Oh, Boy! I Got Me a ‘New’ 1960s BEN COOPER BATMAN Play Suit!
A MORRISON MONDAYS SPECIAL for Halloween — even though it’s Saturday! By BILL MORRISON Just in time for Halloween, I bought a Ben Cooper Batman Play Suit from 1965 in the original box! I still own most of the pieces of the one I got when I was 7 — the belt never made it out of the ’60s — and I wrote about that costume in my autobiographic comic story that details my quest for the ultimate Batsuit, My Life as a Bat. There’s something magically irresistible about having something you once owned as a child in the original packaging. Whenever I got a new toy, I was so excited to play with it, the box was immediately forgotten and cast aside. And like a circus roustabout following behind a horse to instantly scoop up the manure, my Mom was right there to grab boxes and wrappings and toss them into the trash. I know my Mom was not unique in this practice. It’s just a Mom thing, it’s what they do. And that’s a big reason why a collectible in the original box is rare and special. Well, maybe not so special. A few years ago, I bought a Ben Cooper Batman Play Suit that was complete with the belt, cape, cowl, and mask, and my recollection was that it didn’t have a box. But I dug into my archive and discovered that it did have one, but the box is more generic than the one I just bought. So now I have two complete Batman Play Suits, likely manufactured a few years apart, and I have no memory of which one I had as a tyke. I know, first-world problems. So, the new Ben Cooper Batman Play Suit will join the old one, along with other items in my collection like the Marx Hot-Line Batphone and the Mattel Batman’s Bat Maker-Pack in the subset that I call, “Things I once had that are mine again, and in the original packaging.” But first, since it’s Halloween and I just noticed this new playsuit is a size Large, I wonder… — Want more MORRISON MONDAYS? Come back Monday (of course)! Want a commission? See below! — MORE — BERNIE WRIGHTSON’s JENIFER Still Haunts Me — More Than 50 YEARS Later. Click here. — If Only AURORA’s 1965 WONDER WOMAN...
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