Mego 5" Bend N' Flex Batman

Okay, here's the thing...when a company produced a figure of a Superhero in the 1970s, it was always with the intent that they were producing a toy for children to play with. There were no expensive, high-end Batman statues or sixth-scale figures like the ones that are being produced for the adult collector's market today. There were just toys...and some of them, well, they just screamed TOY!

This is such a figure. It's Batman, no doubt. However, this is Batman at the most simplified, silly, rudimentary level. This is Mego's Bend n' Flex figure from 1973. Mego produced a full line of characters in their Bend n' Flex line that covered such properties and DC/Marvel Superheroes and even characters from the Planet of the Apes films.


My kids just laughed when I showed this figure to them. My oldest son just shook his head in disgust. To them, it was almost inconceivable that a child would want to play with this toy and consider him to be THE Batman. This is Batman at his silliest and he certainly wouldn't instill much fear in criminals prowling around the alleys of Gotham looking like this. However, our standards were a bit lower as children in the 70s and it was always fun to get a new Superhero toy... no matter how abysmal looking it was.


This figure is 5" tall and is constructed in the standard bendy style... rubber/vinyl over a bendable wire armature. It's fun to look at the quality standards for paint work on these cheap toys from back then. On this figure, it's all over the place and looks as if the painters worked on these figures while under the influence.

All in all, these bendy figures were a good alternative to "real" figures when you didn't have enough money for a more expensive toy...or if your Mom was "brick walling" your pleas for a new GiJoe at the department store, you could most often snag one of these guys without too much trouble.