Posted By Dan Greenfield on Aug 18, 2025 | 2 comments

MORRISON MONDAYS!

By BILL MORRISON

It’s well known that Bart Simpson’s favorite super hero is Radioactive Man, and in The Simpsons universe, the “Irradiated Crusader” appears to be on a par with Spider-Man, Batman, and Superman in popularity overall.

In the Season 7 episode “Radioactive Man,” a big-budget RM movie is being filmed in Springfield, and this episode also shows a clip from a 1970s Radioactive Man TV show. A Season 2 episode, “Three Men and a Comic Book” reveals that the “Atomic Avenger” also had a show in the 1950s and appeared with his sidekick, Fallout Boy, in a Laramie cigarette commercial. So, it follows that with a character this popular there must also be an endless stream of Radioactive Man merchandise in The Simpsons universe. However, though we’ve seen several comic book covers in episodes of the show, we haven’t seen a lot of merch. There are actually more Radioactive Man items in our universe than have ever been shown on The Simpsons.

Thankfully, Bongo Comics and celebrated comics and TV writer Paul Dini saw an opportunity to give the world a glimpse into the toys that might have fueled Bart’s Radioactive-Mania! It happened in Paul’s foreword to the hardcover collection, Radioactive Man: Radioactive Repository Volume One.

 In a previous column, I wrote about this omnibus of atomic tales with a focus on Mr. Dini’s foreword. Bongo has always presented Radioactive Man stories as if they were being plucked from The Simpsons universe and reprinted in ours. Our first issue of Radioactive Man comics was cover dated 1952, for example, and the story was written and drawn as if it was created in that year. So, in Paul’s foreword he adopted our concept of Radioactive Man having been created in the Atomic Age and expanded upon that by writing a fantasy “remembrance” of his childhood love for the character. He wrote about the 1950s TV series, the Radioactive Man newspaper strip, the wave of toys that fueled Radioactive-Mania in the ’60s, and the ’90s hit, “Radioactive Man: The Animated Series”

I showed examples of some of those things in that earlier column, but there’s so much more from Paul’s foreword. So, to give you an idea of what sort of Radioactive Man collectibles fans might find at the Android’s Dungeon & Baseball Card Shop, the Springfield Bi-Mon-Sci-Fi-Con, or in the closet of Bart’s bedroom, here are the remaining goodies!

Ororo model kit

Krusty Burger Hey Hey Meal

Radioactive Man comics

Newspaper strip

Lo, There Shall Come… a Bartman!!

3D Scene Master

Breakfast cereal

Lovable Smoking Hero

Radioactive Man Action Cowl

Ben Hooper costume

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