16bit.com Figure of the Day Review: Kenner Batman: The Animated Series The Joker Action Figure

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Kenner Batman: The Animated Series The Joker Kenner, 1992

Day #3,078: June 17, 2026

The Joker with "Laughing Gas" Spray Gun! Batman: The Animated Series Action Figure Item No.: Asst. ??? No. ??? Manufacturer: Kenner Includes: Gas mask, backpack with squirting feature Action Feature: Wearable mask, squirting backpack Retail: $5.99 Availability: 1992 Other: The First Animated Joker
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When the cartoon line came out, this was the first incarnation of The Joker that we got - and he's pretty good. The sculpt was reused, repainted, tweaked, and given new gear a few times - but this is probably the best of them. While not an exact match for the cartoon, it's impressively close for a time when adhering slavishly to a style guide or pre-designed models from the licensor was the norm. Kenner frequently took liberties with the design of its toys that today would probably cause much pearl-clutching, but were perfectly normal back then. Maybe you'd tailor the suit a little differently so the articulation not only looked good, but functioned well. Maybe you'd tweak the colors so they "pop" more - or just got as close as you could because you may or may not have had a good color guide yet. But you could be pretty sure the figure would look good, could stand on his own two feet, and would be capable of holding and using his accessories much of the time.

Not all Kenner toys could do this - heck, some were pretty bad at standing and holding their stuff, due to the increasingly huge accessories of this era, but they certainly looked like fun and, adjusted for inflation, were pretty fairly priced. We're seeing more figures in this style thanks to Mezco and Spin Master lately, too, so I can't help but wonder if we will see a reissue of this exact toy in the not-too-distant future. It's good enough, the nostalgia market is mature enough to want to buy it again. Heck, Gentle Giant even designed a jumbo 12-inch version of him when that craze was all the rage.

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With 5 joints, he looked really close to how you'd remember the character from TV. The blue tie, purple suit, pink flower, even the green highlights in the hair were there along with red lips and a smile with massive visible teeth. To think, a decade earlier, Kenner was making figures with a black line for eyebrows, a black dot for eyes, and a couple of lines - sometimes - to set apart the eyes from the eye sockets. It's easy to disregard it, but these figures represented a massive improvement over Kenner's own 1990 Batman: The Dark Knight collection which still used those older, simpler eyes. It felt as if Kenner really appreciated this property, and we were charged accordingly. Most figures were $4.99 in the 1990s, but Batman was one of the first I remember seeing frequently for $5.99.

Translating 2D cartoons to good 3D figures was tough, but it sure seems like Kenner spent a lot of time trying to get it right with this one. The suit has wrinkles that seem to cast line-like shadows, his hair was sculpted to look a lot like he would match most cartoon frames, and he looked as good as or better than many of the other figures of his day.

Because it was the 1990s, most action figures were priced and designed to appeal to kids first. There was a growing adult collector population in 1992, but it was a tiny slice of people buying new stuff and a lot of people mostly interested in whatever their childhood obsessions were. Villains tended to be packed shorter in cases, while you could find all the Batman variants you could want - so if you wanted this figure's squirt gun backpack, molded in rubbery plastic with a clamp-on arm attachment, you might be out of luck. I had a little problem finding bad guys on pegs, but if you kept looking you could find most characters eventually. And if you did, you'd be rewarded with a sturdy peg that fits in his back and a mask that wraps around his head with a tab and a slot that still works well to this day.

Hasbro would recolor this figure and his gear in an 8-pack for Diamond Comics to help get more cartoon villains to market, but they didn't quite match the originals. I'd recommend getting this first release if you're into classic toys. DC Direct and McFarlane Toys would go on to release bigger figures with more articulation and more authentic sculpts. I think Kenner got it right the first time - but I'm biased toward more fun, more efficient figures that look amazing and leave me money to buy even more figures.

--Adam Pawlus

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