I love Angelica Jones. I have very fond memories of watching Spider-Man And His Amazing Friends as a nipper and thinking that there was something 'nice' about Firestar and her alter-ego, even though I had no idea at the time that 'nice' meant 'fit'. Because she really is very, very fit in the cartoon that played a huge part in defining my childhood television habits.

The attractiveness of Angelica's animated charms aside, the show was also vitally important to me as it was my first encounter with Spider-Man and other superheroes. With just the right mix of humour and light-hearted stories combined with the necessary dramatic prose brought about by Spidey and friends' encounters with villains a-plenty, it might not have delivered the thrills and spills of the 1994 animated series, but it more than matches it for entertainment.

That's largely down to the excellent interplay between the three friends, Spidey, Firestar and Iceman. Vocal talent was provided in the shape of Dan Gilzevan (Spider-Man), whose credits also notably include The Transformers Movie, Kathy Garver (Firestar), who was also well-known for appearing in US comedy show Family Affair in the 60s and 70s, and the infamous Frank Welker, now the voice of Scooby-Doo and previously having voiced many of the Transformers cartoon characters. As well as taking on Iceman, Welker also handled Flash Thompson in his first animated appearance.

June Foray, who had previously voiced Rocky the Squirrel in The Rocky And Bullwinkle Show, took on Aunt May in an interpretation of the role that I will forever associate with the great woman behind Pete.

There was one other very important addition to the vocal cast, that of Stan Lee. Lee was the narrator for later episodes of the show which gave fans like me the first opportunity to hear the great man himself, week after week on early morning children's television schedules.

Aside from a strong vocal cast was some excellent animation, no wonder considering John Romita himself had contributed concept art for the show (the earliest sketches for Firestar were provided by him, for example). As for the plots, well, they too had a winning hand in the shape of Michael Reeves who contributed to the scripts, long before he would become an Emmy award-winning writer on Batman: The Animated Series.

The central premise of those plots was that Peter was living in a boarding house run by Aunt May with Bobby Drake and Angelica, students who knew Peter from university. His 'friends' were added in order to appeal to a wider audience. By all accounts, the boarding house itself included Peter's bedroom, helpfully kitted out by Tony Stark to include technology galore, with consoles coming out from the walls with the press of a button. Completely daft, of course, but for kids of my age at the time a truly wondrous thing.

Less amazing was the inclusion of Aunt May's pet dog, Ms Lion. My, how I wanted to punch the screen every time she appeared, often at the end of the episode, ala Snarf in Thundercats, to provide some form of 'amusing' ending. Ms Lion represents everything that is wrong with cartoons and deserves to be cast into a deep dark pit with only a rabid bear for company.

Of course, Ms Lion wasn't the only character developed specifically for the series, as Firestar didn't exist prior to this show. She continued to exist in the Marvel Universe after the show ceased to be in the early 80s and with good reason. She has an interesting superpower, a decent history with Emma Frost and remains rather attractive (sorry, is that wrong?).

As well as introducing new characters, the show didn't shy away from bringing in all the major villains and superheroes from within the wider Marvel Universe either, with Captain America, Sub-Mariner, the Hulk and Thor all having appeared on the show at some time or another. As for those villains, take your pick from the Green Goblin, who starred in the series opener, Magneto, the Red Skull and Doctors Octopus and Doom.

Spider-Man And His Amazing Friends ran for three series while the first episode also inspired a one-shot comic book to attempt to capitalise on its success. It brings back all sorts of great memories for me: that noise associated with Iceman, one of the very best animation theme tunes, lots of gloriously all-American accents, clarification that a dog shouldn't be for Christmas, life or even a twenty-minute television slot, and I trust that this article has done the same for you.

Now sit back and enjoy that theme tune one more time. Excelsior!

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