Toy Review: Target Exclusive Holiday Batman

I'm trying to remember what these were going for last year before they were marked down after Christmas - $2.99, I think, but it actually might have been more. The packaging simply advertises this as "Batman," though the color theme and holly over the Bat-symbol are there to make it clear this is Christmas-themed. Somehow.

The character designs on the left are "New 52" style (translated into non-nerd, that means the design revisions are only a few years old). There's a Justice League shield in the upper right, suggesting this was supposed to be part of a series.

Fortunately, I haven't seen any others appear in these colors.

Red and gold are sort of Christmas colors, but only at a stretch. I guess there's a point to be made that a red/green or gold/silver color scheme would have been gaudy and ugly, but so is this. I mean... look at it. His bat-a-rang is pink, for Grodd's sake:

It's actually difficult to capture the color on film. The plastic is slightly translucent, which causes some weird lighting effects. The red parts look similar to hard candy, which I'm sure meant a lot of these wound up getting shoved into kids' mouths.

Lindsay's theory is that these were produced as Chinese New Year figures then marketed with Christmas toys to try and make some extra money, which is as good of an explanation as any I can come up with. That said, I can't find any evidence these were sold in that fashion. The back of the package certainly isn't much help:

While I haven't got a clue why these were produced in this color, I know a bit of the history on the sculpt. Back in 2009, Mattel decided to enter the 2.5 inch stylized market (Hasbro had been making figures like this for several years). These started as tie-ins to Batman: The Brave and the Bold - I reviewed one of those figures at the time - before shifting to the DC Universe proper. The Christmas Batman figure is a reuse of a Batman figure I'm pretty sure came out in 2011. Here's a comparison:

Setting aside the awful new color scheme, the sculpt is still solid, and the articulation is decent for the scale: cut neck and waist and ball joints on the shoulders. He's got issues standing in some stances, but that's not a problem for the Christmas version, because no one would ever want to display him where people could see.

Obviously, I picked this up out of a combination of morbid curiosity and post-holiday clearance prices. If anyone knows why this version exists, I'd love some insight.