When Kenner took over the Batman movie toy license in 1990 from Toy Biz, it was a very welcome change. It's not that I hated the Toy Biz stuff. It's just that it was pretty clear that things could have been done better.... and Kenner delivered.Kenner used to pack these cool little catalogs in with their larger toys like playsets and vehicles. This one is kind of an "all-purpose" catalog that shows several toy lines (as you can see by the cover of the catalog, above). I still can't believe that Kenner produced a childrens' Robocop toy line... those films were pretty hardcore and deserved the R ratings that they had. At any rate, I thought it would be fun to show these very first Batman movie toys from Kenner's catalog.
Here's the first wave of figures and couple of cycles. Kenner liked to reuse molds from older toy lines and retool them a little bit for new ones. Batman's cycle uses a mold from the Robocop line and I believe Joker's does, as well.The figures were pretty much all-new. They were based on the Super Powers Batman body but were obviously retooled for this line. I have to give them credit for producing pretty decent masked and unmasked sculpts of Michael Keaton.
Here are some vehicles. The BatJet was originally seen in the Silverhawks line of toys... and I believe the Batcopter is a "repaint" from the Super Powers line. However, the Batmobile and Batwing are all-new sculpts and are fantastic toy-counterparts to the "real" vehicles from the film.
In this page, you can see that Kenner reused a portion of the Star Wars Laser Rifle for the Sonic Neutralizer weapon.
Lastly, I love this kids' costume on this page. That would be a neat set to have in a Batman collection.Can anyone else hardly believe that this toy line was released over twenty years ago?!!
Ha ha ha... I was just thinking of that Batman Sonic Neutralizer on the way to work. I wonder if they could do that today with geek culture what it is and people almost instantly recognizing it was from Star Wars. Also this is one of those instances where both of my favorite worlds collide. Batman and Star Wars. I should have picked one of these up when i saw it 20 years ago.
ReplyDeletemissed that generation of toys, but was captivated by Batman & the movie at the time-
ReplyDeleteI love these old catalogs. I don't remember ever seeing this one though.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the post!
My best friend and I were so excited for the Dark Knight collection but we had to wait for the abysmal Toy Biz Batman line to fade out a bit before TDK Collection even showed up in stores. Notice the Batmobile says "Winter 1990" - well as we all know...Batman came out in summer of 89 and even in Winter of 90 it was extremely hard to find the Batmobile. Plus it was hard to justify to my parents that I NEEDED another one after they graciously bought me the Toy Biz Batmobile which was a lot suckier because it only had a windshield not an entire cockpit cover. Anyway, TDK Collection is second only to Star Wars and Super Powers in my book. Eventually Kenner BTAS figures put itself into this elite category as well! KENNER RULED!
ReplyDeleteGreat little catalog. I love how Iron Winch Batman stand in is no other than the Super Powers Batman himself. The Batmobile is also appears to be a prototype of a make shift Toy Biz version. Glad that's nothing like what we got.
ReplyDeleteNext to the Kenner BTAS line, The Dark Knight Collection is one of the best Batman figure lines, PERIOD.
Thanks for sharing.
just found my box of old batman toy collection. with the bruce wayne figure complete with suit parts and the chopper of this collection :) these where the good old days
ReplyDelete