The Mighty Hercules (I) (1963–1966) User Reviews

I'm Glad, I'm glad for the "The Mighty Hercules"

[mickfan · 8/10 · 21 December 2006]

Granted it doesn't have the detail of Disney nor escape the cyclical backgrounds a la' Hanna-Barbara and many others. But there is no call to pick on The Mighty Hercules like it was the only limited animation, low cell-count animated cartoon around at the time.

As for comparison to any of the bland H&B fare of the day, the Pixie & Dixie & Wally & Yogi & Huckleberry..shall I go on? As a young boy I would pick One Episode of Mighty Hercules over a Full Hour of any of them! How exciting can seeing animals chase each other back and forth get? But Hercules had plenty of fast action, plenty of thrills - and could be quite scary to a five or six year old. But that wasn't the only thing that made it great. Hercules was a wonderful role model for youngsters, and this cartoon always promoted good moral values. Yes, where good always triumphed over evil and taught kids right from wrong.

Cartoons used to do that sort of thing, rather than just gross you out like most are designed to do so today.

True...Newton was a bumbling sidekick, but he was as loyal and devoted to Herc as they come. Addressing stupid comments about his "sexuality" is pointless (he is a cartoon, okay?) Also, ignorance can be attributed to not knowing that Newton's voice changed in mid-episode (actually it was right at the end of one) because Jack Mercer had left the production who had been doing most of the voices. If that person had really been observant they would have noticed other changes, some minor and then a major change when Jimmy Tapp joined the voice talent lineup and everything sounded different to the end of the series.

If Newton (he is a centaur) repeated himself, it was a gimmick, a hook to make him stand out and it certainly did. Oh, and Tewt's (not "toot" and he is a satyr ) little musical instrument.. those are called "panpipes". One of the cutest things you'll see on a Hercules cartoon is little Tewt playing his pipes riding on Newton's back as he sings his signature song... "I'm glad, I'm glad to have a friend, to have a friend...like Hercules, like Hercules...

Wow! I can think of quite of few other cartoons where the "action" is taking place out of sight of the camera, and puff of smoke and stars are all you see - but Hercules didn't pioneer this technique by any means.

The writers were actually professional comic book writers. That's right and I think they did an above average job. The narration is just right, not too wordy - and the dialog is consistent making the characters have their own unique personalities through out the series. What else do you want? Shakespeare? Misinformed "Gen-Xers" may want to try to discourage you from enjoying this cartoon, but if you were a Child of the Sixites or 70's then you know better. The Mighty Hercules made a tremendous impact in it's time. And it's still just as good today too!

Also try to remember thirty & under 21st century adults...this may come as a shock to you... but alas, Mighty Hercules was not produced with YOU in mind. The Mighty Hercules was produced for young children of an era where values were quite different, and frankly I am glad I was part of the original target audience.

Greatest theme song ever!

[iloveteach · 8/10 · 25 December 2011]

I've read the other reviews and agree with most of them. I remember watching this when I was 4 or 5 years old. It may not have had the best animation, and it certainly had less than thrilling action, but remember the time was completely different. The children of the 60's who watched this were enthralled by a hero who had flaws and sidekicks who were unquestionably loyal. And it had the best theme song ever! Thank you, Johnny Nash for singing a song that to this day I can remember word for word! It was amazing and I wish I could find it here in Houston. Does anyone know where we can get copies of this cartoon for review? Does anyone have tapes or copies?

Revenge at last.

[lord_president · 7/10 · 7 October 2020]

Johnny Nash died today. After all these years of torment I have revenge for one of the most common earworms I get.

Of course to celebrate I watched about 3 hours of episodes on Youtube. It took me right back to being 8 and sitting too close to our old HMV. I always thought Newton was pretty bloodthirsty deep down, he just likes Herc to do the dirty work. Speaking of which I wonder if Daedalus was driven mad by the death of Icarus and his mistreatment by Midas long before Prince Dorian showed up. He should settle down with Wilamene and they could start a refuge for lost and abandoned familiars. At least now, after all these years I know what it is he shouts as he goes back up to Olympus. Despite the less than astounding animation I am still excited by the character design which has a slight Jack Kirby flavour.

In the end though is that theme. Mr Nash sure put his heart into it making it instantly memorable and something to tickle the memory of a (getting) old man. Softness in his eyes, Iron in his thighs, Virtue in his heart, Fire in every part, Of the Mighty Hercules.

A Lesson In Shoestring-Budget Cartooning

[Jeope! · 9 April 2001]

The Greatest Cartoon You'll Never, Ever See Again. On Earth. Period.

"The Mighty Hercules" is a bygone animated classic, the likes of which are just not made today. With "Rocket Robin Hood" and "The Amazing Spider-Man", "Hercules" created a mighty trifecta of cartoon delights for the Gen-X set.

I mean, damn. Come on. You gotta know what I mean here.

"Hercules" was one of countless shoestring-budget cartoon creations to appear on the Saturday morning scene in the 70s and 80s. And while the show's original run existed in the Mighty Sixties, its true essence revealed itself through rerun after jaw-dropping rerun. And just how cheap was this program?

In one episode, Herc's nemesis, the conniving wizard Daedelus, gains control of a deadly flying dragon and instructs it to destroy Hercules. Out of the sky it spirals towards Herc, who runs headlong into battle...behind a giant rock. No fooling. The entire tussle takes place behind this rock. Now that's thrifty cartooning.

That aside, "Hercules" did boast some cool and laugh-inducing characters and scenes, like the aforementioned Daedelus, quite possibly one of animation's most heinous individuals. With squinted, shifty eyes, a black cloak, little pointy slippers and a handlebar mustache of handlebar mustaches, Daedelus and his equally shifty feline, Dido, attempt dastardly deeds on what seems a daily basis. Occasionally the Mask Of Vulcan would appear. This hombre was pretty much a Daedelus clone with a janitor's pail on his head who was invincible so long as he wore it -- so when he showed up Herc would somehow have to get it off with a tree branch. Then there was Willimene, who essentially was a chick-Daedelus. She had a parrot and spent much of her time beating on Herc's maiden, Helena.

But really, when dissecting "Hercules", one has to go no further than the sidekicks. Herc receives help in the form of Newton, a knock-kneed bumbling centaur with slight homosexual tendencies (and more than an inspiration for "The Simpsons" Waylon Smithers), and also Toot, a spritely sort of two-legged version of Newton who can only express himself through a piccolo. And speaking of cheap and careless cartoon-making, watch out for the one where Newton's voice changes mid-episode. This blatant disregard for quality and continuity may mark this program as, well, amateur...but in the spirit of kitsch and pop-culture, it's probably what puts "The Mighty Hercules" over the top as one of TV's true diamonds in the rough.

Oh yeah, and a theme song for the ages. Absolutely kickass.

I just love it. I just love it.

[smorrow2-1 · 10/10 · 9 July 2010]

I didn't realize it was a Canadian production, that makes me so damn proud (and explains why it's been rerun on Canadian TV for almost 50 years).

You can't really rate or review something like this, you either love it and it's a 10 or you don't and it's a 1.

I remember watching it when I was five and it first came out. They interrupted an episode to bring the breaking news that JFK had been assassinated. I watched it with my kids when they we babies. I expect to watch it with my grandkids.

As has been pointed out, it was unbelievably cheap and cheesy. The stories were pathetic and the art childish. And they recycled the same 5 stories over and over and over. But when all is said and done, I just love it. I don't know why. I don't know why.

The Best Of The Classic 60's Cartoons

[Kevindenise2 · 10/10 · 23 July 2006]

Say what you want to about this cartoon, but it was a 60's Cartoon gem. By todays standards the stories were over simplistic, and predictable but they stuck a real heroic chord with me. The theme music is still unforgettable. Hercules has a slight resemblance of the Max Flisher Superman (in a toga) but this show was fun, power packed with excitement. I love the good versus evil theme that Hercules brought to us. The plots were imaginative, with stories such as the Chair of Forgetfulness, The Pod Of Transformation, The Hydra, and The Box of Pandora. This is a Cartoon show I would really love to own for my collection. To some of you others who might think it's crap, you can have your Simpsons, and South Park. The Mighty Hercules Rock!

This cheesy Canadian made cartoon is worth a few laughs.

[kingcompost · 1/10 · 15 April 2010]

Probably the worst animation ever made, scripted for toddlers at best, "The Mighty Hercules" still serves to pull us forty something people back to our childhood.

Grouped in with "Rocket Robin Hood"(another Canadian "treasure"), "Spiderman" and the mother-lode "Batman" from the sixties, it's a wonder we're not all lactose intolerant from sitting in front of our "Radiation 2000" televisions watching the machinations of the "bad guys" during our half hour of video Nirvana.

What Herc would do during that half hour was too funny for words. It was all lightning and gold rings, Helena being victimized, Newton and Toot making us wish we hadn't started watching, and monsters that "cycle" in for the attack.

Herc never gets hurt enough to save the day, and Helena never gets her kiss.

We kids were surely glued to the TV during all these "action shows", and as adults, for the most part, most of us are pretty embarrassed to admit it.

This show was made by Adventure Cartoons for Trans Lux in Canada. If we do one thing well here in the Great White North, it's producing the highest quality cheese for television.

It's a great cartoon & not just for the fun of Nostalgia's sake.

[Stebaer4 · 10/10 · 4 March 2016]

Yes It was this very cartoon of which had sparked my enthusiasm for Greco-Roman Mythology.

I was first acquainted with this cartoon by watching it on both Saturday and Sunday Mornings on Boomtown of which is a Classic Little Kids Cowboy Show seen on Boston Television and lasted for so many years.It Starred The Cowboy named Rex Trailer.

Johnny Nash sings the theme song well too.It's catchy for nostalgia's sake too. So each time in a classroom when Greco-Roman Mythology was covered I was the one to participate the most of anyone in the class.

When I first heard The Story of Daedelus and his Son Icarus it reminded me of The Daedelus in the Cartoon of whom looked nothing like this one.

Truthfully, Stephen "Steve" G. Baer a.k.a. "Ste" of Framingham,Ma.USA

Just horrid....and cartoons just don't come any worse

[planktonrules · 1/10 · 28 August 2007]

Hanna-Barbera Productions must have loved this show. That's because it was so badly written and so amateurishly made that it made the worst Hanna-Barbera cartoons of the 1960s look very impressive by comparison! This terrible mess must in fact be the very lousiest cartoon series ever made. The characters are a lot like those in Clutch Cargo, in that often their bodies didn't move at all but the lips were animated. The animators also often used a few cartoon sketches again and again and again for the entire cartoon! A slide show would have been about as convincing as animation! Imagine the horror, then, that the quality of animation was not the major problem with the series! It was the stories themselves that were pure garbage. Each episode only lasted about 4 or 5 minutes and the plots often made no sense at all! And, for those who know anything about Greek mythology at all, the characters bore no resemblance to the original stories! In this cartoon's case, Hercules pops in and out of Olympus at will and owes everything to a magic ring. Hmmm,...this sounds a lot like Captain Marvel, not Hercules! And to top it off, the dialog was grade-Z! Herc's sidekick was a seemingly brain damaged creature named Newton who kept repeating EVERY line! I just wanted to shut him up so badly when I was a kid!

A couple years ago, I noticed that our cable company offered some free cartoons ON DEMAND. I found that many of these Hercules cartoons were included and they were even worse than I remembered them from my childhood! They were so bad that I showed them to my daughter and we both laughed our heads off at the ineptness of the show. Only watch these for laugh value or to torture your kids if they have been bad--REAL, REAL bad!

By the way, for more about the series as well as a review from someone who pretty much agrees with me, try http://www.toonopedia.com/m-herc.htm.

This show made me what I am today.

[ace-150 · 10/10 · 11 May 2006]

So, a few years back, I was watching an Hercules-movie-a-thon on AMC before they became totally crappy. In between films (and, yes, Mickey Hargitay is my favorite) they showed AMC cultural filler. At one point, I was suddenly gobsmacked by the theme song from The Mighty Hercules, a 1963 cartoon offering which I watched regularly. You know, the one with the lyrics, "softness in his eyes, iron in his thighs." The one where Daedalus, the villain, has a big, fluffy cat. Where Hercules transform by the power of his jewelry. The one where Herc can't spend time with his beard, I mean girlfriend Helena, because he's gallivanting around Greece with a gay, jailbait centaur with echolalia. At any rate, I had a very demanding physical reaction within seconds. I felt like Data meeting Dr. Soong. I found the source of my programming. How many members of my tribe have this show as their first erotic memory?

Lots of fun

[ralphv1 · 8/10 · 19 March 2019]

A fun cartoon series in the early Sixties. I was probably a little older than the target audience by a couple of years, but I enjoyed it nonetheless. At the time I was in love with mythology, and this was about the only cartoon that spoke to that enthusiasm, though, of course, I realized many liberties had been taken by the producers. Fifty years on, I find the series still has an enduring innocent charm.

Pure cheese from start to finish.

[Java_Joe · 4/10 · 11 November 2018]

Mighty Hercules is one of those cartoons that you watched when you were a kid because, let's face it, you'd watch anything back then. Taking a look at it now and you really wonder what you saw in it in the first place.

The story is pretty basic. The Mighty Hercules of legend lives on Mount Olympus and decides to come to Earth to help mankind. What a swell guy. But for some reason his powers won't work on Earth and so he gets a special ring from Zeus that when he holds it aloft he gains his mystical strength again.

Along the way he befriends an annoying centaur called Newton who tends to say things twice. There's a fawn by the name of Toot who doesn't sing but just tootles on his pipes. There's his girlfriend Helena who's... there as eye candy. And then there's the young by the name of Dorian I believe and all of them love Hercules because he's so cool.

But of course there's all the baddies that try to do bad stuff and force Hercules to fight them. Some of the more memorable ones were the evil wizard Daedalus who may or may not be the same guy from the Greek legend. And some other guy, I think who was called "the Mask", who wore the "Mask of Vulcan" which was more like a helmet but it granted him invulnerability.

Hijinks ensue, Hercules tries to beat them normally, then puts on his ring to regain his powers and beats them easily. The cartoon finishes with Hercules shouting out "Olympiaaaaaa!!!" as he flies through the air back to Mount Olympus and roll credits. And that's just about every episode.

This is obviously something made on the cheap. The animation is a little wonky where in order to save money a lot of the movements were reduced, limited or in some cases replaced by speed lines. The voice acting is.... average I guess for the time. And the overall scripts, as stated earlier, were very cookie cutter.

I get nostalgia. I have it for a lot of things but that doesn't prevent me from seeing the flaws in a product and this products is full of flaws.

Watch it for a laugh but try not to take it too seriously.

You Never Forget Your First.

[Moonbeam_87 · 10/10 · 9 July 2022]

Ah The Mighty Hercules, My Introduction to the Myth of The Demigod, That Became 1 of the gods of Mount Olympus. Maybe It's The Nostalgic Glasses, That made me rate it so High, an Why I'm giving it My TM M for Moonbeam 87 Approved. But in this Version of Hercules, The Origin Story is Much like that of Wonder Woman. Zeus is Holding a Competition, and Hercules is the Victor. As a Reward for Winning Zeus Says That his Son can have ANYTHING He wants for Winning, Hercules Says He wants to go down to Earth. Zeus Says if he does So he will be as Weak as the Mortals, So Zeus gives Hercules a Special Ring, So Hercules Can Regain his Strength as Needed. And So with Hercules Jumping Down from Mount Olympus, Our Story Begins.

Sometimes you should not rely on nostalgia to rating a show.

[Coolerjohn23 · 2/10 · 19 December 2012]

I guess I am a minority on this since a lot of the reviews on here praise this show but I would like to give my own thoughts anyway. This show is really dumb Hercules is bland and has no character to him other than being a strong guy. He has a sidekick called newton and trust me you will grow to hate this character. The reason is that he had a whiny voice and he constantly for no reason repeats the same lines over and over again. Hercules also has a girlfriend who I will call princess peach because that's mostly what happens she gets kidnapped all the time and like Hercules she has almost no character to her. The villains are all stock who exist just to do bad things and pretty much you could interchange their personalities and would never tell the difference. One thing that does not make sense is the strength of Hercules. What I mean is that in this version he does not naturally have this strength all the time instead the show says that he has to wear a ring on earth to have that strength even if Olympus is technically on earth already only separated by 1 cloud. Another thing I do not get is Murtis the evil blacksmith. He has an item called the mask of Vulcan which is pretty much able to anyone immune to physical attacks. At first you would think this mask is just 1 since it is referred to as a mask even thought it is quite clearly a helmet. But later on it shows that he makes them himself so why call it the mask of Vulcan if he can just make them himself. The only real good thing about this show to me is that its so laughably bad that it becomes a comedy then again do not take my word for it the entire show is on netflix so you can view it yourself and come to your own opinion about it.

Great Show

[chrisgianna-10380 · 10/10 · 27 June 2020]

Only very few shows have made me feel like I am a little kid again glued to the tv. Watching The Mighty Hercules brings me back to the wild imagination that any child back then used to have.

It doesn't get any better than this!

[carolleejones · 10/10 · 12 July 2022]

Hercules was my favorite cartoon when I was a little kid. I loved Newton and little toot! I sure wish this was playing now, I'd love to see the reruns.

Olympia!!!!!!

[rerunwatcher · 8/10 · 8 December 2023]

"Hercules, Hero of song and story, Hercules, winner of ancient glory, fighting for the right, fighting with his might, with the strength of ten ordinary men! Hercules, people are safe when near him, only the evil fear him." So goes the lyrics of this cartoon. Hercules lives on Mount Olympus, but he can put on a special ring so he can go down and help normal people. You see, he would lose his strength when he leaves Olympus unless he had this ring. When he is down among the common folk he hangs out with the lovely Helena and a centaur named Newton. Newton calls him "Herk" and repeats himself when he speaks. When Hercules is victorious over the guys he shouts "OLYMPIA".

Suffering psyche! What a great show, a great show!!

[jamesrupert2014 · 8/10 · 5 May 2024]

In a colourful but grossly inauthentic ancient Rome, Hercules and sidekicks Newton the centaur and Toot the satyr battle foes such as the wicked wizard Daedalus, the bewitching Wilhelmine, and the indestructible 'The Mask'. The animation is primitive and repetitive but the characters are endearingly silly and the 5½ minutes adventures have a strange, calming charm about them. I loved this show as a kid and still do (hence the highly subjective rating). Perhaps 'The Mighty Hercules' is best remembered for Johnny Nash's infectious and compulsively whistleable theme song. The cartoon is a marker of an era and I can immediately connect with anyone of my age and cultural background by chirping "Herc, Herc, it's the Mask, the Mask!" or growling "Arrr, Hercules, no one can harm me while I wear the mask of Vulcan". Pairs well with 'Rocket Robin Hood' (1966), an equally ludicrous but memorable cartoon from the same era. "Olympiaaaaa"!!!!!