Posted By Dan Greenfield on Dec 16, 2024 | 0 comments

MORRISON MONDAYS meets TOYHEM — again!

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Welcome to MORRISON MONDAYS and welcome to TOYHEM! For the sixth 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. And Bill’s here for the festivities! 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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By BILL MORRISON

In celebration of the new 1982 DC Comics Style Guide book, I decided to show some examples of Batman merchandise from the wild and wooly days before a standardized guide existed. This was a time when licensees were given access to existing art from comic books, but also allowed to create their own images with little to no approval process, especially for those outside the US. The result was a mix of Batman toys, apparel, books, and other items sporting images of the Dynamic Duo in three basic categories: exact reproductions of comic art, drawings from comics that were retraced by another artist and modified to suit the product, and images that were drawn from scratch, often by artists who were unfamiliar with the characters.

It’s the third variety that I’m focusing on today, a subset category of my collection that I fondly call “Batman’s Off-Model Merch!

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Red Tin Batmobile. This tin litho and plastic Batmobile is from Taiwan and was made in the 1970s by Cien Ge. It features Bump-N-Go action, working pistons, and flashing lights. The car itself is spectacular, but the box graphics offer a wonderland of off-model, off-brand magic. The weirdly decorative fonts, star filter photography, badly drawn Dynamic Duo, and wrong costume colors are all working at peak efficiency to create a graphic mess-terpiece!

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The Official Adventures of Batman and Robin Record. This is the Australian version of a US Batman and Robin record from 1966. The Batman and Robin poses are inspired by the Sheldon Moldoff cover to Batman Annual #1, but the artist has chosen to elongate the bodies, giving the Caped Crusaders legs that a super model would kill for! And if you think this is an example of a non-US licensee getting the colors wrong, look again. This is a great illustration of what happens when printing plates get mixed up! In this case, the magenta and cyan plates were accidentally switched, creating a weird, almost psychedelic cover.

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Batman School Binder. Here’s a great example of a licensee, in this case Standard Plastic Products Inc., getting it right with the fantastic scalloped bat wing shape of the binder! I love it when a licensee puts that kind of creative thought into a product. But they get a failing grade for the disconnected, wonky images of Batman’s head and hand.

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Batman Comforter. The graphics on this 1966 comforter are charmingly off-model, and I love the limited use of mostly primary colors (though it’s a mystery why the manufacturer took the time and expense to add green for Robin’s costume, but not for the Joker’s hair.) The licensee’s lack of knowledge of the characters is evident with the inclusion of Batwoman (out of her 1964 retirement!) seemingly being mistaken for the villainous Catwoman. And this is not the first time this mistake occurred in 1960s Bat-merch.

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Two-Sided Batman and Robin Die-cut Mask. At the height of Batmania in 1966, this promotional premium was available free to kids at General Electric TV dealers. The accompanying magazine ad pressured kids to get their adult relatives to take them to a G.E. television store in the hopes of selling them a TV for the cost of a cardboard novelty item. The mask is not well-drawn, but it’s ingenious in how the die-cut shape of Batman’s head works upside down on the other side as Robin’s head and collar.

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Batman Follow the Color Magic Rub-Off kit. The artists behind this Whitman activity set were apparently given free reign to express their psychedelic ’60s spirit. Though the copyright says 1966, the art on the “follow the color pictures” has a very 1968 Yellow Submarine vibe.

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Batman with Robin the Boy Wonder Dot to Dot and Color Book. From all appearances this 1967 activity book seems to be a knock-off, but the cover says “Authorized Edition” and the interior states that it’s a product of Western Publishing, produced in the Philippines. Though off-model for the time, the cover art is not badly drawn and I can’t help but wonder if it may have been the early work of one of the famous Filipino comic artists who were recruited by US publishers in the 1970s.

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Batman Plush and Felt Doll. I thought about keeping this list to only printed versions of Batman characters but I couldn’t resist adding this one figural interpretation of the Caped Crusader. The sultry blue eyes, exposed button nose, rosy cherub cheeks, and inviting bow lips makes this doll one of my most favorite off-model Batman toys!

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Batman Swoops Down. This 1966 British game that seems to take its name from a comic-book caption box features stiffly drawn, brutish figures of the Dynamic Duo on the cover, and drawings on the game board that seem to be interpretations of Dick Sprang and Sheldon Moldoff panels from 1950s and early 1960s. I find it fascinating that mid-1960s Batman merchandise often ignored the then-current concepts, style, and villains, and instead raided the Batman comics of the previous decade for imagery.

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Batman with Robin the Boy Wonder Storybook Annual. Here’s another product of Great Britain, this time featuring a wonderful painted cover! I love how the Batman head in the upper right corner looks like a chubby man wearing the 1966 Ideal plastic Batman helmet, and also how the full figure of the Caped Crusader seems to be swinging in, but without a bat-rope! The inside is full of cool illustrations of the Dynamic Duo fighting gangsters (no traditional Batman villains) in a very loose brush-inked style.

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Batman and Robin Bicycle plates. These metal plates were designed to go on the backs of kid’s bikes to imitate a car’s license plate. I guess if you peddled fast enough, nobody would notice how badly drawn these are!

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Batman and Robin and Catwoman Valentines. DC Comics certainly didn’t give this art much scrutiny, to say nothing of the balloon copy. As badly drawn as these cards are, there must be something great about them because these are actual cards I had as a kid and I saved them all these years. I also remember looking at Catwoman’s legs and realizing that I wanted to marry a girl one day.

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Corgi Batmobile with Box. I saved this one for last because it’s hands-down one of the greatest Batman toys of all time, with some of the very worst depictions of Batman and Robin on the box. Corgi is of course a British maker of die-cast metal toy vehicles, and is world-renowned for their faithful detail to the original designs from which they make their products. They obviously didn’t apply that same aesthetic to their packaging in this case, but my comment on that is “Who cares?” Off-model box art didn’t seem to hinder Corgi’s success with this 1:43 scale replica of the George Barris 1966 TV Batmobile. It’s a classic “must-have” toy in every Bat-fan’s collection, and I still get a thrill every time I see it on display in my studio. (Plus, it’s been re-released this year — with that packaging! — Dan)

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