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Baby boomers of a certain age, and anyone fond of classic
Hanna Barbera cartoons, might find the 40-year-old episodes in Jonny Quest:
The Complete First Season an exciting blast from the past. Five years before
Hanna Barbera made a comedy about amateur youths solving exotic mysteries in Scooby-Doo, Where
Are You!, the animation giant captured a more serious spirit from a
different era in Jonny Quest. The series played on primetime
television--a very big deal for animation at the time--in 1964, and was infused
with energy from sundry pop trends as well as cold war paranoia and a prevailing
belief in limitless technology (largely inspired by America's race to the moon).
Part intelligence thriller, part science fiction, Jonny Quest made a
child's adventure out of thwarting international espionage and sabotage with
super-computers, state-of-the-art transportation to every corner of the planet,
an apparently bottomless budget for building fantastic weapons, martial arts,
and more. The fact that schoolboy Jonny, as well as his best friend, Hadji and
canine companion Bandit, were having adventures akin to those of James Bond was
terribly exciting.
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