By now, you might have seen my unhealthy plethora of Batmen, which seems to continue to propagate completely unbidden. While I don’t wish to imagine any late-night post-coital-clone piles of little blue and grey defenders of Gotham, I can’t imagine that this is happening in any other way. Time to invest in night vision security cameras. And perhaps set up a membership-only, extremely niche fetish website.

Because of Batman’s universal appeal to audiences of all ages, there’s usually new Batman stuff every month. This month brings me three new figural Batmen that I’ve either added or am attempting to add to my collection.

First off is today’s discovery of ‘Brave and the Bold’ Batman, which is based off of a completely new Cartoon Network animated series. Much lighter than the original Batman animated series, Justice League Unlimited, or even the ‘The Batman’ which recently finished airing on WB, this new Batman returns him to that distant era when his insignia was still a yellow oval with a black bat poised so symmetrically inside. When dealing with Batman, that’s how you know that he’s got a fighting chance to be in a good mood. Yellow = mellow, all black = stand back. I just made that up.

This new Batman from Mattel, much like the cartoon, is geared towards kids. While still in an ‘animated’ style, his wider face and chunkier body definitely makes him more friendly, and the soft voice of comic actor Diedrich Bader all but makes this Batman a regular guidance counselor to the superheroic. While he measures in taller than JLU Batman, and shorter than ‘The’ Batman, his untraditional scale is a great contrast to the two relatively similar Batman pieces. The initial appearance of this line also includes Aquaman, Red Tornado, a modern Blue Beetle, and a handful of villains, vehicles and accouterments.

The great thing about kid-centric toy lines is that they’re usually distributed in high volume and are replenished rapidly, so I can’t see these figures shooting up in price immediately, like the Green Lantern and Martian Manhunter from the previous ‘The Batman’ line – which were suddenly highly-desired as they were the tail end of a dying line.

Also appearing now is Mattel’s new 3 3/4” ‘Infinite Heroes’ line. This scale is the next huge thing, as it already encompasses all GI Joes and Star Wars figures, and it’s quickly absorbing Hellboy, Marvel, and now DC Comics. This super-small line already includes a surprising depth of characters from all levels of popularity, from Adam Strange to Black Canary and even Commissioner Gordon. While the sets of figures are being distributed in three packs, six packs and specialty more-than-six packs, the second wave of single packs has just appeared, and it includes a perfect little Batman, scaled ideally to hang with Boba Fett.

The oft-troubled distribution of Mattel’s toys seems to have spread these around pretty evenly for collectors also, leaving Infinite Heroes Batman as one of the few harder-to-find figures – mostly because he’s a lot more recognizable than characters like Spectre and Black Lightning, which also hang with him on the pegs. While the individual figures cost anywhere from five to seven bucks, the multi-packs seem to cost exponentially more per figure, which is keeping more than a few collectors out of the game.

My third new Batman of the year actually came from a little fly-by-night shop at the local mall, called ‘Kechua World’, which took over where the old prom dress shop used to be. and is completely filled with Native American paraphernalia, both produced and handmade. You know, t-shirts with eagles and wolves next to tribal themed jewelry, and a very genuine-looking family quietly behind the counter.

At the entrance to the shop, there was a small basket of handmade finger puppets (I’ve talked about my love of finger puppets here before), which at first glance included Spongebob, Dora the Explorer and The Hulk. Being who I am, I vocally declared ‘if there’s a Batman, I’m getting him.’ A normal person might have said ‘it’ instead of ‘him’ and not chosen to personify a finger puppet, but that’s the least of my problems.

Either way, there was a Batman-ish guy in the basket. Lopsided ears, not much unlike Bat-Mite, a pink face with bright red lips, a cape, and…. a blue, vaguely bat-shaped insignia on his chest. I took this to be in the spirit of my recent Batdude acquisition, and scooped him up alongside the aforementioned Hulk (with anime face and abs defined with black thread), and Spider-Man (with asterisk insignia… though I opted for the white-eyed Spidey instead of the neon-green-eyed, Spider-Sense Spidey, a decision that I hope to not regret). At 3 for $5, it’s a no-lose situation.

Any year that begins with three new Batmen has to be a good one, right?

---

================

Gotta Collect? Then You Gotta Connect - Join our Collectors’ Community!

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 3rd, 2009 at 2:00 am and is filed under collecting fyi. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.