The Mighty Heroes The Bigger Digger

G | 30min | Animation, Family | Episode aired 1966

The Mighty Heroes is an animated television series created by Ralph Bakshi for the Terrytoons company. The original show debuted on CBS, on October 29, 1966, and ran for 1 season with 20 episodes.

The stories took place in Good Haven, a fictitious city that was continually beset by various supervillains. When trouble occurred, the city launched a massive fireworks display to summon a quintet of high-flying superheroes into action.

In Act 1 of each episode, the team members were portrayed as accident-prone bunglers. A typical occurrence had them in combat hopelessly tangled together offering each other stock apologies, often while falling en masse until they were captured by the villain. In Act 2, however, having escaped the villain's deathtrap in the cliffhanger, the team always managed to regroup and fight with proper coordination to win the day.

The cartoons originally appeared as a segment of the long-running Mighty Mouse Playhouse during the 1966-67 season, which was renamed Mighty Mouse and The Mighty Heroes in recognition of the new segment. Some weeks during the network run, two complete Mighty Heroes segments would open and close the show with a classic Mighty Mouse cartoon in-between. In other weeks, one Mighty Heroes episode would be split in two to open and close the show, with two Mighty Mouse cartoons broadcast in-between.

The character voices were provided by Herschel Bernardi, who provided those of Strong Man, Diaper Man, and Tornado Man, and Lionel Wilson, who provided those of Cuckoo Man and Rope Man. Bernardi was also the original provider of the "Ho Ho Ho" voice of the Jolly Green Giant and of StarKist's Charlie the Tuna's voice in commercials. Wilson was also the voice of the title character in another famous Terrytoons series, Tom Terrific. Only 20 episodes were produced; the series came to an end when Bakshi left Terrytoons in 1967.

Reruns of The Mighty Heroes were eventually syndicated by Viacom (now CBS Television Distribution) in the 1970s as part of the Mighty Mouse package. There have also been two licensed VHS releases. Episodes of The Mighty Heroes also appeared in movie theaters for a time, with an episode shown to audiences, preceding the main attraction.

They appeared in animated form as guest stars in the episode "Heroes and Zeroes" of the late 1980s series Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures, produced by Bakshi, in which they had all retired and were running the accounting firm of Man, Man, Man, Man and Man. Even Diaper Man had grown up, evidenced by his wearing a mustache.