YMMV / Spider-Man (1967)

• Awesome Music:
  • Most of the incidental jazz-funk tracks of the show were licensed from the KPM catalog, resulting in a very catchy soundtrack.
  • The theme song is shamelessly corny and energetic, much like Spidey himself, and has more or less been adopted as the theme song for the entire franchise. It's the one that always plays when there's a Spider-Man balloon in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade, and everyone instantly recognizes it. An orchestrated version has even been used as the theme for the Marvel Cinematic Universe version of the character starting with Spider-Man: Homecoming.
• Complete Monster:
  • "Phantom from the Depths of Time": Dr. Manta is an alien scientist who lives on an uncharted island in the Atlantic Ocean. Dr. Manta has his robot kidnap the population of a nearby city and forces them to become slaves, making them mine a rare element called Lavacide. Dr. Manta plans to kill all his slaves when they are done mining the Lavacide. When confronted by Spider-Man, Dr. Manta activates a giant rock monster, who will kill everyone on the island, including himself, preferring to die rather than admit defeat.
  • "The Birth of Micro Man": Professor Pretoris was a noted scientist arrested for misusing his talents. Holding a grudge against society, Professor Pretoris escapes from prison and plots his revenge. Returning to his lab, Professor Pretoris plans to active his Kingdom Come device, an atomic pile that will completely destroy New York City.
  • "Revolt in the Fifth Dimension": Infinata is the evil ruler of the alternate dimension Dementia-Five. Discovering that the people of the planet of Gorth have learned his secrets and put them into their digital library, Infinata destroys Gorth in retaliation. A scientist escapes Gorth and goes to Earth, makes contact with Spider-Man, and gives him the library. Infinata learns Spider-Man has the library and summons him to Dementia-Five, tormenting him with illusions to make him give up the library.
• First Installment Wins: While the show ran for three seasons, the first season is likely what comes to mind for most when thinking of the show, due to it being the most faithful to the comics (and featuring the character's iconic villains). Most of the show's memes also originated from the first season.
• Fridge Brilliance: Peter Parker's normal voice was typically high-pitched, like most teenagers, but his voice in the Spider-Man costume was unsettlingly deeper and more adult (read: more typically "heroic"; helped by Paul Soles being a few years shy of 40 when he began voicing the webhead). Why does he do this? Because he had a secret identity he was trying desperately to protect, so putting on a deeper voice as Spider-Man would ensure that Peter's friends, family and acquaintances wouldn't recognize him as Spider-Man. Notably, Soles is the only Spidey voice actor to date who actually did this (only Drake Bell has also attempted this, and even then it was for a one-off gag in The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes).
• Fountain of Memes: The entire show is this, to where many are likely more familiar with the memes that spawned from the show, than the actual show itself.
• Genius Bonus: In the episode "The Witching Hour," Jameson reads an incantation that sends the reader, if receptive, into a trance in which he acts as a medium for demonic spirits. The incantation is in Latin, and means (approximately) "Come forth from the great inferno." The translation might not be perfect, but that the writers even tried to come close is noteworthy.
• Harsher in Hindsight: The climactic fight in "The Menace of Mysterio" feels rather prophetic today as the superhero and supervillain's fight drifts into the set of a Western and dominates the action. In the real world, the Western would fade as a dominant genre while the Super Hero one is now on top as Hollywood's big blockbuster movie material.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Contrast the casting of a grown man as Spider-Man with complaints made during the 21st century about people like Drake Bell and Robbie Daymond sounding too young to voice the web-slinger.
  • Similarly, compare the casting of a grown man as Spider-Man with complaints made during the 21st century about a 27-year-old, 28-year-old and 19-year-old being cast as a live-action high school-age Peter Parker.
  • The episode "Home" has Spider-Man encounter a race of Human Aliens with spider powers like his, when the 1978 Japanese live-action television series would have Takuya Yamashiro gain his spider powers by receiving a blood transfusion from Garia, an alien from the planet Spider.
  • Also from "Home", Peter meets and becomes interested in a girl named Carol and the two set up a date. Carol turned out to be an alien. This predates Peter's budding relationship with the half-alien heroine Carol Danvers when she was Ms. Marvel. Both Carols also have blonde hair.
  • The episode title "Home" itself became this after the word was featured in every title of the MCU Spider-Man Trilogy (Homecoming, Far From Home, and No Way Home).
• Magnificent Bastard: The Human Fly Twins are a pair of circus acrobats who turned to crime. One of the twins makes Spider-Man follow him on a wild goose chase, while the other one is free to commit robberies. Spider-Man captures the twins, but they are later paroled. The twins go back to crime and commit robberies dressed up as Spider-Man and frame him for their crimes. The twins later place a fly tracer on Spider-Man, in order to track his movements, so they could frame him for more crimes and make Spider-Man look like a fool.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • '60s Spider-Man^Explanation Since the series became viewable on Netflix, people started watching the series and made a multitude of image macros based on it, running off of an Alternative Character Interpretation that depicts Spidey as crude and chaotic. Most of them point out the incredibly cheap and poorly done animation.
  • "...and I'm just sitting here masturbating."^Explanation An image macro of Spider-Man seated at a desk with this caption, which quickly became a popular exploitable for all sorts of situations that Spidey is depicted as being apathetic towards.
  • A screenshot showing Spider-Man pointing at an imposter is a common meme, often found with Hypocritical Humor screenshots. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse spoofs this scene after the credits, with Spider-Man 2099 as the "imposter", drawn in the same style as the '67 cartoon. Spider-Man: No Way Home would also spoof the scene but with three Spider-Men. And that before Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse top everything off by spoofing it in its second trailer with an entire multiverse of Spider-Men!.
  • Spider-Man getting his face clobbered by pretty much everybody.^note There were plenty of times Spider-Man either had an even fight or even completely overwhelmed his opponents, but odds are if a villain - from a petty bank robber to a top-class member of his Rogues Gallery - wasn't supposed to be beaten yet, Spider-Man was going to get ragdolled until it was time for his victory. Even if it was absurd or had him getting beaten by the most random and ridiculous or mundane of things; the montages that were made of this effortlessly propel him into Iron Butt Monkey territory despite being the protagonist.
  • This photo◊ of multiple villains ended up becoming the face of the already-existing "Me and the boys" meme. ^note Rhino is actually photoshopped into this picture, after briefly being his own meme that compared a high-quality image of comics Rhino to the '67 version.
  • My Clown Detector is off the charts!
• Narm Charm: It's cheesy as all get out, it's far from the more developed incarnations of Spider Man we have nowadays, and it's incredibly weird... And yet, it all kind of works, and some would even argue it's better that way, as the sheer ridiculousness has struck a chord with modern viewers.
• Nightmare Fuel: "Revolt in the Fifth Dimension," an episode intended for the final season, was never aired by ABC (which aired the Season 1 episode "Sting of the Scorpion/Trick or Treachery" in its place) due to the network considering it to be too creepy for kids. They weren't too far off the mark; the episode itself is one hell of a trip and features an entire world getting destroyed.
• Seasonal Rot: For many fans, the series began to decline considerably in quality after the first season, particularly because of Spider-Man's traditional rogues gallery being phased out in favor of original villains (many of whom inexplicably had green skin) and many of the later episodes consisting of recycled footage from older episodes.
• Special Effect Failure: Frequently in the second and third seasons. The final season episode "Conner's Reptiles" has a shot where the cel showing the Lizard slides onto the frame, for example.
• Tear Jerker: When Spidey discovers that his Uncle Ben died at the hands of the burglar he refused to stop.
  Spider-Man: Yes, Uncle Ben is dead, and in a sense, it's really I who killed him, because I didn't realize in time that with great power, there must also, always be great responsibility!
• Values Dissonance:
  • The show had other racial caricatures that, by today's standards, are incredibly racist. "One-Eyed Idol" has the savage Aborigine guide in employ of the Great White Hunter gunning for Spider-Man, "The Fantastic Fakir" features almost every Mystical India trope in existence (complete with a villain whose entire theme is rope tricks), and the "Super Swami"... is actually racist in so many ways it's hard to nail down just what nationality he's supposed to be.
  • Sexist, too - women are usually either seen in subservient domestic positions or featured as crazed villains. Then again, Peter and Betty do seem to have a largely platonic working relationship (which is more than the comic of the time could say).
• What Do You Mean, It's for Kids?: The show was meant for a young audience, but a few times, death was actually mentioned, and someone actually was allowed to spout the word "Hell" at least once.