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This TV series has yet to be released here in the United States on DVD. Among the uncut presentations of the episodes, fans also want the documentary "Spider-Man: On The Move" from CBS affiliates KDKA Pittsburgh and KPIX San Francisco, the teasers, the separate intros, and more. "Spider-Friends, GO FOR IT!!!!"

Old cartoon with poor visual quality for today but decent for the time it was made. Episode plots are bordering on the mundane and there are some awkward script choices. It's not bad but it has aged badly.

This was one of my favorite Spider-Man cartoons I saw growing up. I also saw the other 80s Spider-Man cartoon where he's by himself, but I liked it better with Iceman and Firestar. There were more supervillians and more guest superheroes (like Captain America, Iron Man, the Fantastic Four, The Incredible Hulk, and the X-Men) It was a very fun series which I very much enjoyed.

This show was a really unexpected and pleasant surprise! I loved it, the episodes, the plot, all the characters, I got to know so many new Marvel characters!

It's hard to believe it's been nearly 14 years since the movie Iron Man kicked off the global phenomenon that has since become known as The Marvel Cinematic Universe franchise, a franchise that has turned a whole generation of movie goers into superhero fans.

Now with all the action transferred onto our television screens as well, with shows like Wandavision, Loki and Hawkeye the now predominant superhero genre is far from over and looks set to go from strength to strength.

But where did it all begin? Where did people like me, children of of the 70's and 80's get our superhero fix back in the day? Before the MCU (over)exposure?

Well of course it began with the comic books, but as classic superhero screen time goes, it was the Saturday morning cartoons that roused and maintained our interest and Spider-Man and his Amazing Friends was perhaps the best of them all.

Spider-Man first appeared in cartoon form back in 1967 with the now famous theme tune that boasted (rather inaccurately) how "Spider-Man, Spider-man, does whatever a Spider can" but it was a short lived project and apart from another short lived (and now extremely dated and cringeworthy) live action attempt in 1977 starring Nicholas Hammond the character was destined to remain comic book fodder indefinitely.

That was until the early 80's when thanks to Spidey co-creator Stan Lee and the newly found Marvel Productions there came a boom time for Superhero cartoons and Spider-Man was set to feature very highly in its plans. Two Spider-Man themed shows were rushed into production, almost simultaneously.

The first was 'Spider-Man' a solo series that pitted the webslinger up against many of the Supervillains on Marvel's roster. The other was this one 'Spider-Man and his Amazing Friends' which followed exactly the same premise.

Only two things differ between the two. Firstly Spider-Man/Peter Parker is voiced by a different actor in the latter series (otherwise he is identical) and in Amazing Friends and as the title suggests it gives Spidey two superhero friends to join forces with.

The first of these friends was Bobby Drake who was able to produce snow and ice from the molecules in the air and transform himself in to a human ice structure known as Iceman. Iceman was an old character originally featured in the X-men series of comic books dating back to 1963..only one year after Spider-Man's original debut. Iceman was the amiable and affable comic relief often the one with the one liner or gag to offer in any given situation and transported himself about everywhere on a self made ice slide which was pretty cool, but which seemed to disappear very quickly even as quickly as the next shot.

The other 'Amazing Friend' was Firestar/Angelica Jones. Where Iceman was all about the cold, Firestar generated her own inexhaustible supply of unlimited heat and fire, but to make her more than just the polar opposite of Iceman they made sure Firestar could fly as well.

Unlike Spider-Man and Iceman, Firestar was a brand new creation specifically invented for this show. She also had more than just a passing similarity to The Human Torch from the Fantastic Four series and that was by no means an accident.

The Human Torch, was set to be the third friend in this show, but it was decided at the last minute to leave the Johnny Storm character within the foursome to which he belonged, and so a brand new character was created along much the same lines..the main difference being that Firestar does not fully engulf herself in flames like Johnny Storm does.

When not out and about Superheroing, they all attend the nearby University and all have digs at Peter Parker's Aunt May's house. With one turn of a bust on the mantlepiece, their questionably rather spacious student digs transforms into a state of the high tech super hero base of operations which in one episode is explained as being a thank you gesture from none other than Tony Stark and he's not the only 'Avenger' they meet as the series progresses. There are a lot of crossover characters from other stories along the way.

This show really is the full package. Not only three great superhero's, but countless villains, humour, action and great GREAT music. What's not to like.

Spider-men will come and go, but this for me will always be my favourite 'incarnation' of the character. If such a word can be used for an animated drawing.

It's on Disney+ now which is the reason I've been able to revisit those long lost early 1980's Saturday mornings of my youth. Usually going back to things is a mistake. They are never quite as good as you remembered them to be. "Spider-Man and his Amazing Friends' is an exception to that rule, it is every bit as good.. maybe better.

I used to watch these over and over as a child thanks to Mum and Dad recording them when they were on the telly and now Disney+ has the whole lot! This really take me back to my childhood in a great way

When I was a little kid I was going to have an apartment with a statue that, when moved, turned the place into a super hero base of operation when I grew up.

Now I have a few computers and a Kindle Fire and they are all in plain sight and not hidden at all and the little kid that still dwells within me hates me for not disguising them...even though now everyone owns a computer.

Anyway, Spiderman, Ice Man, and the made for TV hero that ended up still having a cool presence but not as cool or important as X23 named Firestar round off a cast includes Aunt May.

I still love it...and that transforming apartment.

the series is cool and....then they visit the X-Men and you are in little kid heaven even though at the time I was too young to really know what Comic books were or who the X-men were or why Spidey couldn't be on the team but I knew, i knew that it was important and awesome and...

...and this is a reason why My generation, the last to really experience Saturday Morning Cartoons feels so bad for the kids that came after us that only had video games to keep them occupied early in the mornings when they were stuck waiting for mom and dad to wake up.

As a kid I used to love this show. Unlike the Superfriends it balanced the humor with nice action sequences. Superfriends at times were a bit too silly but this show balanced it well. As well as having good plots. This was a very enjoyable show to watch and Iceman and firestar were amazing friends.

The only flaw this show has is that Frank Welker's Iceman sounds too much like Fred from Scooby-Doo.

This is my personal favorite TV show of all time-- and my favorite action cartoon of the 1980's.. I still remember the great fun I had watching new adventure of Spider-man with the "new" heroes Iceman and Firestar (the latter of course, being totally new). It introduced me to X-Men and other aspects of the Marvel Universe. It had great writing and funny, witty exchanges between all three characters. For whatever reason, nowadays certain people look down on it-- usually because of the animation quality-- Most of it wasn't groundbreaking, but it wasn't "Rocky & Bullwinkle" either... Overall, it was very satisfying for me. I wish I could get the show on a DVD boxed set. I even emailed Disney/Buena Vista, who currently own the video rights. They sent me a nice disclaimer/rejection letter, along with my original missive.

By the late 1970s, Marvel Comics (which at the time, was owned by chemical company Cadence Industries) sought to expand its entertainment industry footprint, and entered into a merger with Depatie-Freling Studios (responsible for the original Pink Panther animated cartoons and several others of the late 60s and 1970s; founded by Warner Brothers Studios alumni Friz Freling and David H. Depatie.) The soon to be renamed Marvel Productions sought to develop animated series based on Marvel Comics characters (and others). The Fantastic Four and Spider-Woman, which aired on NBC and ABC respectively, were the first superhero productions begun by the studio. By the turn of the 1980s, the studio sought to expand the syndication options of the original 1967 "Spider-Man" series. They self-funded a run of over 20 original episodes of a new, straight-to-syndication "Spider-Man" series as a consequence. Concurrent with this development, the studio entered in talks with the NBC network for a series that would provide the network with an answer to ABC's "Super Friends" series (which was based on DC Comics "Justice League of America" characters.) Instead of providing perhaps a direct parallel with an "Avengers" series, instead a team concept was built around Marvel's marquee character Spider-Man. Thus, "Spider-Man and his Amazing Friends" was created, debuting on NBC in September of 1981.

But to the actual content of the series: Each episode is a self-contained adventure for the college-aged trio of Spider-Man, Iceman and Firestar. They all live as boarders in Aunt May Parker's townhouse (in the comics, in Forest Hills, Queens) and attend the fictional Empire State University in Manhattan. It is at least nominally implied that they are undergraduates currently.)

The lead character of Spider-Man was voiced by Dan Gilvezan, a Webster University drama graduate, in what was then his first animated voiceover role. He soon became the voice of the Transformers breakout character Bumblebee.

For the run of the show, most episodes operated with the conceit that each primary character was a long-established adventurer. In Spider-Man's case , he had long been a superhero since his teen years in high school. In the case of Iceman (Frank Welker, already well known as the voice of Fred from "Scooby Doo") and Firestar (voiced by Kathy Garver, an alumnus of "Family Affair"), later episodes featuring their origins explored their backgrounds as teenaged mutants who eventually came to join the X-Men shortly after discovering their strange powers. "The Origin of the Spider-Friends" shows how the three got together as a team.

The writers of the show ranged from relatively new professionals to career entertainment writers/producers. There is a thematic bent to highlight humor in all the episodes, though in most the stakes and antagonists are presented as serious.

Most of the villains and adversaries in the show are not presented as brand new menaces. Spider-Man, Firestar and Iceman all have familiarity with most of the antagonists featured on the show. The creative choice to introduce the characters in media res likely was the best choice to allow for a freer way to explore the cooperation between the characters. The canon (or "continuity") of the published comics was largely reflected in many of the stories, which arguably can be attributed to the influence of Marvel executive Stan Lee and the writers who were familiar with the comics. Still, various stories stepped outside of rigid boundaries of the printed page and created a wonderful new world for the Spider-Friends to inhabit.

A few of Spider-Man's then-traditional supporting cast made it into the series: aside from Aunt May, who was in nearly all the episodes, select episodes featured Flash Thompson, Peter Parker's high-school bully (though this context was muted somewhat with the college setting of the show; here he's presented as a snarky classmate who admires Spider-Man and is clueless as to who Spider-Man actually is.) Daily Bugle publisher J. Jonah Jameson, who scandalizes Spider-Man as often as possible in his newspaper, has a few bit parts, but is largely not a factor in this series.

Villains for the series were culled not just from Spider-Man's own established adversaries but from the wider Marvel universe: from well-known bad guys like Green Goblin, Dr. Doom, Red Skull, Magneto and Juggernaut, to "deep cut" foes like Swarm, Mordred and even all-new creations like Videoman and the Gamesman.

By keeping the core team to a trio, the writers had plenty of opportunity to give each character fun and exciting things to do and say and giving them some time in the spotlight. Additional fun was brought in by the guest heroes like Captain America, the X-Men, Sunfire, Thor, Dr. Strange, and all-new creations like Professor Hiawatha Smith (an Indiana Jones pastiche).

A polarizing character in the series is the dog sidekick of the team, Ms. Lion. Perhaps the first time a Lhasa Apso was featured in a Saturday morning cartoon as a regular character, the (fortunately) non-talking (her grumbles and barks were provided by Iceman's voice Frank Welker) but ubiquitous pet of the team fit as a common trope of kids' cartoons at the time, allegedly at the request of the network buyer representing NBC. The episodes could easily all be done without the character, but it isn't as galling as, say, Scrappy Doo is retroactively considered to be for the "Scooby Doo" franchise.

Overall, despite only having 24 episodes produced in total, the series had an impact that went way beyond its relatively short network run in the 1980s. From the point of cancellation forward, it became a rotating part of Marvel's catalog of syndicated television series, and was also a touchstone for the original Generation X cohort of viewers and even some Generation Y viewers who saw the series exclusively in syndication. The series is a must-see for Marvel, Spider-Man, and X-Men fans and supporters.

So amazing . . . This is a must see, and a true classic! You don't have to be a comic book fan to appreciate this!

SPIDERMAN AND HIS AMAZING FRIENDS (1981-1986) is a cool classic animated superhero series, featuring Spiderman. The superhero trio / friends (Spider-man, Firestar and Iceman) team up to stop crime and save innocent people from criminal. This was a fun series!

"Spider-Man battles crime in New York City with the help of his good friends and colleagues Iceman and Firestar."

This series is fun to watch, especially as a Marvel-fan, superhero-loving kid. These throwback cartoons are still fun to watch even today, in my opinion. Watch if you enjoy Marvel cartoons, Spiderman and superhero action! ..

This was and is one of best Spider-Man cartoons ever made. Previous Spider-Man cartoons (there were two) didn't explain the origins of Spider-Man or his enemies. Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends does this for Spider-Man, Ice-Man, Firestar and several of the villains. There were however some differences between the comics and the TV series. I must add that these differences will likely only be noticeable to Marvel comics fans.

First in the comics, Spider-Man and Ice-Man are much older than Firestar(10 years at least), so the idea of them all going to school together doesn't make any sense. Second the way Bobby Drake transforms into Ice-Man is way overblown, in the comics he merely wills the transformation and a coating of ice forms around his body. Lastly Ice-Man and Firestar were not members of the X-Men at the same time as shown in Firestar's origin story; when Firestar became a member of the X-Men, Ice-Man had long left the team.

Anyway these differences were probably done on purpose, the emphasis being on entertainment rather than realism. I enjoyed watching Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends twenty years ago and is definitely worth checking out!

I suppose most Spidey fans must despise this show because of it's rather small connection to the comics, but the main reason I liked it was because Spidey got Iceman (Bobby Drake) and Firestar (Angelica Jones) from the X-Men on his side, Iceman was mostly a neglected character in the Marvel Universe although he was one of the original 5 X-Men. Firestar didn't even exist until she was introduced into the show, but she later made her first comic appearance in Uncanny X-Men #193 . For the most part I watched the show because Iceman was my favorite superhero, Spider-Man still kicks ass though, Firestar was pretty cool..or should I say hot... I really enjoyed the show and you should check it out although by today's standards, this show is considered 80's trash to new fans, it is a guilty pleasure of mine and many other Spider-Man fans...

I was thinking this cartoon was only on a couple of years, but according to imdb it was on for a good while. Well, I watched it when I was a kid and I remember it being one of my favorite cartoons...though when I started to collect the comics I realized it was a kind of weird team-up. Iceman being a member of the X-men and I am not sure how Firestar was used in the comics back then. I do know that it worked and I am not the only one who liked this series otherwise it wouldn't have been on for so long. One episode I remember had the three friends and some other marvel superheroes going to this house of some villain (it might have been Kraven), and the villain uses the superheroes weaknesses against them. He pitted Firestar and Iceman against each other, and the Submariner accidentally swam in a pool full of alcohol. In the end Spiderman saved the day, as he didn't have an apparent weakness.

I loved this show as a kid, Spider-man, Iceman and Firestar all teaming up against the evil villains of new york city such as the Green Goblin, Kraven The Hunter and The Scorpion and many more.

I have a few of the episodes still on tape and I still love the show, even though the animation is seriously dated, the voice acting is superb for an 80's cartoon.

Frank Welker is easily recognisable as Bobby "Iceman" Drake in his Freddie "Scooby Doo" Jones voice as is Dan Gilvezan as Peter Parker/Spiderman voice as it's exactly the same voice he used for Bumblebee in Transformers.

I didn't recognize Linda Gary as Firestar though, guess that's what made her such a good voice actor.

But it was a classic show, alright it might not have the on-going storylines and spidey facing moral dilemmas as the 90's and MTV Spiderman shows have, but it was the 80's every kid back then who was a spider-fan loved these shows.

Bring on the DVD's of this show and the other Spider-man show of 1981 :)

Spider-Man cartoons have always been great and I think this series was probably the best.

Spider-Man teamed up with Iceman and Firestar every week to battle all kinds of villains. It was great fun watching the three superheroes battling the likes of Dracula. The voice artists responsible for the cartoon characters really seemed to put some emotion into the characters.

To the best of my knowledge this show hasn't been repeated in the UK that often since it first aired. I would recommend it to anyone who likes Spider-Man cartoons. And what can I say about Iceman? Wow!

Try and hunt down some videos of this show if you can.

Spider-Man was a loner and always has been. It's fun to see one favorite character to team up with another favorite character but this went a little out of hand. This series had Spider-Man, Iceman and Firestar (a character who did not exist in comics when this came around I believe) in an alliance against evil. Their alter egos also lived together in Aunt May's house. Really. I felt this show was not true in any way to Spider-Man unlike the other shows. It provides some enjoyment but not as much as the others.

this was good but not as good as the solo spider-man cartoons of the 80s these cartoons we never or hardly see the daily bugle why Ted Swartz never did do the voice of spider-man in this show is strange as this show was i think a follow up to the solo series of spider-man in the 80's though i did like the x-men as guests and seeing spider-man in the danger room other guest stars in show were the incredible hulk Dr strange prince namor captain America, x-men. some of the best shows here are the origin of the spider-friends the origin of firestar the origin of iceman. and my favourite along came a spider(spider-man's origin) for me tells spider-man origin the best out of all the spider-man cartoons

i hope these will be on DVD soon

One of the best series of the 80's, good fighting scenes and good characters. Undoubtedly, one of the best versions of Spiderman in cartoon. Highly recommend.

I loved this TV show as a kid, without having a problem with Spidey having friends.Firestar was my ideal, I loved Spidey, and Iceman had great sense of humour. Admire, emotions & laugh; I think these three things can get you totally attached to the main characters.

And here comes the big BUT. Knowing the original story, the "webisodes" of this series is like seeing Peter Parker's life in pink. His problems are always solved so easily, because his friends are always there to help him out, which of course they should do, but not having to face any bigger problems makes it less realistic. The other problem is that the series persists in ending every new adventure in 30 minutes. I personally hate it, when any kind of story is cut with a "To be continued..." sign, but from the point of view of the story, it can be useful if the writer has more time to work out the story, or add another great turn before the end.

All in all I think this series is like Peter Parker himself, before he had gotten his powers; a little odd, but loveable.

Spider Man and his amazing friends has given me the greatest memeories i had when i watched it. I remember this programme when i bought a video which contained some of the episodes, i remember the characters Iceman and the Firestar. I give this programme a great score 10 out of 10 because it is a programme that brings the memories back to you.