Batman Por Vida

In his autobiography “Back To The Batcave” Adam West remarked that the three pop culture phenomena of the Sixties in America were “Bond, Beatles and Batman”. While I never engrossed myself in the marketing of the first two icons I always had room for buying all the 1966-era Batman stuff I could get my hands on.

A major factor in the Batman TV show’s success can be attributed to the way it was so deeply entrenched in the sonic boom of Sixties teen culture. Villains like The Joker and The Riddler had gang molls that looked more like go-go dancers than Virginia Hill, wriggling like they just jumped out of their discotheque cage, The Batmobile was Kustom Kar Kulture at its wildest, and Batman himself hit the discotheques in an early episode doing a bastardized Watusi called “The Batusi”. Batman showcased more teen hipness than Patty Duke, Gidget, Dobie Gillis and every teen TV show combined. The only show to match it for teenage grooviness was The Munsters, but Batman had one thing The Munsters didn’t have – COLOR.

No matter who the villain was – Penguin, Riddler, Joker, etc. – they never dressed in black, foregoing it for comic book shades of purple, green and hemorrhage red. Batman’s cape and cowl was a cool midnight blue, a visual respite from the dreary black rubber nightmare he’s been draped in for the past twenty years. Next to G.I. Joe no other toy captured my imagination more in the Sixties.

I stayed away from textile based souvenirs like sweatshirts and towels and focused more on the vinyl-based toy media. There was the Batman soaky, a figurine that held bubble bath for dirty kids, the Ideal hand puppet that eerily resembled Adam West, or the vinyl Batman wallet with the brilliant Carmine Infantino artwork. There was the Colorforms art board where you could move plastic cut-outs of the Dynamic Duo around, and the great lunch box which shows Batman and Robin fighting the nefarious Penguin.

Then there were all the paperback cash-ins, some were silver age reprints and some were cheap novelizations. There was the 3D comic book, again with The Penguin seen fighting them (what’s the deal with The Penguin?). I also owned the View Master of Batman, a portable slide show you could watch, the series showing stills from the great Catwoman episode.

There were all the cool exploitation records I had, like the 45 rpm of The Spotlights rockin’ out on Batman & Robin, written, performed and produced by Leon Russell. There was the “Jan & Dean Meet Barman” album, which transposed Gotham City over Surf City (big surprise!).

Thirty years after the Sixties Batman craze died out Bruce Timm, a former animator from the Ralph Bakshi Animation studio (New Adventures of Mighty Mouse) helmed the Animated Adventures of Batman in 1996 for Fox Television and a whole new onslaught of great Batman merchandise returned. The artwork and designs were far more stylish than its earlier predecessor due to Timm’s brilliant eye for design and excellent makeover of tired and long-forgotten villains (Scarecrow, Clayface, Poison Ivy) and short-lived heroes (The Demon, The Creeper, etc.).

It was back to the toy store in the Nineties to grab all this awesome swag, which included cool figurines, a Bat signal night light, toy Batmobile and Batgirl motorcycle, plus a new Nineties soaky and Nineties lunch box. I hit the Warner Bros. store on an almost weekly basis to catch the latest merch on Batman, The Joker, Harley Quinn, and all the rest.

The ultimate book on this merchandising craze that’s spanned several decades is “Batman Collected” by Chip Kidd, (Watson-Guptil), an eye-popping collection of images and details that doesn’t leave any stone unturned on all things Batman.

There are basically two kinds of toy collectors out there: one, the kind that want bragging rights for owning a collector's item, and two, the kind that love their toys and treasure the memories that they bring. I’ve only acquired the things I really can’t live without and enjoy looking at day after day. Happiness can’t be bought but it can bring a few smiles now and then.

Freezy's Big Day

In 2006 I posted a video on YouTube called "Freezy's Big Day". Rebecca took a series of photographs illustrating Freezy Sliddle delivering packages for Santa Claus to all the Liddle Kiddles. I wrote the text to this series of pictures and compiled it for a video on iMovies.

The music originally chosen for the video was The Beach Boy's "The Man With All The Toys", but unfortunately it was too short to pad out the duration of the film, so I had to choose another song. At the time Steve Jones of The Sex Pistols had a radio show called "Jonesey's Juke Box" and he was playing a lot of hoary old glitter chestnuts on his show like Showaddywaddy and Alvin Stardust, but the one that brought back the best memories of Rodney's English Disco was Mud's "Dynamite". Perverse soul that I am, I decided to use "Dynamite" as the music to accompany Freezy's Yuletide flight to help jolly St. Nick to deliver packages to all the kids of Christmas.

G.I. Joe and I

Steve Jones of The Sex Pistols once remarked that “every bloke has a bit of ginger in him” and dammit, he’s right. I get a warm glow in my heart when I apply my light blue eye shadow and work that sweet lip gloss like a cheap dame, but nothing can compete with that guy who stole my heart in my flaming youth. I called him my Joe, but everyone knew him as “G.I. Joe”.

“G.I. Joe” made the scene in the early Sixties and made my pulse pound like crazy until The Beatles came along. He was manufactured by Hasbro Toys from Rhode Island, where I actually lived at the time (1962). In fact, there was a kid in our school named Danny Hassenfeld who we treated like a rock star because his uncles were in fact the Hassenfeld Brothers (hence “Hasbro”).

G.I. Joe was brilliant because finally there was a Barbie doll for boys, if Barbie killed Krauts and drank beer at the local PX. They all had a rugged scar running across their cheek and looked like they could kill Ken in their sleep. It was a major toy-making phenomenon and probably the only important thing to come out of Rhode Island*. When G.I. Joe first started out they confined him to the basic World War Two army soldier model. Once he took off, however, they made a Navy doll, an astronaut doll, a frogman, a Green Beret (topical for the Vietnam War), and then they got foreign on us: there was the British soldier, the bitchen French freedom fighter with beret and black turtle neck sweater (!), and accessories! There was the space capsule complete with 45 rpm record, jeeps, fire trucks, and I made my Dad crazy driving me around to toy stores scoring this junk. I’m surprised he didn’t kill my annoying ass. We even got the enemy G.I. Joes: The Japanese WW II soldiers, the German stormtroopers (I’m sure my father was thrilled to have that shit in his house), and of course the surrendering Italian fascists. No, I made that last one up.

But things got weirder by the day: just for shits and giggles I filled out a Barbie sweepstakes blank at the toy store and quickly forgot about it. When I came home from school my Mom said, “A big parcel came in the mail today for you, Andy”. Kids love parcels, yeah? I won a Francie Dream House and a Twist and Turn Barbie! Shee, yeah! Let me tell you, that TNT Barbie was one happy playgirl, pouting those sweet bee-stung lips of hers as TEN G.I. Joes sat around her serving her by her molded vinyl bed. Even the Nazi was down for it. The sailor might have been watching the astronaut bend over a few times, though. I would pose my studly servicemen around this hot little ingénue while my transistor radio blared The Kinks, The Turtles and Billy Stewart yodeling “Summertime” like Jackie Wilson on crystal meth. G.I. Joe was the awesomest pal a little boy could ask for. And I haven’t killed anybody.
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*Next to me, of course.