Practically Magic
At long last, the original animated incarnation of SABRINA THE TEENAGE WITCH finally makes her very auspicious DVD debut. Genius Products, in tandem with its other ARCHIES releases, brings you a 3-DVD set of the original Filmation animated series featuring all 31 episodes.
Sabrina made her first appearance in the ARCHIE'S MADHOUSE comic series and gained a fair amount of popularity, eventually spawning her own comic book. Filmation brought Sabrina to animation in the prime-time special ARCHIE AND HIS NEW PALS, and eventually spun off her own series after showcasing her as part of THE ARCHIE COMEDY HOUR. The resulting cartoons depict Sabrina as a resident of Riverdale and a student at Riverdale High, accompanied in her adventures by her boyfriend Harvey and her friends Spencer and Ophelia (who respectively serve Jughead and Betty functions to Harvey's Archie).
However, as our title says, Sabrina IS a witch, and therefore must keep her magical abilities a secret...
"You'll See Her Tug Her Ear! You'll See Her Disappear!"
Now you can enjoy Sabrina the Teen-age Witch, her tail-zapping red cat Salem, her witchy aunts Hilda and Zelda, her warlock-cousin Ambrose, and Head Witch Miss Della in all 31 episodes from the original FILMation animated series.
In its initial concept stage, this series was supposed to feature the teen-age versions of Samantha and Darrin from "Bewitched", but the producers were uncomfortable with Samantha dominating the airwaves on both ABC and CBS. With the success of "The Archie Show", Norm Prescott, Lou Scheimer, and Hal Sutherland turned to a lesser-known Archie Comics character who appeared in "Madhouse Comics", Sabrina. Instead of twitching her nose to trigger her magic, they had Sabrina tug her ear. Stories focused on high school situations to relate to young Saturday morning viewers, and Archie and the gang even guest-starred in some of the episodes. (Eventually, Samantha and Darrin's children, Tabitha and Adam Stephens, starred in their own cartoon on "The...
An Excellent Slice of Cartoon History
I'd never heard much about this cartoon prior to its DVD release, and many people I've spoken to aren't familiar with it either. But after so far only watching one disc out of the three included, I can affirmatively say that I haven't enjoyed a cartoon so effortlessly and thoroughly in a long time. It has all the right ingredients: bright, vivid colors; enchanting character personalities; creative storylines with lots of innocent and belly-ache humor.
After watching a few episodes, I was surprised to see how many of the fundamental aspects of this series were retained for the 90's sitcom version. There are some key differences. For instance, this cartoon feeds more into traditional stereotypes of witches as doing evil deeds (a priority for Aunt Hilda here), whereas the 90's sitcom presents them in a more positive light. But it's all done in a lighthearted way. However, Sabrina's boyfriend has the same name (Harvey), and Salem is also around.
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