As a kid growing up in the 1980s, your CultBox correspondent had several pre-adolescent crushes on female characters in imported cartoon series. Two that immediately spring to mind are Princess in Battle of the Planets and Sheila, the Thief from Dungeons and Dragons.

Whether that was because they both had a tendency – thanks to pervy animators in Japan and America – to show their knickers at any given opportunity is a matter for much angst-ridden debate on a psychoanalyst’s couch, but neither of these pant-flashers could ever hold a candle to the (literally) hottest cartoon hero of the age: Spider-Man’s amazing friend, Firestar.

By day a student pal of Peter Parker’s named Angelica Jones, by night – or whenever Dr Doom starts kicking off – a scorching goddess, Firestar will never be forgotten. Just hearing the (actually excellent) opening titles of the series in which she unforgivably took third billing below Spidey and Iceman opens up a whole raft of starry-eyed reminiscence….