From the Department of Interesting Collections
I found this amazing album on Flickr of 60s and 70s Batman ephemera, toys, and miscellany. I mean, c'mon that scalloped school binder at the bottom?! It's something I would have flipped out over in first grade. Pretty amazing design.
My favorite here is that Japanese Batmobile model box. The bat-tipped kanji are perfection.
I love this era of Batman because it wasn't so dark but FUN and more importantly weird. I the modern trend to make superheroes grittier and more realistic has its place but the more you sacrifice the weirdness of superheroes for more reality the more ridiculous a man wearing a batsuit becomes. Also...can Robin please come back?
The sweet spot was the animated series in the 90's. I've said it before, but if we had a live action version of that I'd be in Batman heaven.
These images are all a part of the personal collection of Donald Deveau and there's three pages of this stuff you can check out here: LINK
The rest of Deveau's collection is like a middle 20th century pop culture museum. Good stuff!
-Jake