Impossible memories

Today's tribute is to "The Impossibles", superheroes extraordinaire! My two brothers and I loved playing "The Impossibles" in the 1960s. I was always Fluid Man. He had the best sense of humour. Such terrible puns; I think I developed my punning ability from them. We first saw "The Impossibles" in glorious black & white, because Australia didn't get colour TV until 1975! It was a bit of a shock to see that Fluid Man's costume was green. I'd always assumed blue = water.

"The Impossibles" contributed two adventures to each episode of "Frankenstein Jr and The Impossibles" (1966), topping and tailing a cartoon of the giant, robotic version of Frankenstein's Monster. As kids we were horrified to hear that "Frankenstein Jr and The Impossibles", probably our favourite Saturday morning show, was being canned after only one season because the American censors, under pressure from lobby group complaints, had decided that cartoon superheroes were "too violent". Sigh.

Coil Man, Multi Man and Fluid Man animation cels!

The Hanna-Barbera cartoon show had a single Gold Key comic tie-in, which is very rare today, but luckily the reprinted material, plus an all-new text story, appear in a UK "Annual" (for 1969?), published by Atlas. Thank you eBay. Thanks also to eBay for the Whitman's frame-tray jigsaw puzzle.

Above: Keyrings (dated 1998) of the superheroes and their all-singing, all-dancing band member alter-egos. Like the (once-boxed) figurines at the top of this blog entry, the carded keyrings are made in China for JUN Planning Co. Inc, of Japan. Thanks for these to Steve Gidlow, now living in the USA. When we started our eBay auction negotiations, Steve and I suddenly realised we knew each other from several "Number 96" screenings in the 1990s.