30th Anniversary Micro Action Series - BATMAN

The Microman Batman toys are nothing short of stunning. They're approximately the same size as your average action figure, but much more realistically proportioned (remember, Batman - Bruce Wayne - is not Superman, he's just a very healthy, well-trained human) and with many more points of articulation. Additionally, they come with at least ten (yes, 10) replacement hands (that's five pairs) in a variety of gestures. Catwoman comes with a pair of replacement shoes as well - each with a blade at the toe!

Takara produced two versions of the 'traditional' Batman, a grey one with its muscles badly overdefined with bold, dark grey lines, and this blue/black work of art, which came as part of a set with Batgirl. If you ask me, this is easily the better of the two, regardless of the colour scheme

His accessories include a Batarang (pictured), Bat-Cuffs, breathing gear, and a grappling hook with a rather short cable. Plenty of potential for dynamic and interesting posing on his own or with other characters (slapping the cuffs on Catwoman, for example). The cape is made of bulky, heavy rubber, and serious jolting can cause the head to fly off. It might have been better to have the cape attach rather more solidly to the shoulders, or perhaps make it out of fabric instead...

Batgirl is every bit as posable as Batman, but there are some differences in the arrangement of joints. The shoulders are much simplified, the upper leg twist joint is closer to the knee than the hip, and the plugs for the hands seem much more delicate. Also, I'm not sure whether this is by accident or design, but the crotchpiece isn't attached to the hip joint, so it rattles around somewhat.

Bizarrely, Batgirl has articulated hair (only one joint, though, allowing it to 'stream' behind her) and a similar joint in her cape. This seems to make the cape much looser than Batman's so her head will occasionally fly off if the cape gets even slightly jolted.

The gold paint used for the hands and feet looks like it might flake off over time, so I'll be keeping an eye on this one. Also, even with the clear stand, Batgirl can be difficult to stand because of her small feet. Just goes to show, heels are just no good for a nocturnal vigilante...

The Catwoman figure is based on one of the comicbook versions I just didn't like. Sure, the costume is more plausible - it's just a tight, leather-look catsuit, the likes of which you could buy in any fetish clothing emporium - but the 'cap and goggles' look just doesn't look right to me. Better than the Halle Berry movie costume it may be, but I prefer the more traditional 'catsuit, opera gloves and mask' look. It's not like I'm asking for the Michelle Pfeiffer costume...

This one comes with the standard selection of extra hands, but the only pair that have claws are the 'kitty-scratch' hands she uses out of the box. Additionally, she comes with a pair of extra boots (with daggers at the toes) and an extra 'unmasked' head. Both Catwoman and Batgirl are essentially very basic Microlady figures apart from their paintjobs, though Catwoman obviously has the 'zipper' detail on the front of her costume. She also comes with a whip, which really could have used some wire or something to make it more posable. It doesn't quite fit her hands, either...

'Flight Gear' Batman is a very futuristic-looking incarnation of Batman. The colouring of his costume is rather odd... Quite garish, considering this is supposed to be the 'Dark Knight'. One might have expected it to be more like the Batman Beyond costume... or maybe that's too dull.

The metallised parts of this are quite interesting - it's the excellent, shiny, chrome style of thing, with a subtly greenish hue, and it looks pretty damned awesome. I do have one gripe, in that the mask/helmet detail is difficult to make out without some contrasting plain paint, but that's really all I have to complain about.

The wings are very posable in themselves, even closing into a kind of shield, which reminded me of the Gundam Deathscythe Hell. Other than the wings, his only accessory is a sort of Batblade thing, with a mounting clip to stick in his back. Unfortunately, you can't have the mounting clip and the wings attached at the same time... which strikes me as a rather serious design flaw, but there we go.

Overall, this really is just the kind of costume I'd hope to see in a Batman movie. In some ways, it's a reasonable 'movie adaptation' of the Jean Paul Valley 'mecha-Batman' from the Knightfall comics.

Following on from the rather excellent movie, Takara have released a couple of figures in the Batman Begins line. Sadly, so far, the only other one is Ra's Al Ghul. It's not very interesting.

This one, however, is a truly excellent action figure to take full advantage of the truly excellent hype surrounding the film. Forget the official toy line - they're posable, but not Microman posable - and stick one of these figures in your Batmobile. It captures all the important detail from the film's modified 'Nomex Survival Suit' and add's Microman's standard 30 points of articulation. Most importantly, the face has captured Christian Bale's look of grim determination almost perfectly.

My main sticking point with this figure is the cape. They've tried to be very clever, introducing wires to a fabric cape in an attempt to make it a dynamic part of the costume. Sadly, the wires don't quite reach high enough up the cape to make it work, nor do they connect with the solid plastic piece which connects the cape to the body, so it's completely floppy till about halfway down the figure's back. The upshot of this is that the cool pose from the package's card - Batman is crouching, having just landed, and his cape is streaming upward - is almost impossible to recreate with the real figure.

Nevertheless, it's a great figure, still far better than the official line of movie toys that were in the shops before the film hit the big screen (obviously fully aware that many people would already have seen it on pirate DVD), and the accessories are cool. Aside from the ten extra hands, Microman Batman Begins comes with two batarangs (one 'folded' for storage, and can attach to his belt), two flash-bang grenades (one 'closed' for storage, and can attach to his belt), his cellphone and its holster. Might have been nice to have a Bruce Wayne head but, since you never see him unmasked in the film, there's no reason for something like that.

So, you'd think that properties like Batman would be just begging for action-packed, highly-articulated toys (along with just about every other property licensed from movies or comics), but far too many toys are like this one:

In the Knightfall series of comics, Bruce Wayne gets crippled by a new (yet familiar) villain calling himself 'Bane'. As a result, a young man named Jean Paul Valley, also known as 'Azrael' - recently extracted from a bizarre sect, the Order of St Dumas - is given the Bat-costume and is told to take over. Valley is still unstable due to the 'teachings' of the Order, and decends into violent paranoia. When he goes up against Bane, intending to succeed where 'the old Batman' failed, Bane is unimpressed and swats him aside. Valley then goes about designing a new Bat-costume (conveniently in time for the 500th issue).

This new costume is what the toy designers have tried to depict with this toy... unfortunately, it's a fixed-pose deal. All you can do is turn the head, and rotate the arms. Sure, you can also rotate the hips, but they have to stay as they are if you want the silly thing to stand.

It also came with a Bat-Disc Launcher which, for once, was slightly authentic. Since Valley wasn't too handy with the Batarangs, he designed automatic Bat-shuriken launchers, mounted on his clawed gauntlets, and fed by chain from his back. Sadly, this isn't possible in such a small toy, so the launcher is very much oversize.

The worst things about this toy (if you can ignore the whole fixed-pose side of things) is that it's overly muscled, and the head looks almost nothing like Knightsend Batman. Now, granted, the artists couldn't seem to agree on what it looked like, but there was some consistancy in the beginning.

The best thing you can say for this toy is that, aside from the above mentioned points, it's a fairly accurate representation of Jean Paul Valley's vision of Batman... which is why I bought it.