Rainbow Batman Punches Just as Hard as Blue Collar Batman!

I was recently in my local video rental store checking out the cool toys and stuff they have there.

While browsing I came across the Pop Vinyl Batman 75th Anniversary Rainbow Batman toys.

The “rainbow” name is a bit nonsense and misleading.

Each toy is ONE colour, not a rainbow, and to confuse things further there was a Rainbow Batman costume design that featured in Detective Comics #241, the same issue with all the crazy coloured Batman suits on the cover. I think an actual Rainbow Batman toy would be pretty cool, it’s just kooky and odd enough that I want to own one. I hope it gets made some day. See for yourself in the this page from Detective Comics #241.

I knew the cover of Detective Comics #241 from memory, but until I got home and looked online, I had no idea the pink Batman Pop Vinyl toy I bought was related to that comic.

Then later that week I found online that there were regular sized action figures of the same fruity Batman colours. And of course I bought another pink Batman. The one on the right side of the picture below.

At this point my girlfriend is giving my those funny looks, but I feel quite secure in my own Batmanliness that I feel fine owning not one, but two cool Pink Batman toys.

The cover in question for Detective Comics #241, 1957 is equally as bizarre today as when it was first released.

I think the iconic cover has arguably become a piece of genuine pop-art. If you google “pink batman” or “rainbow batman” you will find not only those toys I just mentioned, but also blogs and websites that mention this particular cover, and the loopy story inside, which is one of the loopiest Batman stories I have ever read.

If this isn’t kooky enough for you, well then I won’t even mention the all white Batman with a target on his chest who reminds me of Marvel’s Bullseye that also features in the same issue, which would also make another cool toy in my opinion.

If you are wondering what the hell is the plot of this crazy Batman story, well that is a topic for another time. I am just going to leave in suspense for now, and a full run down of this nutty as a fruit loop story will wait for another post.

Until then, I will be enjoying my Pink Batman toys, which are pretty damn awesome if you ask me.

My ‘other’ first Batman

In a previous BATBLOG My first Batman I talked about my first memorable Batman experience.  But there was one other Batman that came before the Burton / Keaton Batman 1989 mania.  My own sort of Batman: Year One if you will.

When I was a kid, I had the Kenner Super Powers Superman and Batman action figures that my mom gave to me.  They were really cool toys, if a bit underweight for two DC titans, you could squeeze their legs together and their arms would pump back and forth like they were jogging.

I don’t know why Superman and Batman were jogging, I guess I missed that particular issue of World’s Finest, I figure they were both healthy enough already and probably too busy for jogging.  But none of that mattered to my younger self, I guess they were just good buddies and liked to hang out together, so why not jogging?

 

All I knew is that they were cool and colourful and that their arms moved, which breathed more life into them with my imagination doing the rest.

Both action figures came with sweet cloth capes which inevitably got lost, I would make the Superman fly around the room with one hand making that swooshing noise.  I seemed to know a little bit about Superman from the Dick Donner directed movies starring Christopher Reeve and Gene Hackman, I think I saw the third one in the cinema, but my memory is pretty foggy.  I also had a Parademon toy, but I had no idea what that was, and the mini-comic that came with all of the Kenner figures didn’t really help me out.

So I knew a little about Superman, even less about Batman.  He was on some crummy animated shows now and then that I never paid attention to, and the repeats of Batman 66 with Adam West and Burt Ward would play forever on TV.  But I was not a fan of that show even as a kid.  But none of that mattered, I loved those toys and would play with them all the time.  This was years before I had ever seen any kind of comic book, which were not common or easy to find when I was kid in New Zealand.

 

At some point I got older and my adult self had no idea what happened to those two toys, I wish I still had them today.  I have other toys now from back then some even older than the World’s Finest, so I really have no clue what happened to them.  It sounds silly, but my adult self feels like I lost something of my childhood when those toys disappeared and I didn’t even notice they were missing until years later.

These days I like to imagine that they went to another dimension for an adventure and they were needed there, so they never returned.

Superman and Batman left enough of an impression on me that over a decade later I would seek them out in comics, animation and films, and they would come to define a large part of my life, and provide inspiration every day to live a good life, treat others right and be an everyday hero.

Can a toy inspire a kid to live a good life and be a good human being?  Probably not, but the adult me purchased a Batman toy a few months ago, and I bought the Batman that my childhood BAT-FAN demanded from ebay, all sleek Blue and Grey. That lithe Neal Adams look, and he sits proudly atop my book shelves reminding me to train hard, keep learning and adapting, treat people right and be just a little better today than I was yesterday.