... The New Adventures of Batman from 1977. When I first saw this, I was four years old and had no idea there had been a live action show ten years earlier upon which this show was loosely based.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=toSqtyuqZ3k[/youtube]

A lot of the animation was reused from my childhood's Batman cartoon a decade earlier:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2oDy6N4zPhQ[/youtube]

Yeah, I just noticed that. Filmation did love to cut corners!

I remember the first time I ever saw this PSA... it must have been around 1980 or so. It floored me because, at that time, I was still unaware of the Adam West tv show. There was an eerie sort of deconstruction feeling to it as well.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szZsKdJYR-A[/youtube]

Wow! Thanks to WGNX Atlanta, I can't even remember life without the live action tv show.

The '77 is so much part of its predecessor, I can't be sure which I saw first! But that's most likely my first Batman cartoon, too..If not? It was seeing him on Super Friends.

Whitman's coloring and activity books...there's one where the Joker owned a hamburger franchise he used for brainwashing people. He's in jail laughing on the cover, maybe even in a straight-jacket, suggesting an insane asylum, actually. Superman fought the Prankster and Toy Man during the Pirates of Penzance as well. Together with the Hulk coloring book, they were central to me learning to read!

I think the first Batman I ever saw must have been re-runs of the Adam West show. My dad bought me the Bat-mobile, the Bat-Boat and a nice cereal bowl and plate (all long lost) and my absolute favourite: A Batman money box.

The money box was plastic, maybe 10 inches high, with a fairly static Batman standing against a brick wall (the slot was in the back) and I think the figure had a Neal Adams feel to it, rather than a Bob Kane look. I must have had it around 1970. I would dearly love to own it again, as it's lost along with most of my childhood possessions, but I've never seen one like it since.

The top cartoon used to frustrate me because it seemed to be airing the same couple of episodes every time I watched it. Plus I really did not like Bat-Mite.


It's interesting how Batman and Robin appear to be clearly against equal pay in that PSA.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't Bat-Mite basically "Batman's Mr. Mxyzpltk (sp?)."

I love the feeling the little kid in all of us shows up here at the Clubhouse for all ages.

Yes, but with the opposite motivation -- Whereas Mr. Mxyzptlk was deliberately antagonistic towards Superman, Bat-Mite idolized Batman but was utterly incompetent.

I have figured out that I actually saw this one a good bit more than the "new" one!

The Superman from this earlier era came on on a syndicated channel, so that, I saw lots for a year or so.
"New Adventures of Batman" got bumped for Sports a lot.
Even with the repeated Filmation images, it's still pretty exciting! One thing that stuck out in my mind as a child was the great changes in theme musics, and the places from which in the pop culture they'd drawn their influences.

Theme music was a critical part of me being hooked on too much TV! LOL

Casey Kasem got to be the host of American Top Forty, Robin the Boy Wonder, and Shaggy from Scooby Doo all in the same life. Pretty sweet.

Yeah, he was a dead ringer for Burt Ward vocally.

I have spent a lot of hours with Casey Kasem (not even counting his Saturday morning drops he recorded for NBC), in all his vocal incarnations. But most of it was before I turned 17. Not forgotten at all!

Plus he was in the American version of "Battle of the Planets".

I had kind of a soft spot for Bat-Mite. I kept wanting to see him actually get something right and make good.

A better way to describe Filmation's animation is that they cut the middle out and ONLY had the corners!

That was the first all-Bat cartoon I saw, but I was first exposed to him in "Superfriends." I saw reruns of the Adam West series as well. The first Batman comic book story I remember was "The Mile-High Tombstone" team-up with Mister Miracle. Still my favorite "Brave & Bold" story ever.

So, Bat-Mite was the role model for most of DC's current writers?