Posted By Dan Greenfield on Nov 30, 2025 | 3 comments

TOYHEM! You can’t always recreate everything from your childhood…

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Welcome to TOYHEM! For the seventh straight holiday season, we’re bringing you a series of features and columns celebrating the toys of our youth, which often made for the best memories this time of year. Click here to check out the complete index of stories — and have a Merry Christmas, a Happy Chanukah and Happy Holidays! — Dan

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There are two prevalent strains among collectors, I find: those who want to get the things they could never have as kids, and those who want to recreate what they did have and lost (or sold, or gave away, or whatnot).

I think most of us are a combination of the two. I certainly am and have spent the last, I don’t know, 20 years or so, reconstructing my old collection, and far surpassing it. I’m fortunate that I have been able to do so, and try to never take that for granted.

That said, there are still some elusive items out there, and one is the Batman Bop Bag that I had when I was around 5 years old and at some point went to the great Gotham City in the sky.

That’s not me. But it may as well have been. That’s just some rando on the internet.

I loved that thing. The Batman Bop Bag, in case you don’t know, was one of those inflatable punching bags weighed down by a heavy pouch of sand at the bottom so that whenever you gave it a solid whack, it bounced right back up for more.

It seems they were made by a number of companies, sometimes had different names and they came in different characters. (Bozo and Popeye are two that come to mind. There were other superheroes too, like Superman and Spider-Man.) They were also remade in different styles for years to come.

Mine featured Batman in a steady stance on a bright yellow background. He had lenticular eyes and an inflatable utility belt buckle that squeaked when you hit it. Other versions I’ve seen online lack those particular features.

Whatever the case, I would stand that baby up in the living room and go to town. Until I got bored. And until it also occurred to me, “Why am I punching Batman?” Wouldn’t it have made more sense for me to get into my Ben Cooper Batman play suit and whale on a Joker Bop Bag?

Anyway, at some point, the Batman Bop Bag vanished. He probably sprung a leak or something.

Thing is, as much as I’d love to have one standing in a corner of my current collection, the durn thing is ridiculously hard to find — especially with the goofy eyes and badass belt buckle. It’s hard to even find a decent picture!

Oh, well. I guess when somethings get gone, they stay gone. You can’t have everything.

But that doesn’t mean I won’t stop looking.

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MORE

— The Complete TOYHEM INDEX of Stories and Features. Click here.

— 13 THINGS From the HEROES WORLD Catalogues You Really, Really Wanted. Click here.