Quite a while back, Funko released what it promised would be just the first wave of an ongoing line of 3 3/4″ action figures from the 1966 Batman TV series starring Adam West – something I’d been wanting someone to make since I was a kid. There was some pushback from fans regarding the selection of villains, and the fact that Robin was only available as part of the Batmobile set; Funko assured concerned fans that Robin and the more obvious, “A-list” villains would make up the second wave. I snatched up that entire wave of figures like they were going to stop making them. (Spoiler: they were going to stop making them.)
That second wave never arrived. Not only that, but after issuing these figures, figures from Stranger Things, and box sets of figures from Twin Peaks and Married With Children (!), Funko seemed to back away slowly from the 3 3/4″ figure market altogether. It wasn’t just that more Batman wasn’t on the way, nothing was on the way except for oceans of Funko Pops. Which is fantastic if you like Funko Pops, but maybe not so much if you were hoping that the much-mooted second wave of Batman ’66 characters would arrive in that same decade. And that’s where we pick up the story in the 2020s: with years having passed since Funko’s Batman figures were released, there was absolutely no reason to expect that this collection would ever be complete – and that’s why Mezco Toyz’ 2020 announcement of a huge box set of new 3 3/4″ Batman figures and plentiful accessories was such a surprise.
First off, dropping an announcement about this kind of product in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, at the height of supply chain strangulation, seemed… well, let’s just say optimistic at best. But everything else about it was better than anything Batfans could’ve hoped for. The box set included a fairly large cardboard playset of the Batcave (the reverse side, naturally, shows the exterior of stately Wayne Manor), complete with seven figures, a new Batmobile with a few more features, and an almost ridiculous number of accessories to go with those figures: Batarangs, the Batshield, swappable heads for every character except the Joker, weapons and props appropriate to each, and very much in the spirit of the series itself, cartoon action exclamations (“POW!”, etc.) that could be physically attached to the figures. Oh, and a tiny spray can of shark repellent. The only thing missing was a bomb – some days, apparently, you can get rid of a bomb. The Batcave would include cardboard consoles (to be punched out, folded, and asseumbled after opening the box), a working turntable for the Batmobile, Batpoles, and… holy cow, could anyone actually make this, in the middle of a pandemic or not?
Yes, they could. It would just take a little while – the beginning of 2022, in fact. (Which is not a complaint – the fact that this actually shipped at all, rather than being cancelled, is a minor miracle in and of itself.) There is some duplication here: if you went “all in” on Funko’s Batman ’66 line, you wind up with an extra Batman, an extra Robin, an extra Catwoman, and a spare Batmobile. (One has to imagine that Batman himself probably had a spare Batmobile on standby somewhere.) But the swappable heads mean that you can leave the Mezco figures “unmasked” – i.e. Batman and Robin can be Bruce without the cowl and Dick without the mask, and Catwoman similarly has an unmasked head. The Penguin, the Riddler, Catwoman and even Alfred have “masked” heads – the latter very handy for those occasions on which Alfred took a more active role in crimefighting.
In case you can’t tell, the “A-list” villains left unproduced by Funko are all here: this box set completes the collection. Oh, it would’ve been nice to have Egghead in the lineup, but for most of us, Mezco Toyz finally delivers the full “A-list” who teamed up against the Dynamic Duo in the movie that was produced between the first and second seasons. I’m never going to knock Funko’s strategy of doing largely recurring B-list villains in its first wave; the real problem was that, having promised the headliners in the second wave, that second wave never happened. The two collections actually complement each other beautifully in that regard, with the only major different being Mezco’s Kenner-style 5 points of articulation vs. the Funko figures’ 7 points.
And they all hang out together just fine
The Batmobile from Mezco’s set has the edge over the Funko Batmobile; the body is longer and more accurate, and the accessories like the cutting blade and the attachable “jet flame” put the Mezco vehicle on a whole different level. The Batcave itself is an extremely roomy place to park the Batmobile; I’ve actually begun using it as a gathering place for all of my superhero figures, regardless of which publisher they originated from. (If you’re the type whose blood pressure shoots up dramatically in anticipating of arguing loudly at the thought of this, you’re not allowed to come over and play with any of them. House rules.) The figures themselves are not individually packaged, but are all inside a plastic blister mounted on a slab of cardboard as wide as the box itself. That’s a relief – I would have struggled mightily with the decision to open or not to open individually carded figures.
The JLA meets here on Thursdays, the Avengers use it on weekends – chill already
The cardboard Batcave is held together largely by Velcro, and there is a tendency over time for that to slowly pull apart. My recommendation: put the set in a space that helps it maintain its shape, or be prepared to periodically do that maintenance yourself. I also wish that there was some kind of container to keep all of the tiny accessories, spare heads, etc. in; I had to resort to a ziploc baggie tucked away behind the Batpoles. But those are really my only complaints with this set. Even the exterior box is a piece of pop art suitable for display in its own right. It was pricey at the time of pre-order; it has only gotten pricier since.
There was absolutely no reasonable expectation that anyone would ever pick up the abandoned Batman ’66 3 3/4″ line. And there was even less reason to assume that they would do it this well, in a way that will have everything most fans want from such a set, but not entirely duplicating the characters and features of the previous line. For old collectors like myself who are stuck on that classic Kenner scale, and stuck on Adam West-era Batman, this is Christmas all in on big, colorful box, beautifully put together.