3 out of 5

Developed by: Joe Ruby, Ken Spears

Endlessly distracting, Ruby-Spears’ ‘The Plastic Man Comedy/Adventure Show’ has its Plastic Man episodes singled out and released across four discs. The old hands who worked on plenty of the stuff from this era (late 70s / early 80s) are in the writing credits – including regular comic book crossovers like Mark Evanier and Steve Gerber – so there’s a comfortable familiarity at work, crossing into Super Friends-type romps with the ridiculousness allowed by the, er, flexibility of the character.

That latter point is probably (sigh) stretched too far: Plastic Man’s “plastic” abilities are used for eeeeverything, with their limitations and specialties randomly decided as needed for extending the plots. Plots which, of course, are essentially swappable, as per the format of shows like this: in this iteration of the character, every episode starts with PM getting a buzz from The Chief – Plastic Man’s ‘boss,’ in some vague government organization – and is tasked to solve some evil villain threat. Plas drags his lady friend Penny and guy friend Hula-Hula along with him on such missions, naturally, and they usual get there via “the plasti-copter” or something, do some investigating / getting kidnapped, are stymied by the bad guy plan, then eventually Plas overcomes the problem with wild plastic power. To the writers’ credits, some of the villains and applications of the hero’s abilities are just so goofy they make you laugh, but some are like mad libs; weekly carbon copies of stuff we’ve seen.

The inclusion of the sidekicks feel of-the-era, with Penny ceaselessly in love with Plas, and Hula-Hula the goofy one with a catch phrase or two, but the show has some cute wiggle where they keep PM – at least for most of the series – pretty sexually aloof / ambivalent, despite Penny’s adulations, and Hula-Hula is maybe just as problem-prone as Plas, meaning he also actually assists sometimes; he just doesn’t have super powers to fall back on. Whatever the case, the voice crew remains dedicated, with Melendy Britt cooing, and Joe Baker yukking, and Michael Bell leaning into a Don Adams shtick as Plastic Man, with the writers forcing as many puns as possible into the script.

The video quality is like a VHS; this is the only way to currently own this stuff, so it’s fine, but expect a slight blurriness / choppiness to the image at points and some odd audio quality – including maybe a laugh track that’s been muted on some episodes? In terms of extras, we do get two nice bonuses: a lengthy (for these types of releases – 15 minutes!) doc on the background of the show / character, and the Tom Kenny-voiced / Stephen DeStefano-designed pilot from a mid-2000s attempt which never went anywhere. The additional trailers for others shows are total filler.