The New Adventures of Jonny Quest

Did You Know?

• On April 8, 2014, Warner Archive released Jonny Quest: The Complete Eighties Adventures on DVD in region 1 as part of their Hanna-Barbera Classic Collection.
• The DVD release is a Manufacture-on-Demand (MOD) release available exclusively through Warner's online store and Amazon.com.

Production and history

Hanna-Barbera first explored bringing back the Quest family in the late 1970s with concept art for a show called Young Dr. Quest: The Adventures of Jon Quest. This version featured an older Jonny and Hadji, plus an adopted Japanese girl, along with pets Bandit II and a monkey named Oboe. Benton Quest and Race Bannon, who had married Jade, would provide occasional support. Doug Wildey later pitched the idea to Joseph Barbera as simply Young Dr. Quest, with Jonny now a 22-year-old MIT graduate adventuring alongside Race and Hadji. By mid-1983, edited episodes of the original Jonny Quest series, each trimmed by about five minutes for time and content, aired during the second season of The Funtastic World alongside Yogi's Treasure Hunt, Paw Paws, and Galtar and the Golden Lance. In 1986, thirteen new episodes were produced to accompany the originals in that programming block. These episodes, titled simply Jonny Quest, were less violent and more kid-friendly than the 1960s series. In an interview for the first issue of Comico's Jonny Quest comic, Joseph Barbera revealed that since 1984, six companies had approached them about licensing Jonny Quest for a live-action prime-time series or feature film. Although they turned down every offer, the interest convinced them to pursue a new animated series. The plan was to pair the new episodes with reruns of the original; if successful, an additional 26 episodes would bring the total to 65, making the package attractive for syndication. No further episodes were made beyond the initial thirteen. Two television films followed: Jonny's Golden Quest in 1993 and Jonny Quest vs. The Cyber Insects in 1995, with Don Messick, Granville Van Dusen, and Rob Paulsen voicing Dr. Quest, Race, and Hadji. The 1980s series also introduced Hardrock, an ancient stone man who did not appear in later versions.