The Kenner Batman movie lines (heck, and Toy Biz' too) were weird. Lots of delays, figures which didn't look like the movie, and other weirdness made me happy Ertl had a license to make figures like this Penguin Commando die-cast metal figure which, if memory serves, came out way before Kenner's bizarre and colorful figures. While not exactly like the movie, the metal figure was closer than Kenner's offerings and the heavy metal figure's paint job does look much nicer now that we're a whopping 20 years removed from its release.
The figure has no action features and is just under 2-inches tall. It's sort of like Kenner's Action Masters line, but... not. It aspired to be a cheap collectible for kids, and it was. I wanted a toy penguin, and by gum I got one.
The figure has a nice heft to it and isn't likely to topple over. I've had this one since it came out and as you can see, it held up quite nicely. Today a packaged sample is worth about five bucks, which I would say is a perfectly fair price for an item this bizarre. I've always been a fan of the "armored animal" thing so I jumped on whatever Penguin Commando toys I could get, including Kenner's, which we'll get to later. While by no means an essential release in the Batman toy canon, I just wanted to show the little guy. He'd been sitting in my toy photo studio for a while and helped prop up some figures which wouldn't stand right, so here he is! He's small, cute, and cheap. Just like me in 1992.
If you really drill down in Batman movie toys from this era, it's interesting how Kenner swooped in and cheaped out. If you wanted a Danny DeVito Penguin, you had to get an Applause! PVC, as Kenner just rehashed its 1980s Super Powers mold. Mold reuse in this era was pretty amazing but, again, we'll get to those later.
--Adam Pawlus
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