Batty-Meal Toys!

Well since we didn't see much in the way of "Happy Food Time" toys from any of the Junk Food Dealers with the last Batman movie (except overseas, those lucky bastards!) I thought I would throw up... err, put up some pictures of some past toy goodness in this installment of... Food for Toys!

So here we are the year is 1992 and Batman Returns has taken the box office and had it's way with it (okay so I exaggerate a little here) but it was definitely a Batman Summer! Michael Keaton returns as the Dark Knight and two new villains are lurking about Gotham, the Penguin, played by Danny DeVito and the Catwoman played by Michelle Pfeiffer.

I'm going to go off here a little bit and say Michelle Pfeiffer as Catwoman was the best part of that movie. She easily ranks up there as on of the best Catwomans in history. Meeeeoooow! And the cat suit redefined many a Halloween costume for years to come! My favorite scene... all of them! Okay, the one where she blows the crap out of the department store!

So McDonald's hit with what I like to call a small but powerful one, two punch. Four Happy Meal toys featuring Batman, Penguin, and Catwoman, plus four collector cups with Batman frisbee lids. What a nice compact little promotion they had gong. It was really cool as well that they did up the restaurants with large promotional banners of the characters, it was like eating at a McDonald's in Gotham City!



So what did we get, besides unwanted pounds and a legacy of cholesterol? The Catmobile that when rolled wagged that kitty's tale, the Penguin Mobile, roughly modeled after the characters duck mobile from the movie, the Bat Ski Boat, sort of... did it have treads? Plus my favorite from the line the Batmobile with launching Batmissile action, so you can recreate the scenes when Batman ejects from the Batmobile in a sleeker missile like version to squeeze through some tight alley ways... wait a minute... Batpod...Batmissile... huh.




That was one of the greatest summers ever... not just because of fast food toys, I got other reasons, I'm not that geeky. But the Batty-meal Toys certainly enhanced it a little!

UPDATE! Looks like the Bat Blog has some news about the Lego
style Batty Meal toys!

Lightning Fast Bat Transportation!

I think enough time has passed since the Dark Knight has swept up everyone in it's amazing whirlwind of adventure that I can post some "Bat Goodness"! So here we go Bat Fans, the Johnny Lightning build your own Bat Vehicles. These were released in the early part of the new decade, and have to be one of the coolest if not easiest models I have ever built. The actual finished vehicle is about the size of a Hotwheels car, but they were packaged in a display type box with header card that is similar in size and shape of the Corgi Batmobiles, maybe a little smaller.

Each kit came with instructions, a tiny screw driver, tiny screws (duh), and pre painted parts. You could pretend you were on an assembly line putting together little die cast cars! Each represents a different era of Bat vehicle, or major Bat vehicle, with two of the four representing the 60's. No you are not seeing things the fourth will be revealed tomorrow.

Let's start with one of the coolest of Batmobiles, the 1940's. The 40's Batmobile is a supped up sedan with the recognizable bat fin adorning the roof, running down the back of the car, as well as the "mask" that was used as a battering ram. This version even has the wheel wells that have the bat like scalloped edges. Solid gloss black, chrome accents, this is one bad looking Batmobile. Probably only considered iconic by comic fans, but is easily recognizable as a Batmobile.






Next we have the 1960's comic Batmobile, I say comic because it seems that while they could do a version that was based on the Futura car design, Johnny Lightning was not licensed to do the 1960's Television Batmobile that everyone knows. But this one is similar to the Barris version form the show in so many ways that it's not to far to imagine Adam West at the wheel.







This set also features no bat markings except for the matte black mask that is on the hood of the gloss black car. The interior and any exterior details were all pre painted as before, but one extra feature on this one is the opening hood. This car also included a hitch on the back that comes in handy for the trailer that came with the next set the 1960's comic Batboat!







Again the comic being because the television Batboat was not licensed. Probably one of the coolest of the four sets, the Batboat features similar pre painted details as the above Batmobile and includes a trailer that you can hitch to the car, or lower it's hitch wheel to stand at the ready in the Batcave. I wouldn't try to float this one though, it's made up primarily of die cast, like the others, and would sink rather fast.



This one along with the Batmobile reminds me of the older Corgi sets that included the car, trailer, and boat. I believe there was even a larger rack toy set that had the same set up, but all plastic at a larger scale. I wonder if they ever produced a Batcamper, so Batman and Robin could hitch it up for a weekend of s'mores and ghost stories?

The Making of the Bat Boat

So since I've been showing off some "off the wall" Batman stuff this week in honor of our special guest from LOG, I thought I would go out with a Bang, Biff, Pow!

For your viewing pleasure the 1960's Bat Boat or rather a company brochure for the Bat Boat. Now, I do not have a lot of older pieces in my collection and I certainly do not have a lot of catalog, brochure, magazine pieces, but being a designer I am drawn to paper products and older advertisements. It's just something about that era. So I do have a copy of this brochure. Why just a copy? The owner didn't want to part with the original, and since we had a color copier at work, he was more than happy to loan it to me to make a copy for my collection.

So here's the story. I guess I should proceed this with the following, you never know where you'll find Batman stuff. Okay having said that, I was the art director for a waterpark ride manufacturing company for a few years in the early 2000's. We developed water "rollercoasters", slides, and tons of what we called water toys. Those were giant hippos, elephant slides and what not. Nine times out of ten if you have been to a water park, indoor or out, you've been on one of the slides we developed. So this manufacturer is smack dab in the middle of Texas, probably fifteen minutes away from my house, outside of town. It was the best drive to and from work I have ever had, in the three years there I was in maybe a total of three traffic jams.

Well one day in the Spring I decided to check out a local hobby store at lunch and while I was in there I found the Polar Lights model of the vintage Bat Boat. I bought it just for the package art. Well on my return to work I decided to take my new prize in and show the art team what I had found, and when I was finished showing off my latest trophy I sat it on top of my monitor to gaze at while I worked the rest of the day. The building which we occupied was once the Texas branch of Glasstron Boats, more precisely their engineering and development branch, and to take it a step further our head engineer and our park layout designer both used to work for Glasstron.

So now the park layout designer worked for me and when I showed him the boat he launched into a spill about how Glasstron used to build boats and they even built that boat. Of course I didn't believe him, I've heard one to many of his fish stories, so he rang the head engineer. David, the head engineer, comes down to the Art Department and starts telling me about the Bat Boat he helped design. David is a very straight shooter, there was now doubt in my mind that he was speaking the truth. He told me about testing it out on a local lake, doing the float test in the factory, and trying to make this thing look like a Bat Boat and still be able to run like a regular boat. Now my Park layout guy starts chiming in about blue prints and David says they are long gone, moved with the company files, but he still had a brochure. He brought in the next day for me to see and make a copy and now it's up here on the blog. All in all it was a great couple of days to be a Bat Fan. I scored a cool model with an even cooler box, and got to listen to war stories of the good ole' days of making Batman's trusty Batboat. It was like I was there on the lake chasing down the Penguin, quick where's the Bat Shark Repellent!