Animated Robin in the Seventies
The Boy Wonder Has Been on Screen Almost as much as Batman
Dec 16, 2008
The mantle of Robin, the Boy Wonder, has been held by three boys and two girls since the character was created. Dick Grayson, Jason Todd, Tim Drake and Stephanie Brown have all worn the Robin costume in the DC Universe and in Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns, which takes place outside the official DC Comics continuity, Robin's outfit is donned by Carrie Kelly.
Created by Bob Kane and Bill Finger in 1940, Robin has fought alongside Batman ever since. It didn't take long for the character to leap off the pages and onto the silver screen. Riding Batman's cape tails, Robin has a decades long pedigree in films and on television.
The Batman/Superman Hour
Given the incredible popularity of the Batman live action show in the late 1960's, when Filmation found a loophole that allowed them to license the animated rights to the characters of Batman and Robin, they took full advantage. In 1968, The Batman/Superman Hour premiered, starring Olan Soule as Batman and the voice of America's Top Forty, Casey Kasem as Robin. The Batman/Superman Hour ran until 1969 and then was retooled as Batman with Robin the Boy Wonder to run as a half hour show, reusing the cartoons produced for the original hour long show.
Super Friends
In 1973, Olan Soule and Casey Kasem would reprize the roles they had played in the Batman/Superman Hour and the two would voice Batman and Robin until the final season of Super Friends in 1986. That year, Adam West returned to the role of Batman he had made famous in the 1960's live action show. Burt Ward did not return to voice Robin, so Casey Kasem played Robin to West's Batman for this one season.
Robin was one of the five core members that appeared in every season of the Super Friends.
The New Adventures of Batman
Robin returned to the screen in 1977 in a show called The New Adventures of Batman, which ran concurrently with Super Friends for its inaugural season. While Soule and Kasem voiced the Dynamic Duo on the Super Friends, Adam West and Burt Ward returned to their roles as Batman and Robin in the Filmation production, fighting crime alongside Batgirl.
Despite the mere 16 episode production run, the show served its producers well in reruns until the mid 1980's, being repackaged with other Filmation shows like Tarzan.
The New Adventures of Batman is notable for the return of West and Ward, but it might be best remembered for the addition of the impish Bat-Mite to the Batman Family.
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