. Some vintage items prompt a reaction along the lines of, "Wow they sure don't make 'em like that anymore!" You are more likely to watch Super Friends: The Lost Episodes with a bit of a silly grin on your face, plus some remembrance for the fat laces and parachute pants that held a special place in your life long, long ago during the '80s. Some "treasures" are best left hidden...