...of minty Bat Dolly in the morning. It smells like victory!

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Back when Hasbro held the Batman license a little cartoon made a debut called Batman the Animated Series. Hasbro not missing a beat released some of the best all around Batman figures ever. These things were spot on to the cartoon, well with the exception of all the multi colored bat suits with skis and jet packs and the like. Combat Belt Batman was the only way you were getting a "regular" looking Batman from the cartoon in the sea of goofy Suit Batmans.



This Batman not only combines the look of the show, but has a pretty cool play feature, that actually makes sense, the utility belt! If you didn't feel like wearing the Combat Belt, you could remove it and not ruin the look of the figure.

So what comes on a Combat Belt. You get the standard issue humongous grappling launcher with rope and hook, you also get a bat-a-rang that fits into the launcher and has a storage loop on the belt, plus you get a neat little set of Bat-Cuffs for apprehending Gotham City's Goons.



Combat Belt Batman is by far my most treasured Batman in my collection. You know that question people ask, what is the one item you would grab in an emergency? Well besides the Family and Pets, Vintage Boba Fett, and the family pictures. Combat Belt Batman is right there with them. Of coarse I might have to grab his Batmobile as well, especially if that's were he is at at the time, no time to stop and think about these things...

I've been following various forums and blogs that have been featuring the new Hotwheels Batman 1/64th scale line for a few weeks. I have personally seen most of the vehicles in the line at the store, save the Tumbler (the movie Batmobile) and the Comic Version of the Dark Knight's car. I have to date only picked up the 1960's Television Show's Batcycle and this one. Probably the one I was most excited to see since Batman the Animated Series (BTAS) hasn't really had product since the cartoon aired in the 90's.



I for one am glad to see the Animated Series represented. A lot of people think this car is a brick, but I really appreciate the design on this one. It's a sort of hybrid of the older movie designs and the "retro future" design of the Animated Series.

Here's the Batmobile in the title sequence of Batman the Animated Series, the best cartoon opening ever in my opinion!

This is one of my most favorite of Batmobile designs. It just looks like this heavy, hard hitting tank of a car. You can really see where Bruce Timm and crew took their influences from the 1930's art deco and other Bat properties and rolled them into this monster.

This Batmobile represents the simple, clean style of Batman: The Animated Series (BTAS) and was produced by Ertl. About three inches in length and the same basic construction as a standard Hotwheels die cast car, this is one Batmobile to be reckoned with.

What's your favorite Superhero ride? Like Hulk's Copter, the Captain America Vette, or dig Aquaman's Seahorse? Chime in with your favs.

As a follow up to yesterday's post here is the Batman Carnival Capers Signage that was produced for amusement trade shows back in 1996-1997, by the now defunct Play By Play Toys and Novelties.

The actual dimensions are 2' x 4' and the "poster" itself is a high output print mounted on foamcore with a high gloss laminate coating (so please excuse the glare from the flash).

This lived in my son's room when he was younger and when he decided to get rid of a few posters, I moved it to the back of the office door for safe keeping.

Enjoy!

Today for your viewing pleasure I have a couple of style guide pages.

First up since Spider-man seems to be on everyones minds these days I have a page from the Spider-man Animated Series Style Guide. Spider-man's Animated series came along around the mid nineties on the heals of another great superhero animated series. I'll admit I was a fan of both, and the Spider-man series did seem rather well done for younger market. Characters where bright and colorful, even the villains, and the toys that were spawned for this cartoon matched the animated versions quit well. even today these are some of my favorite toys from any Spider-man show or movie.

This page is the main Logo and Character detail page. It gives commentary on logo colors as well as the main colors of our hero, Spider-man, and is one of the "upfront" materials of the guide. This style guide is similar to most, giving you the main details of the heroes first, some poses in black and white, villain colors, situational art, repeat patterns, and some alternate logos. All in all some nice artwork, very clean and ready for scanning. When this guide was produced, you would have to scan and streamline your artwork, then color and place on a given product. It was sort of rare then to get artwork CDs accompanying style guides and even then it was some of the larger licenses that did this.

Second, but not by any means second to Spider-man, is a situational artwork page from Batman: Carnival Capers Style Guide. This guide was a continuation of the Batman: The Animated Series Style Guide, and was one of many attempts by Warner Bros. to come up with stories or situations to place there animated heros in, and use villains that were featured in movies to help continue the brand. I would say that Warner Bros. along with Disney were two of the best at doing this, the idea was to keep the characters fresh and up to date.

I actually used this piece of artwork, though in it's black and white form and streamlined and then colored, to produce an amusement show poster for Play By Play. Later, a year or so after the line was finished we were cleaning out the art department and we all had a chance to grab a poster or two to take home, they were going to be trashed. These posters probably set the company back about 80 to 120 bucks each, we would produce one or two of each license, for a total of about 20 to 40 posters at about 2 foot wide by 4 foot tall. We had these things printed out on something like a high gloss dura trans and mounted on foam core, they were nice, too nice to be trashed. The one that I kept was this one and I still have it today, the design is not that great (not the artwork itself, but the design I set up), but it was my first of many show signs and it was of my favorite hero. I'll drop a pick up of it later on in another post in it's new home.

Here's a blast from the past. A catalog page from a little company called Play By Play full of Batman Goodness. These are actually product that I have worked on either laying out the graphics, coming up with the product pattern, or generating the concept artwork. The inflates were especially fun because I had to come up with shapes that could be translated into inflatable toys.

As you can see the Batmobile from the Batman the Animated Series didn't quite turn out like the one in the show. I was told this was as close as the vendor could get to the actual drawing. I think given the time and knowledge of inflate construction I could have got this one closer. Never the less I'm still happy with the results of most of the items. The Batman cowl was my all time favorite. I based it on an old Ideal toy from way back in the day, I believe the early sixties. I originally made this so my son could have a cool Batman mask to show off to his buddies. Most of the time I had my son in mind when I was designing new stuff, always a good inspiration. The cowl went through two prototype stages before we started producing them. The first prototype was constructed of white vinyl and could fit an adult sized head, I loved it and would wear it around the office doing my "I'm Batman" impersonation. I was outvoted and it was sized down for a child's average head size. Like kids are going to play with these things, huh. The Bat-a-rang and Grappling Hook were no brainers, I mean you have to have these to go along with the rest of the costume, right?


Besides inflates I was in charge of all things basketball for most of my time at Play By Play. The red and blue Batman basketball was actually the first time that a gradient was used on a basketball. Play By Play was at the top of it's game during this time and we made numerous advances in basketball artwork science. It was always great having product managers that would push the vendors to try and figure out how to make our designs work. The art department was very fortunate that we could try a few out of the box ideas and include them in the line. Not a big deal now, but for the time, we introduced glow in the dark basketballs, photos printed on basketballs, gradients, and designs that crossed the center lines, just to name a few. All these are common place now. Oh well, it wasn't rocket science, just art.

One of my favorite cartoons of all time is Batman The Animated Series (BTAS for short). This cartoon had really great stylized artwork that has been compared, in style, to the old Max Fleiser Superman cartoon of the 30's. Bruce Timm was the madman behind this cartoon, as well as the newer Justice League Unlimited Series. If you're into Batman animation, then you probably know more than I would about Bruce and team and the great imagery that they have produced over the years.

What I bring to you today is a page from the BTAS style guide. If you have read past posts you would know that I'm sucker for these style guides and that the guides themselves are used by Licensees to produce everything from toys to household goodies. This page would be used to check your color usage and scale of the characters in relationship to each other. I happen to have the whole guide for this cartoon and I consider it among one of my favorite guides. This actual guide was used as reference for plush and inflatable development back in the late 90's. I had worked on a few BTAS products for a small amusement toy company around that time, and when the license was up they were going to through out the old guides and offered them to me instead. I will be bringing you some of those items that I had developed for the amusement industry in future posts so stay tuned.