Sabrina the Teenage Witch

Watching this cartoon as a child almost made me delirious!Its over use of extremely bright colors,especially pink,loud cartoonish noises,and characters with annoying and repetitive sounding voices was enough to give me headaches.I DO NOT recommend parents to show this to their children,unless you want to make them sick!I can't believe this became a popular prime time TV show,based on stuff like this!

The cartoon Sabrina was a not much of a cartoon even when it first came out. This was clearly another "Archie" product, in fact Sabrina started appearing in the "Archie" cartoons for a few weeks before Sabrina came out on her own. The standards in 1970-71 weren't real high, but we (my brother and I, Saturday Morning Cartoon aficionados of the highest order at 8 and 10 years old) always recognized the "Archie" cartoons as clearly second or third rate. It was clearly recognized as such, because after a short run on late Saturday mornings, it switched to the Sunday morning "filler" slot. Sabrina herself was OK, but the associated characters were pretty annoying. I can tell you that Aunt Zelda looks A LOT better in real life (AKA live action Sabrina) than on this cartoon!

The stories were typically witless, with no imagination and painfully loud and blatantly fake laugh track thoughtfully telling you which were the funny parts. There was no other way to tell! Quickly spun off were the "Groovy Ghoulies", an assortment of Munsters rejects related (in some undefined way) to Sabrina. This actually lasted longer than the Sabrina show itself. I guess they never bothered to look up the meaning of the word "ghoul".

Not the worst of it's era, but "Hot Wheels" was more entertaining, and "Scooby-Doo" looks like "Masterpiece Theater" in comparison.

Jane Webb does a beautiful job as the voice of the protagonist Sabrina here, who is written ALMOST PERFECTLY, which is quite surprising for a Saturday morning cartoon. They pulled off the feat of making her magical/otherworldly but also very relatable and down-to-earth at the same time. The Melissa Joan Hart version of the character became utterly insufferable from the 4th season of the live-action sitcom onwards, and THIS SATURDAY MORNING CARTOON version of the character could have taught her a number of things about REAL MORAL FIBRE and maturity (because yes, the Melissa Joan Hart version become increasingly immature and immoral as time went on).

Jane Webb also BRILLIANTLY VOICES almost EVERY SINGLE FEMALE character on this show - a feat which is practically unequalled. The lady was an absolute genius, and I can't believe she is practically forgotten today. The rest of the voice cast is also brilliant - with a special shout-out to John Erwin, who would go on to become famous as He-Man/Prince Adam. Here he is Reggie Mantle, portrayed as an utterly three-dimensional human character, despite all the ludicrous and zany antics he gets entangled in, because John Erwin is so amazing. Despite the arrogance and condescension that characterize Reggie, you can't help but love him here!

I think it was a stroke of genius not to have a recurring, standard villain/rival for Sabrina in the form of a "mean cheerleader" or some other female nemesis - but rather, Reggie was depicted in the DEEPLY COMPLEX manner of a FRENEMY. This is something a lot of children would have done well to learn from.......how someone could be a friend on the one hand, or at least be a part of your friends group/social circle, while still sometimes being out to "expose" you if they believe you have a secret. It wasn't BLACK OR WHITE on this show, and that was brilliant.

Another reviewer said the series was witless and lacked imagination, but I must disagree. The moral ambiguities and endless grey shades of magic/witchcraft are openly displayed here - with some characters like Aunt Hilda and Miss Della the Head Witch going out of their way to HURT people with magic sometimes, and yet those characters are not presented as EVIL or as VILLAINS........rather, the motif of witchcraft and all its implications are used here to teach children that some people, even some adults who are in positions of familial responsibility and great authority (people that you're expected to look up to) can use their powers for less-than-noble aims. Again, there are almost never any clear-cut villains on the show, and so children are presented with a much more TRUE-TO-LIFE (ironically, despite all the magic and wackiness) depiction of moral complexities than the straightforward, simplistic and much more ubiquitous "good vs evil" formula that Disney cartoons had long since established.

Not all the episodes and stories are created equal of course, and some are quite hard to watch because some of them are more overtly infantile (like a number of the Groovy Ghoulies episodes), while the "high school" episodes can also be hit or miss depending on the degree of juvenility the writers decide to employ, but taken as a whole, this is a UNIQUE and VERY MEMORABLE series. They do a terrific job of setting up a very specific world - a mood - a MISE-EN-SCENE if you will - which honestly transcends the standard Saturday morning cartoon formula. This is all the more impressive considering the Sabrina show was an off-shoot of the already existing Archies series.

Sometimes you feel like you are watching a cartoon version of the 1963 BYE BYE BIRDIE film musical with Ann-Margaret - and I mean that in a VERY POSITIVE WAY - while on some occasions, they manage to evoke the entertainingly creepy/spooky ambience of the B-list horror and thriller films from the 1960s and early 1970s that have become cult classics. And there are PLENTY of legitimately witty, laugh-out-loud funny moments that transcend age.

You cannot watch this with any degree of cynicism, and like I said some of the episodes are real doozies, but I am very very glad I own the collection on DVD to pop into my player and watch whenever I need to get a nostalgic cartoon kick (nostalgic in the sense that it evokes a distinct bygone time period SO PERFECTLY that I feel like I own a little time capsule). It ISN'T just a generic Saturday morning cartoon, although some of the Groovy Ghoulies episodes do weigh it down in that direction, and if you don't want to get the DVD you can watch this for free on YouTube as well. I just like having the DVD set because I like owning a tangible, hard copy that is its own collector's item. :)

I watched it growing up and there was nothing wrong with it then or now. Sabrina is a good witch living with her two Aunts Hilda and Zelda. She goes to Riverdale High and is friends with Archie and the gang. Sabrina uses her magick to help her friends. She tries to be an average teenager even though she is a witch. Kids need to watch to learn about friendship. As for the sounds and bright lights there are other things on TV far worse. Have you seen the cartoons now? So full of violence? Kids should watch this than being hooked on video games. They are sitting there mindlessly blowing stuff up. The music on those hurt my eyes and the loud noises. Ever been to a video arcade? Wow! Enough to send you into a migraine.

I finally came across this one! I was happy to find the whole series on the archive website. I never knew that Sabrina herself was a character in the Archies series until sometime in 2016! This cartoon, unlike all the other Sabrina adaptations (from the sitcom to the 90s cartoon to the Satanic witch version on Netflix...yes, I love them all!)....I am not familiar with it at all. When I played the first episode and I heard that theme song, I went, "ummm what the *bleep* was that?!!" I was not expecting a theme song to a 1960s show about a cute female witch to sound so out of place. Why does it sound very honky-tonk Huckleberry Hound country-like?? This is the late 60s; you would think they would go with an obvious 60s bubblegum pop tune like the Archies did (but with a female singer this time and with some sparkly sound effects thrown in the song). Or perhaps even more effective than a bubblegum theme song would have been a baroque pop or psychedelic pop theme song. It would fit the witchy vibe a-lot more. In the late 60s the medieval aesthetic was prominent especially in music. Most of the musicians who were influenced by the medieval period had a mystical feel to their music; some of them were fueled by drugs, while others were just enamored with the medieval Europe aesthetics and lore.

Overall, the theme tune might have gone in both of these musical directions. What a wasted opportunity. So who was the buffoon who decided to give poor Sabrina that awful theme song to her own show? Was the Huckleberry Hound singer blackmailing the crew of this cartoon or the animation studio to get him to sing that song...or else he does something?!! Or was it just pure nepotism?! Poor Sabrina and my poor ears.

I am not a huge fan of the voice acting. I maybe saw the original Archies cartoon when I was very young, and I don't really remember it. I'm aware that's what their voices sounded like in the Archies cartoon. Still I'm going to be critical of the (young male) voices. I know these are prominent voice actors. But the male voice acting for the teenage boys were rubbish and ear grating. They are too cringe and very goofy-sounding for me. The older men sound good. But Archie, Harvey, Jughead and their peers sound awful. I wish they'd hired young voice actors who were in their late teens or early 20s for those roles.

But Jane Webb as Sabrina is a keeper. I love Sabrina's voice! The female voices (Webb does a majority of them!) were a lot better than the male voices. Webb, as Sabrina, reminded me of one of my favorite voice actors, Tress MacNeille! I never knew Veronica was Southern?! & I was expecting her to have a much deeper voice. Every time Veronica talked I couldn't help but laugh. I thought they redid the show in the late 70s because this cartoon has a few alternate titles, so I was wrong, which is a pity. Some episodes of the show are cute, and the others are just blah and forgettable. This is a cartoon I could've skipped. I guess it's now time for me to start reading the vtg comics!