Superman battles a criminal mastermind and his robot army. As the headline on the Daily Planet tells the public: "Mechanical Monster loots bank!" In fact, a scientist has an army of these flying robots able to steal anything in sight. Police are set up everywhere to guard an exhibition of rare jewels, but it's no use. When a robot crashes into the building, it steals all the precious stones in sight, while the policemen's bullets harm it no more than flies. Clark and Lois are at the exhibit. While Clark phones in the story from a booth, Lois stows away in the robot's compartment. Clark sees that Lois has gone missing and decides to change into Superman there in the phone booth. Superman follows the monster, while his X-ray vision allows him to spot Lois inside. His attempt to get Lois out fails. The robot knocks him onto some power lines, losing the jewelry and (nearly) Lois in the process. The robot returns to the scientist's hideout with Lois, but no jewelry. She refuses to tell the scientist where it is. He retaliates by tying her up and setting her on a platform over a pot of boiling metal. The platform slowly descends, as Superman breaks in. But he'll have to fight the scientist's entire army of robots to save the day. "The Mechanical Monsters" is a 9-minute cartoon that was made during World War II like all the other ones from the franchise. In here, Suoerman is up against an evil engineer (very forgettable villain) who throws an army of fire-spilling mechanical monsters (or robots in short) at out hero. I found it an underwhelming watch. It uses the same formula like all these. Superman seems in danger occasionally, but in the end he prevails of course and Lois, who gets kidnapped again, owes it all to him. Too generic for my taste and there are many better American cartoons from the 1940s. Even at such a small runtime, I felt it dragged a lot and I do not recommend the watch. I hope the next ones turn out better. The second in this wonderful serious is the best. This cartoon is also one of the cartoons i remember the most. If you read my review of the previous cartoon, you will know i owned a dvd with most of these cartoons on it. This one is one of the cartoons i remember very well from my childhood, because it used to scare the crap out of me when i was a kid, for some reason. I think i just thought the robots were scary. Anyways on to the cartoon.<br/><br/>The story is about this evil scientist, crime boss, og criminal rich guy. Who has build these big robots who steals jewels and cash for him at night. The story about robots flying around and stealing gems, jewels, and cash is of course published by many newspapers, including the Daily Planet. Later, as Lois Lane and Clark Kent are covering the museum's exhibit for the Daily Planet, one of the robots lands in the street outside. The police tries to stop it with machine guns but the bullets can't stop the robot and it marches through the big window in the museum. As the museum visitors, including Clark and Lois, flee, the monster marches towards the jewels and steals them. While Clark phones the Daily Planet, Lois climbs into the Monster's back, just as the monster leaves the museum and takes off into the sky. Now it's up to Superman to save the day.<br/><br/>There's really nothing i dislike about this cartoon, other than it's dated by today's standards, but again, i can't really dislike it for that. The X-ray vision being introduced in this cartoon, is enough to love it. But this cartoon has lots of other reasons why it's my favorite. The animation is great again, it's bright and colorful. The designs of the robots, is really cool. And one of the best action scenes of this series, in the end, where superman beats the crap out of the robots is the highlight of this cartoon. It also gets pretty dark at the end, when the villain tries to commit suicide, by jumping into the lava. but then Superman grabs him, and flies off. It's also very impressive that this short inspired movies like Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, and Hayao Miyazaki's Castle in the Sky. As a big fan of Miyazaki, i will say, this is pretty damn awesome.<br/><br/>In conclusion, this is my favorite cartoon of the Fleischer/Famous Studios Superman cartoon series. 10/10
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372 weeks ago