On June 28, 2004, Spider-Man the '67 Collection was released on DVD. This six-disc DVD set contained all the episodes of the series, advertising them being "fully restored" and a "must-have for Spider-Man fans of all ages." For Christmas 2004, I received the DVD set as a gift. After watching the set many times, I can say that I truly enjoy it; but does it really beat out your VHS recordings of all the episodes from YTV and Teletoon?
The first thing that catches your eye with this DVD set is undoubtedly the bright, yellow box. The box lists "Spider-Man" across the top, using the show's title font, followed by "The '67 Collection" angled on the bottom, printed in a font that was attempted to look like the title font. It also carries a note of the written introduction by Stan Lee, and this is all labeled across a picture of Spider-Man that resembles one of the cels of the series, but it is obviously a redrawn image. The back of the box gives all the catchy details about the set, mentioning all the episodes are "fully restored."
The case that holds the DVDs has a cover art of one of the cels of Spider-Man, but it is redrawn as well. The back also has a cel image of Peter that very closely resembles the scene of him staring at his hand from episode 21. Open the case, and you see the DVDs. Each DVD label has a cel of a character from the series, with the exception of the first disc, which has the same redrawn picture of Spider-Man from the cover of the case.
The set comes with a booklet insert that contains all the information about the discs. Flip to the first page, and you have the "written introduction" by Stan Lee. This write-up is just a shortened version of the same write-up Stan did in the book Spider-Man The Ultimate Guide. It is not specific to the series, nor does it even mention the series at all. This further affirms my belief that Stan was never involved much in the series. It would have been better if he wrote something specific about the series, but this is what passed for the first two pages.
Flip to the next page, and you have the listings of which episodes are on which DVDs. The episodes are ordered on the discs in the order they originally aired. The only thing worth noting about this listing is that all titles with "Spider-Man" in them have them spelt with the hyphen. Season two and three episodes featuring Spider-Man's name omitted the hyphen, but in this listing alone, the hyphen is present in all the titles featuring Spider-Man's name..
Flip over and you get a page with three pieces of information. First comes a "featured voice cast" listing. The list is not complete, and contains a few misprints. J. Jonah Jameson is listed twice, once beside Peg Dixon; and Bernard Cowan's name is spelt incorrectly. This list was ripped directly from Internet Movie Database, minus all the misprints. The original list submitted to IMDb was actually written by me. I have since updated it, but I didn't receive a dime from my efforts going into this booklet. Go figure.
Next comes the "show creators" section. This just lists "Steve Ditko, Stan Lee," and "Jack Kirby (characters)." Below is "show information." All it says was the "first episode aired" was in "September 1967," and incorrectly lists the "last episode aired" to be "September 1970." Followed by that is the "network" which was "ABC."
On the last page of the booklet they list the lyrics to the theme song, telling me to "feel free to sing along." Flip the page again, and you're at the back of the booklet which has the design printed on the back of Spider-Man's costume taking up the page.
Now we get to the DVDs themselves, starting off with the first disc. As you see right away from the first disc, they made the DVD menus nice and simple to navigate. You have the option to play all the episodes, or you can pick the episode you want to see. The episodes also have subtitles available. On the first disc only, they stuck a section of "sneak peaks," but this is only some promotion material for other Buena Vista merchandise.
Now we get to the episodes. You start off with the first episode. They organized these per show, meaning when you begin the first episode of a two-story show, you'll see the theme song; and after the second episode, you'll see the credits; and for single episode shows, you see both. All the episodes have the same standard theme song animation. They did not change up the season two and three episodes to have the minor animation change that was present in the theme song on those episodes. The credits for the episodes are the credits of the respective season, so you do get the season one, two and three credits; however, some copyright text was obviously superimposed on the last screen in the first season credits (the second-last screen in the season two and three credits). The ARP logo that follows all the episodes is replaced with the Buena Vista logo, and the "A Marvel Comics animation presentation" screen the precedes the episodes is gone entirely, though the "IN COLOR" bumper before the episodes remains.
Getting past the intros and conclusions, and you see that the episodes are just as you've always seen them. No episodes have been edited for anything, and starting off, they look better than ever. Episode 1A probably has the best difference between the before and after restoration. As you make your way along, you find the picture and audio better than ever.
But then we get to about disc five, and certain episodes begin not to resemble the others. Some of the episodes on the fifth and sixth discs are not entirely restored (and whenever I get around to organizing which ones they are, I'll list them here). Each episode is presented in higher quality than before the DVD release, but these episodes could have been cleaned up a lot further. In some episodes, it's only a matter of one aspect is lower quality while the other is good. The audio of some of these episodes may be muddy, but their animation is good; or vise-versa. This is where those subtitles can come in handy.
The DVDs feature no extras of any sort, save for one thing that could be considered an extra. At the end of episode 28, the plug for "next week's episode" is included. It makes no sense why all the episodes did not feature their next week plugs, but at least this one managed to get included.
So, after my thorough commentary, do I make it sound like the DVD collection is worth buying? I'll state it clearly that the episode restorations alone make this set worth buying, even though all the episodes were not cleaned up the best they could have been; however, that doesn't mean more could have been done to improve the collection. It would have been nice if all the episodes featured their next week plugs, and if they had included an audio commentary of some sort, image gallery, the ARP screen, trivia information, anything so they could say they put some extras in this; but you can't deny Buena Vista their effort. The series has been made convenient to have entirely on six DVDs. That beats a stack of VHS episodes recorded off the air with commercials choppily edited out of them.
So, yeah, it's worth buying, though make sure you shop around to find your best bargain on it.