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In the mid-1990s, Marvel Productions syndicated a new Fantastic Four animated series as part of The Marvel Action Hour. The first half of the hour was an episode of Iron Man; the second half an episode of Fantastic Four. During the first season,[1] Stan Lee was featured speaking before each show about characters in the following episode and what had inspired him to create them.

The vast majority of episodes in the first season consisted of fairly accurate re-tellings and intelligent re-interpretations of classic 1960s FF comic book stories by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, but the season's cost-effective animation and attempts to add humor through the inclusion of a fussy British landlady for the FF were generally met with displeasure by fans - to say nothing of then-curent FF comic book writer Tom DeFalco, who got in trouble for penning a scene in issue #396 of the series that featured Ant-Man watching and lambasting an episode of the cartoon.[2]

Both the Fantastic Four and Iron Man series were radically retooled for the second seasons,[3] sporting new opening sequences, improved animation, and more mature writing (the first season was primarily written by Ron Friedman), though noticeably having fewer introductions by Stan Lee, with several of the new shorter intros being used more than once. The Season 2 episodes also drew upon John Byrne’s 1980s run on the Fantastic Four comic, in addition to further Lee and Kirby adventures. The Marvel Action Hour lasted two seasons before being canceled.

Following the release of the 2005 live-action film, The Walt Disney Company released the series on Region 1 DVD, now featuring new introductions by Stan Lee for all 26 episodes (replacing the original introductions, which had been removed for network broadcast). Additionally, pieces of footage from the episodes themselves had also been removed for network broadcast, and it is these cut episodes that comprise the DVD set. Region 2 received only a DVD comprising of the first four episodes.