Batfail

Why does the Batman action figure franchise consistently wind up at the mercy of people who are obviously dependant on inhaling huge amounts of crystal meth during regular work hours?

I now understand why The Dark Knight Collection was called "The Dark Knight Collection." Eight Batmen and two Jokers does not a "Batman Mythos Collection" make. I suppose we all bought into it when we were kids, seeing as how the last thing we'd been offered by Toy Biz left something -- I'm still not sure exactly what, but something, definitely -- to be desired. It was nice to see the classic Super Powers mould being used again, and it was pretty cool to have a Batman that actually looked like Michael Keaton. Alas, that's where the faithfulness stopped and the current abominable traditions began.

The first obvious move was to create a way to make the Batarang more marketable to kids who play with toys -- by creating an oversized missle that launches from a humongous gold arm attatchment. Of course, we all know that the word "marketable" has absolutely zero value in reality. In reality, if they'd just given us a tiny, hand-held Batarang, we'd have fucking pretended to have our hero toss it at his enemies -- or, "enemy," I should say, since the Joker was the only villain bothered to be made -- and it would have happened with far greater accuracy than the crazy fantasy-land commercials suggested:

Seriously, I can't believe how ridiculously stoked this kid is to see that Batarang crash into a pile of model crates. I also can't believe that Batman would haphazardly fire his Batarang into a pile of crates. Why crates? What did the crates ever to do Batman? Did the crates just rob a bank or something? Did the crates kill Batman's parents when he was a young boy? We will never know for sure.

Anyway, the major downside of this "innovation" is that just about every single subsequent Batman action figure produced now comes with some form of rocket launcher/ginormous arm attachment/destructive mechanism/bringer of death. The real mystery, however, is WHY THERE ARE SO MANY FUCKING VERSIONS OF BATMAN.

"Air Attack" Batman. "Arctic" Batman. "Assault Gauntlet" Batman. "Blast Cape" Batman. "Battle Board" Batman? What in the shit is a "battle board" and why is Batman using it?

"Claw Climber" Batman. "Cyber Gear" Batman. "Deep Dive" Batman. "Deluxe Attack Wing" Batman. "Deluxe Laser Disc" Batman... a) I'm not sure the people responsible for this one know what a laser disc actually is and b) what the hell makes him deluxe?

"Disaster Control" Batman. "Fireguard" Batman. "Fractal Armor" Batman. What in the bloody blue blazes is Batman doing with something called "fractal armor?" He's BATMAN. He's a man who dresses up as a bat and beats the living shit out of muggers with his gloved fists. He wears long underwear, a cape, and a mask. NOWHERE in the Batman mythos does he nonchalontly switch costumes in the middle of a fight so he can suddenly have the ability to "claw climb" or perform an "air attack" or whatever the kooky fuck is being implied that he does. Why is there even such a thing as "Ice Blade" Batman, or a "Manta Ray" Batman? Please tell me how Batman is going to lock up crooks with a docile sea creature. The idea could only have merit if his arch nemesis was Steve Irwin.

The madness goes on and on. For every one villain put out, there are twenty Batmen to fight him. Obviously Batman is supposed to win in the end but does it really have to be that freaking easy? Example: Along waddles a sadly cheap mould-haxored "Batman Returns" Penguin who looks nothing like Danny DeVito but does have a rocket-launching umbrella. He decides to sneak into Wayne Manor and steal the Batmobile. WHAM! Out comes "Aero Strike" Batman, followed by "Bola Strike" Batman with "Laser" Batman and "Powerwing" Batman and before you know it the Penguin has so many new assholes that it'll take a crew of ten men and sixteen buttplugs to keep him from constantly shitting all over the walls of his room at Arkham asylum.

Nothing has changed in the past twenty years. Honestly, it's been two full decades of the same old game, even despite the fact that the franchise has shifted hands from one company to the other. Whether it be Kenner or Mattel, every time a new Batman film is made these soulless hacks stick to the tradition and dole out a whole new line of total crap. In The Dark Knight, Batman has two suits. TWO. One as a simple improvement over the other. Where in God's holiest of holy names does this come from?

I know it's become fairly standard for toy companies to milk the balls right off of popular characters (see Hasbro's goddamned thirty versions of Storm Shadow), but what are kids honestly supposed to do with a bajillion versions of Batmachine and one peasley Joker? Does Batman really need forty two outfits riddled with missles to bring down one guy? Where are the henchmen? Where are the cops? What about Commissioner Gordon? What about Harvey Fucking Dent? When I was a kid, we had enough X-Men characters to develop feature-length film-quality storylines. With this crap, the best you can hope for is to relive the highlights from the thirty second T.V. spot over and over... and over...

These toy companies either seriously underestimate the creative capacities of their target audience or they simply hope that kids will buy their product, realize after week one that there's nothing left to be had from it, get bored, and buy something new. This is one of the ultimate swindles of consumerism: Instead of building the kids a playground, they're selling them half a set of monkey bars.