We were remerchandising one of the big display cases in my Arlington store (click here for info) and we tripped over something pretty gosh darn cool. So cool in fact that I just had to share it with all of you.
It amazes me how much cool stuff we have. It is really great, but believe it or not there is a down side. I know that may be hard to believe, but you get a little desensitized after a while. Only when someone new walks in and gets all excited that you remember how much work went in to loading every shelf with something or other to tantalize even the most jaded of collectors.
Anyhoo what was it that we discovered? How about these little beauties…
As you can see these are the Batman and Robin: Authentic Walkie Talkies - Bat Coders. Made by Mego in 1977 they are totally awesome. You have got to admit, these toys from the 70s are just fantastic. Simple in the conception, bright colors, bold designs… love it.
I do think it is interesting that the decals seem to be reversed, as you can see the red/green/yellow one has a Batman sticker on it where the black/gray one has the Robin sticker. Seems like an obvious blunder unless they wanted you to believe that they were little TV screens and the pictures represent who you were talking to. Well of course it was… not sure it is all that convincing though.
Each of these units have an extendable antenna which, given the limitations of the technology of the day, is quite long. The picture above only shows it partially extended, when pulled out fully the whole thing is almost 3 feet long.
So any ideas why they went for such an interesting flip up design?
… yes you in the back.
Were they going for some new cutting edge design concept? Nope.
Of course… it was laziness. Manufacturing laziness, but laziness none the less.
Released by Mego a year or two before the Bat Coders were the unforgettable Communicators from the original series of Star Trek.
Ok, so they are not exactly the same, but you get the point. The same round silver microphone/speaker grille, the same layout for the buttons on the side. The shape of the case and the flip up cover are changed, as is the design for the controls on the front panel. The Star Trek originals have push buttons whereas the Batman version has a lever switch that moves from side to side.
The packaging was even the same. The Trek version was also released in an alternate boxed version, this was not the case for the Bat Coders which ended up being produced in much lower numbers. Yes indeed, the Batman version is quite a big bit rarer than its Trek counterpart.
Both versions were able to interact with a base station.
Star Trek with its Command Communications Console.
… and Batman with the waaaaay cooler Command Console. Lucky for us even though the toy was the same once again this time they really stretched themselves on the outer design. I am just so in love with the big Batman logo on top.
For those of you interested in our awesome Bat Coders you can either drop me a line at scifinds@yahoo.com or you can just check out our listings on eBay. Don’t hang around otherwise you will miss out as you don’t see these around too often.
To see the Bat Coders in action check out the original TV commercial.
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Wow, those are absolutely awesome!
The walkie talkies are very sweet. We need to get these Dave so we can be in constant contact with each other.
Maybe we should just put some stickers on our cell phones?