Japanese Spiderman series also from 1978

And I thought the U.S. TV Spider-Man's webbing was too rope-looking!!!

Finally took a look at the Wikipedia article and was surprised to learn that the '78 Japanese series has a boxed set!!! It got an 8-DVD set covering its entire run in late 2005, no doubt prompted by the great success of the current Spider-Man movie franchise. Why can't the owners of the U.S. counterpart take the hint and get their Spider-Man on official DVD?! They would have a lot less episodes to deal with, and if much bang for their buck were needed, they coud do like Japan's Toei Company and put the whole thing out on one boxed set.

PBS used the last three seasons (1974-1977) of kiddie show "The Electric Company" to air "Spidey Super Stories", recurring Spider-Man skits. The stories were so simplistic that Spider-Man barely did anything superhuman and never appeared out of costume as alter ego Peter Parker (allowing the theme music to claim "Spider-Man, nobody knows who you are!"). Spidey would simply show up and foil mischievous characters (typically far less sinister than Marvel Comics villains) by ensnaring them in his web (which would just be a superimposed cartoon in the moment that it was being fired off). These shows-within-a-show weren't completely live-action; instead of Spidey speaking out loud, cartoon speech balloons would appear above his head (to encourage the young kids watching to read). This '74-'77 Spider-Man was played by Danny Seagren, so Nicholas Hammond isn't really the 1st Spider-Man (he is the original live-action Peter Parker). A few "Spidey Super Stories" are available on official DVD as part of recently released "Electric Company" best-of sets. [The only thing the PBS Spider-Man had over BOTH the CBS Spidey and the Japanese Spidey was a better costume. It was more authentic looking.]