Batmania: 1989

Bat-Mania.

Well there was Batman Cereal, and.......alot of stuff. Promotion uding Diet Coke, much of toys......I'll get back to you.

 

The "Way till they get a load of me" trailer really created a huge buzz. That's the first "teaser" I ever remember seeing. After that it was a wrap they had everything you could think of. Everywhere you went someone had a T-Shirt with the oval on it. They basically changed the look of Capn' Crunch & sold it as BATMAN cereal. They had a BATMAN arcade game which was awesome but the pinball game was even better. The game later came out for the NES but wasn't as good cause it was impossible to make it arcade perfect in those days.

There were these TOPPS trading cards which were cool. I had the entire BATMAN & Dick Tracy set. They brought the poorest excuse for "chewing gum" in each pack. The toys were cool Batman's belt could be used as a harness. But The Joker action figure to me was the ****. You could put water in it & then squeeze it out with an attachment it had so it could simulate the acid flower. The toys sound corny but at that time those features were a big deal since action figures didn't really come with many features. Hell I spent many hours playing with the awesome bat cave playset & the batmobile. Batmania was pretty intense, it was the biggest movie of that summer everywhere you couldn't really escape it.

Ah those were the days, it's amazing how much times have changed though. I don't even think traditional trading cards even exist anymore. That's something that just wouldn't appeal to this generation since it'll be viewed as a "simple" hobby.

 

You couldn't walk down a city street without seeing the bat logo somewhere. That's what it was like.

 

I was 9, too young to go watch it so I got the sticker album, It ruled!

 

Man you missed the eighties, pisser!

 

i was 10 and was loving every minute of seeing batman everywhere! toys, cereal,plush dolls, the cave(which i still have)books,again everything!

 

it was like when ghostbusters came out, logos everywhere man!!

 

I was 15 and yeah, it was everywhere back then for the 1st one.

I was in Military School and they took us all to go see it, it was that big of a deal that "the Batman movie finally came out".

 

more. The only thing I can compare it to was how popular American flags were after 9/11. it was massive.

 

Well I lived in Ecuador at the time but I do remember seeing the trailer with Ghostbusters 2, the Prince video was playing months before, the theatre in downtown had this huge billboard of Keaton as Batman and street vendors were selling all kinds of bootleg Batman T-shirts.

It was a happy time being a kid in the 80's, not even the hype on Spider-Man could campare to it.

 

It was huge - everybody was wearing batlogo T-shirts and everywhere you looked, there was something Batman. It was bigger than either Spider-man film.......

 

yep, it was pretty crazy.

 

Indeed it was crazy. There wasn't anywhere where Batman couldn't be seen. It was in comics, newspapers, magazines (remember a cool in depth article on the character and they even got all the actors that portrayed Batman in pictures), there were costumes, cartoon tapes, toys, backpacks, you name it.
He was the most popular thing on the face of the earth. Even with Returns and Forever was the same thing.

 

You can't understand the hype without referencing the casting controversy. Warner Brothers had had Batman in development for so long - like Spider-man long - and this was to be their flagship franchise after the implosion of Superman. Finally, we had an announcement of the movie going ahead with the wrong director - Tim Burton, who at that time was known only for "Pee-Wee's Big Adventure" and "Beetlejuice" - and the wrong star - "pudgy, half-balding, runt" (to paraphrase some dearly departed members of the Hype) Michael Keaton who was known as a lightweight comedic actor. Now remember kids this was before the internet was in wide use so we had to get our news from the mainstream media, fanzines, or in my case, the guy who ran my local comic book store. When we wanted to talk about the movie we had to actually get together over coffee - normal coffee, not a Grande half-fat mocha latte - or a beer -again from a mainstream brewerey like Labatt's, the most exotic beer we had available was Foster's from Australia, "Gee, Uncle Irony, how did you ever survive?" or we could call each other on an actual telephone that was conected to the wall with a wire and may even had had dials rather than buttons. I'll give you a minute to get that horrible image out of your mind.

Anyways, a couple of things started to happen. Keaton appeared in a movie called the "Dream Team" that showed a dramatic, psychotic edge. Burton started to talk about how he wanted to explore the psychological fracture of the character and how he wanted to show Gotham as a gloomy, Gothic character in the movie. Jack Nicholson was cast as the Joker. Then, WB released a trailer featuring the fight scene between Batman and the Joker's goons and the momentum started to swing.

Suddenly everything was Bat related. People started to get excited about the movie. Our fears that the casting of Keaton had meant a return to the 60"s camp version of Batman receded as we saw the trailer and heard Burton and Keaton discuss the movie seriously.

Then the movie came out. And whether you ended up liking it or not, whether you felt that Keaton was miscast or not, whether you thought that it concentrated too much on the Joker at the expense of Bruce Wayne, you had to admit that they had treated the material with respect, seriously and in with a depth that was usually missing when you discussed a "comic book movie". Comic books and comic book movies would never be the same.
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Batman was more popular due to more merchandising and advertising. As has been said numerous times, Batman was everywhere--on cereal, on billboards, on TV, on clothes, etc. It wasn't that way with Spider-man.

 

Oh yeah, that was crazy for a while.

 

It was awsome. I remember it as a kid. I got like a billion Batman toys, the costume, and all. Everywhere you went everyone was talking about Batman. 10000x more hype then Batman Begins had even more then the Spidey films.

and You shoulda been in New York at the time of Batman '89! Freggin amazing, I even remember seeing a huge replica of the '89 mobile in New York.

 

Its to bad you dont see the same for movies like that these days..

That kind of stuff sounds so cool imo

The only thing that i have come close to is the first spidey films was hugeley anticipated

For some reaosn i dont remember spidey 2 getting as much attention but maybe thats me

It would be soo cool if the "Bat mania" came back for the sequel.....oh man would it be awsome

It's just these days movies are not as big( as you can tell from this summer) i guess people are getting tired of them or something

 

I think the last truely hyped movie after Batman '89 was SW:The Phantom Menace.

 

I was 2 1/2 and I vaguely remeber going to see the movie. I do remember being scared of the Joker when he first appears and shoots the mob boss, and my mom and dad taking me out of the theatre. Funny thing is I had the dress up set with the belt, and the plastic half cowl, velcrow cape, and I even remeber the little plastic bat-arang. I used to throw it at my brother. My parents could never get me to take off my bat gear lol. Good memorys........... If anyone could post a pic of that old dress up gear thatd be cool and give me some fuzzy memorys. That was my favorite toy besides my ghostbuster proton pack and the trap with the little foot pedal that opened it up lol.

 

i was 15 it was huge back then their was more hype about keaton playing batman than about the movie itself coming out but i guess he shocked everyone

 

That Batman cereal sucked. It was bland. I remember the Coke commercial with Alfred, it's on the VHS. Bat stuff was just everywhere. I use to collect Batman buttons they carried at my local Walgreens.