NIGHT HUNTER BATMAN

BATMAN FOREVER (KENNER)

The first post in my humble little blog is a review of the very first (well, technically second, but I'll get to that in a minute) action figure in my not-so-small collection. Yep, this is the one that started it all, and 2400 figures later, he does seem to be a bit of an odd choice.

THE FIGURE ITSELF

Night Hunter Batman is a Batman variant from the tie-in line to 1995's Batman Forever. He's black with some bright yellow accents, the obvious choice for creatures of the night. He once had a cape with a pretty nifty windswept look to it, but I've long since lost it. He also used to have an actual bat symbol on his chest, but if I recall correctly, he lost that fairly shortly after I acquired him. I feel the true highlight (aside from the actual yellow HIGHLIGHTS) of the figure is the pop-up goggle feature. There's a button on his back that, when pushed, extends and rotates the goggles in front of old Bruce's eyes. You know, for detective-stuff. Or going by the name of the figure, hunting stuff.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

Why, of all the action figures out there, was this my very first action figure? I honestly can't say. I know I liked Batman, though I watched the TV series and in fact didn't see Batman Forever until I was almost 20. Maybe I liked the colors. Most likely, it was the goggles. I like goggles, and the whole focus of this little guy was those really neat goggles he had.

Remember when I pointed out above that this was technically my second action figure? Yeah, funny story: this particular Night Hunter Batman is a replacement for the first Night Hunter Batman, that by all accounts I gave to a girl at a restaurant. Yes, even at 3, I was quite the charmer. So, my parents drove me over to Toys R Us (Side-Note: Remember when Toys R Us didn't suck? I miss those days...) and purchased me this lovely replacement (EDIT: I stand corrected. It wasn't Toys R Us, it was Service Merchandise. Man, there's a blast from the past!) . While there, my dad happened to wander down the aisle and find the Iron Man animated series toys, leading him to a) start his own collection up again b)introduce me to the wonders of Marvel Comics and c) even more directly lead me to my current state of being. And it's all because I was trying to impress a girl! Silly girls!

Originally published October 17, 2013

Addendum

January 20, 2017

Hey everyone! Back in October, I made mention of finding a bunch of missing figure accessories and doing a bunch of photo reshoots and how that would mean the occasional addendum here and there in order to make older reviews as complete as possible. Well, I'm finally getting off my butt and actually doing something with it. Every Friday from now until I run out of updates, I'll be linking to an old post, updating the images contained therein, and adding a few new comments about the figure or my review. Without further ado, I present my first Flashback Friday Figure Addendum!

For today's FFFA, I'm going back to my very first review of my very first action figure, Night Hunter Batman!

Wow, that was surprisingly brief, and left out a lot of the details I would now consider "standard." It's so quaint!

It's worth noting that Night Hunter Batman is about 5 inches tall and has 5 points of articulation. Also worth noting are his accessories, missing from the original review. He had a removable cape, which has a nice windswept look to it, as well as this big...shield thing. I don't know. It's shaped like a bat. Sorta. It's a little hard to get him to hold it properly, and I'm not sure what purpose it would serve whist one hunts...at night...but it's an entertaining enough piece. There were also these claw attachments, which hooked onto those two bottom rungs of the shield, but those I truly have lost.

Since writing this review, discussing with my dad about why this was my first Batman, it came up that this was apparently the closest we could come to a standard Batman figure when I went to pick one out. It would appear this guy got to be number one by sheer luck. Good for him!