When it came to action figures, by 1993, I was caught in a pre-adolescent rundown. At twelve years old, I still desperately wanted to continue playing with my X-Men and Aliens figures but was getting the sense that it was time to put childish things away. Becoming a toy collector was a great way to split the difference between my love of toys and my worry that I would be ridiculed for being interested in toys.
The problem with this scenario was two-fold. Firstly... where I was living, distribution of the toys I was interested in owning was spotty at best. I vividly remember the frustration of pawing my way through aisles of unsold Flintstones and Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers looking for just ONE Jack Skellington toy, only to come up empty-handed. This is still a problem today!
The other thing holding me back from being a first-rate collector is that I had absolutely no restraint when it came to keeping figures in the box. Although I would usually make a passing attempt at keeping a toy mint in the box after buying it, only a few days after it would inevitably be ripped from its packaging.
These two conflicting toy desires came to a head in the last weeks of '93 when I, flush with cash, stumbled on a Wal-Mart with a COMPLETE set of Kenner's Legend of the Batman action figures for sale. I'm sure these toys haven't aged well, but the first series of Legend of the Batman were, I think, pretty damn awesome. Instead of giving kids endless variations on Batman, Legend of the Batman gave us different versions of Batman.
This will be a fine distinction to most people I suppose, but it's one that always bugged the heck out of me as a kid. I never
wanted fifty versions of the same Batman ("Oh, here's one with his Arctic Blast suit, and here's one with his Lava Walk suit!"), I wanted different BatMEN. Legend of the Batman fit that bill, essentially giving kids the Elseworlds versions of Batman. This way I could have a plain ol' normal Batman standing next to a Batman with a whacked-out robot theme and it made sense to me.
The first series included a lot of characters that fans had been dying to see cast in plastic for years, including Nightwing. I had wanted a Nightwing figure ever since the Eighties. I owned a ToyBiz Batman and Robin around the time that the Tim Burton flick hit theaters, and I was comics-savvy enough to know that Nightwing was the original Robin all grown up... but there were no figures of the character.
Further, finding the not-Batman characters in any toy line was always an unbelievable pain in the neck. I always imagined even if Kenner DID make a Nightwing figure, it would be impossible for me to find.
...and yet, there he was, along with the rest of the first series, including Catwoman, Knightquest Batman, and a couple of other genuinely cool variations on the Batman Theme (Cyborg Batman is one I remember pretty vividly). I bought them all, as I was flush with Christmas money from various relatives.
Then the waiting began. I knew I should leave them carded. I knew they'd be a
great collectable someday. I put them up in my closet and tried to busy myself with other things. After about two days, I couldn't hold out any longer and decided to take just ONE out of the box. The choice was pretty easy.
I don't know that these toys hold up today. They suffer from that annoying super-posed look that really inhibits play; Nightwing is always crouched in permanent fighting stance, one hand opened to hold his ridiculous large and yellow rocket launcher. Still, the toy really held my attention. I loved the fact that the yellow armor that hung over Nightwing's shoulders was removable; it was fun to "suit him up" when he was about to go fight whatever random toys I used as villains for my characters (castoff Ninja Turtles, mostly). Still, I had quite a bit of fun with Nightwing back then. He's earned permanent display in my classroom where he and a collection of old toys from my childhood sit on top of one of my chalkboards.
I probably made the right call, seeing as you can find these toys for about $3 bucks if you look on Amazon.com.
.........
I don't know if this is of use to anyone, but in the past month I've become obsessed with the website
Slick Dealss. It's sort of a clearinghouse for good sales and deals across the Internet and beyond. I've seen some truly good stuff that's well beyond my means as a lowly public school teacher with two young children and a mortgage, but there have been some awesome stuff I've been able to take advantage of. They usually have about two or three amazing deals on magazine subscriptions a week, and I subscribed to a couple for my classroom, like Nintendo Power.
This week they had a promotional code for a free Papa John's pizza that totally worked- we got a pie for the cost of delivery!
Anyway, with the holidays coming up, there have been all sorts of "slick deals". If nothing else, it's a fun site to check out every once and awhile.
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