It has to be said this Fantastic Four cartoon was quite poor in most respects, and i dont even mean because Herbie the Robot was in it in the place of The Torch.As a kid in the UK i was weaned on AMERICAN, Fantastic Four comics, not the British black and white reprints like some kids, and the 1967 Hannah Barbera Fantastic Four cartoon, wich i think is a classic. I was around the age of 15 when we got the 1978 on Television in the UK, and still a big comic book fan, and along with the Spider-Man live action TV Series, found this series a big disapointment. It was one thing replacing the Torch in the team. It had happened in the comics on numerous occasions (with Medussa and Lazerfirst for example), but the route the 1978 Animated series producers took to introduce Herbie the Robot, was uninspired depressing and plain embarassing if you were caught watching the series as a 15 year old. Why not introduce an already established Marvel character into the team, such as Iceman or Ant Man or just about any other character. Just thinking about the cute little Herbie is sending my blood pressure up. As well as that the storylines for this series was weak and the dialogue given to the characters was feeble. The characterisation of the F4, or is it F3 Themselves was completely out of tune with the comics and previous animated series. Sue was represented as an old hagg, moaning all the time, Reed a completely boring leader with none of the humour ascociated with his character apparent, and Ben, well actually Ben didn't come off to badly, his character getting the best lines and most of the action. It is fair to say that the animation itself was appalingly lame right down to the way the characters appeared. Ben for instance looked exactly like Homer Simpson making this monster in fact cuter than Herbie. There was also moments of crass recycling and stock animation apparent.About the only thing that rescues this series is the classic theme tune. Still, avoid this one, hunt down episodes of the 1967 series instead.

The New Fantastic Four was a fantastic (no pun intended) cartoon from the late 70's and even though it omitted a major character it was still highly enjoyable.The Fantastic Four consisted of Mr Fantastic, The Invisible Woman, The Thing and The Human Torch. For some reason this show didn't feature the Human Torch; instead we got a robot called HERBIE who was annoying at first but became likeable after awhile.The plots themselves were pure fun just like the original comics from the 60's/70's. All of the Fantastic Four's top foes such as The Frightful Four were here to battle the team. It was also great to see the Thing and HERBIE the Robot always arguing (they loved each other really).All in all, a great cartoon series even if the robot had an annoying voice.

Censoring the Human Torch is an Urban legend. The fact is, in the mid-1970s, Marvel licensed TV rights to many of their characters to Universal for TV pilots (including Spider-Man, Hulk and Captain America). Since the Human Torch was licensed elsewhere, when Marvel made the animation deal, he couldn't be part of the Fantastic Four. The fact that he was in the first FF cartoon series (1967) and the recent one (1994) puts to rest the theory that the Torch is too hot for TV.

This Saturday-morning adaptation of the Marvel Comics title was done at a time when parental fears of violence on TV were at their worst. As such, the Human Torch does not appear in it. Parents were afraid their kids would like the Human Torch so much, they might try to light themselves on fire. Or something. Of course, without the Human Torch, they would only be the "Fantastic Three," so the writers had to invent a new character to fill in for him. And whom did they invent to replace the Human Torch? Why none other than H.E.R.B.I.E. the Robot, a robot so annoyingly cute that you want to throw your bowl of Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs cereal at the TV every time he appears. The animation was on par with that of the animated Star Trek TV series -- in other words, it stank. And worst of all, I can't recall a single episode in which Doctor Doom made an appearance. What good are the Fantastic Four without Doctor Doom? That's like having an entire Silver Surfer TV series without Galactus, or a John Travolta movie without Scientology.