Batman And His Amazing Toys
Toys and superheroes are a sure fire bet, whenever a cartoon series with a cool character comes along you can guarantee there will most likely be some kick-ass toys to accompany it – by the way, still looking for Ben10’s Gwen, GI Joe Dreadnoks and a Cyclonus that doesn’t fall about mid-transformation.
DC have always had a Batman figure on the market, it unsurprisingly consistently rolls out and gets some interest, sometimes they produce too many and folks like me get excuses to buy them and not feel too guilty or stupid, despite the fact that we then buy and pay more because even going over the top it’s still on sale.
The release of The Dark Knight bought a new wave of Batman figures to expand on the slightly limited range of Batman Begins figures, which at the time was perhaps being shortened due to the more cartoony version of figures for the animated series The Batman.
Whilst in my local supermarket, I spotted – in the way that geeks tend to, that being a slight glint in the peripheral vision leading to a sudden stop whilst pushing a shopping cart and causing a small child to smack in to the back of your leg and butt cheek – that they were discounting a whole load of Dark Knight figures, as well as Pokemon Diamond and Pearl, Power Rangers and Ben10 (but no Gwen) toys.
The deal was two figures for £8 or $11. What actually led to the purchase was seeing that if you bought them individually they were £7.97 each. Away I walked with four new figures. Well, after paying for them, away I walked, it would be rather ironic to shoplift crimefighter toys.
The four figures were: Bruce to Ninja; Grapnel Launcher Batman; Sonic Spy Batman; and, Punch Packing Joker.
The back of the packs reveal, in the good old fashioned way that toys have, what other toys there are to collect. From the Dark Knight range there are twelve figures, of which each pack only shows six, I happen to know there are a few more from just looking around (for example the overly neon PowerTek figures from the range aren’t included). The figures shown though are:
M5053 – Stealth Wing Batman (In bright blue costume repaint)
M5047 – Elasto-Cuffs Batman (Where it is now possible to fire handcuffs at villains on a length of cord and always apprehend them. Just as long as the handcuffs are dayglo orange)
M5045 – Staff Strike Batman (Where he gets HellBoy wristbands with pikeaxes sticking out)
M5048 – Grip Gear Batman (Quite a good one, in that he has suction pads to stick to glass. However, some websites show him as a fire red repaint, while he is the cool basic black on box)
MS060 – Swiss Blade Joker (Quite cool, Joker in a reverse colour scheme – green coat and pants, purple waistcoat – he carries a big metal case with weapons a-plenty)
M5058 – Fear Shot Scarecrow (A brilliant looking Scarecrow with a wristmounted Fear Gas sprayer)
M5061 – Punch Packing Joker
M5055 – Battle Belt Batman (The colour scheme on the box gives him a really awful camo outfit, some websites put him in grey and baby blue, either way he has a missile launcer thing)
M5052 – Ultimate Chain Attack Batman (How to put this, he’s wearing a goldish-brown and weilding an oversized tripple chainsaw. If he was in basic black with red splatter it would be the perfect Resident Evil crossover figure)
M5050 – Parachute Batman (I’m not sure why this Batman has bright green shoulder pads on top of his cape)
M5044 – Grapnel Launcher Batman
I really want to go back and see if I can get a Scarecrow, Swiss Blade Joker, Ultimate Chain Attack Batman and, well, anything to round it off to sale price again. If I do get a Chainsawing Bats, you can bet I’m taking one of the plain black suited figures and blood splattering him.
Bruce to Ninja
For a line that was marked up for The Dark Knight it seemed a bit odd to include Bruce’s ninja training from the first film, however I’m very much in favour of being able to actually have a Bruce Wayne and I can see how Business Suit to Batman might not have sold so greatly.
The set includes Bruce in ninja training garb and a batsuit torso that you can fit over him to ‘transform’ to Batman. It also features a very thick chunky sword shaped thing that opens up in to a fan, as well as a spiked gauntlet.
Personally, even as a kid I’d have preferred the Business Suit to Batman, because suited arms and legs would match the torso better. Yeah, I wasn’t co-ordinated in a wardrobe as a kid, but dammit my action figures better be.
Grapnel Launcher Batman
The better of the two Batman figures that I picked up, in my opinion. The figure is the basic black suited Batman – which is highly detailed and sculpted, though luckily not to the point of including batnipples – with a slightly oversized grapnel gun, obviously oversized to fit the spring mechanism for it to fire.
The gold coloured grapnel is roughly shaped like a bat and the gun does seem fairly in keeping with movie versions of hook-and-line weapons, with feasible areas to store cord and winch devices.
Sonic Spy Batman
Remember in Dark Knight where Batman fired those sticky bombs to the windows? Yeah, this is nothing like that. How about the bit where Batman unloaded a device the size of a cement mixer to fire a listening device so he could be all stealthy?
The basic black suited mold is back, and this time his gadget is fairly insane. Batman comes equipped with a huge missile launcher with a satellite dish and a missile that lets him listen in to things. The launcher itself is bigger than his torso and described as ‘fully portable’ on the back of the pack.
Punch Packing Joker
Got to love a Joker figure, if only for his clothing. Purple long coat, pants, shirt and tie, with a green waistcoat. His green hair is wavy, though as well as being long it does seem to be receeding giving him a noticable amount of forehead, maybe if they’d parted it a little differently.
The Joker figure is equipped with a missile launcher, which I could quite believe was inspired from the Police Van Chase Scene in Dark Knight, except that because the toys are obviously aimed at children they couldn’t just have Joker firing a missile, it had to be a missile with a boxing glove at the end.
Having seen the Batman Activity Book that was brought out for kids, which yes I own and may review sometime, I can understand that they’ve taken a few steps to still cash in on kids love of Batman and keep it tied to something current and hip. Heck, Two-Face gets majorly dropped all over, talk about discrimination.
The Joker figure is cool though, possibly second best to the Burton movie Joker figure because he had a hat and the long barreled revolver, not needing to soften down for the kids. He outwins the other Sark Knight tie-in Joker just because it’s a better colour combination.
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