The New Adventures of Jonny Quest is an American animated series produced by Hanna-Barbera Productions, and a continuation of the 1964âÂÂ65 television series Jonny Quest. It debuted in 1986 as part of The Funtastic World of Hanna-Barbera syndication package, being the seventh and final Hanna-Barbera cartoon of the four and a half weekday/weekend morning line-up. While it is a continuation, the series can be seen as the second season to the original series.
This series features Dr. Quest and his group as they go on adventures while thwarting different villains, such as the mad scientist Dr. Zin. Some episodes had a stone man named Hardrock as the Quest family's ally.
In the late 1970s, Hanna-Barbera produced concept art for a new series entitled Young Dr. Quest: The Adventures of Jon Quest, featuring an older Jonny, Hadji, and an adopted Japanese girl. They would be accompanied by pets Bandit II and Oboe (an unspecified species of monkey), and receive support from Benton Quest and Race Bannon at times (with Race having since married Jade). According to Disney historian Jim Korkis, Doug Wildey later pitched the concept as simply named Young Dr. Quest to Joseph Barbera, featuring Jonny as a 22-year old MIT graduate going on adventure with Race and Hadji.
By mid-1983, the edited episodes of the original Jonny Quest series (each episode was missing about five minutes of footage edited for time constraints and content) were part of The Funtastic Worlds second season lineup, alongside Yogi's Treasure Hunt, Paw Paws and Galtar and the Golden Lance. Thirteen episodes were produced in 1986 to accompany the original in the Funtastic World programming block. These episodes were referred to simply as Jonny Quest on their title cards, and were noticeably less violent and more âÂÂkid-friendlyâ than the 1960s version.
In an interview in the first issue of the published Jonny Quest Comic book, Joseph Barbera stated since 1984 they had received offers from six different companies interested in licensing Jonny Quest for either a live action prime time television series or feature film. Barbera stated that they'd entered into negotiations several times but turned down every offer but this convinced them that there was interest in a new Jonny Quest series. The intention with the new batch of episodes was to pair them with rebroadcasts of the original series, in the event the new episodes were deemed successful, an order of 26 additional episodes would be produced which along with the original series would bring the total episodes to 65 thereby making the series an attractive package for broadcast syndication. Ultimately, no further episodes were produced beyond the initial 13 episodes.
This was followed by two television films, 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 Quest series introduced a new character named Hardrock, an ancient man made of stone. He did not return in later versions of the program.
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. This is a Manufacture-on-Demand (MOD) release, available exclusively through Warner's online store and Amazon.com.