Being a proud child of the '70s, I have the fondest memories of The Super Friends cartoon. Those memories have morphed into something altogether different as I revisit the episodes, approximately thirty years later, with my three-year-old son. What used to be a fun Saturday morning romp has been elevated to a new level of appreciation. Yep, it's still all rompy fun, but I feel so good about my son watching The Super Friends for several reasons.

The Super Friends is an innocent cartoon.
In today's world of inappropriate television, it is refreshing to see a show that could be very violent be instead very innocent. There are no guns (aside from "rays" that shoot light or beams and usually transform someone into say, a dinosaur or a miniature version of themselves. Yeah, that's realistic.). There is no fighting or physical contact, unless you count wrestling with Wonder Woman and her magic lasso. Assumptions about a show with "bad guys" could keep one from watching it with their kiddos, but don't knock it 'til you try it. I'd show Owen a marathon of The Super Friends before I'd let him watch any of the violent Looney Tunes of my youth. Yeah, I turned out OK, and I know birds really don't drop anvils on coyotes and rifles really don't make people "all purple" as Owen puts it, but he's only three, for crying out loud.

The episodes are only about 10 minutes long (some of them).
Since we limit the amount of TV watched in our house, I like that some of the seasons of The Super Friends (The Legendary Super Powers Show) are shorts. I think I remember them being shown in-between other shows when I was a kid, like the Schoolhouse Rock episodes. Shows of that length with a beginning, middle, and end actually have some educational value for kids, teaching them sequencing and story retelling. Plus, he's getting all of those benefits without sitting in front of the TV all day.

The Super Friends teach right from wrong and good versus evil.
Heck, this is the very reason fairy tales were invented. Kids need to know that good will conquer evil, that good will win, and that it is never beneficial to be bad. The universe is watching out for the good guys, so Lex Luthor's and Darkseid's evil plans never come to be. In a not so black and white world, it is a nice source of comfort for a young child to have that cut and dry experience.

The Super Friends have mulitcultural characters.
OK, it's a stretch, but nice to see that The Super Friends took some inspiration from Sesame Street and The Electric Company and included some different-looking faces. If you are from suburbia, you may have noticed that mulitcultural is hard to come by, and Owen needs to know that not all superheroes have white faces with a black curl on their foreheads. So Apache chief and Samurai are secondary characters, I'm not saying they didn't have a long way to go, but they were there and that is something many shows thirty years later still aren't doing.

The Super Friends has a woman in a position of power.
Regardless of what you think about the foolishness of Wonder Woman's crime-fighting "bathingsuit," or the fact that she is the only woman in the Hall of Justice (although I guess you could count Jayna from the Wonder Twins, even though she's not a regular), you've got to respect that she is treated as an equal to the other male heroes. For little girls, they get to see a strong woman working alongside men and succeeding. Little boys will see that women can be valued as equals and contribute more to society than just preparing lunch and doing laundry for them.

Now there, did you realize all the good you were doing your kid when you sat him down to watch The Super Friends? Go do your laundry, clean the dishes, or just surf the internet; your child is in good hands.