15 Weirdest Ever Batman Movie Tie-In Toys

9. Gotham City Thug - The Dark Knight

Batman Water Gun 1
Mattel

When Christopher Nolan came along and re-imagined Batman as a dark and gritty vigilante who you could actually envision going out and cracking skulls, it became difficult to market toys for the movies. They weren't really for kids like the last few '90s Batman films were, yet no one wanted to leave merchandising money on the table.

The darker tone made for wonderful high-end collectibles that could reflect, say, Heath Ledger's brilliantly psychotic turn as the Joker, but it left toy companies at a loss as to how to combine kid friendly with gritty.

What we got were innocuous figures like the Gotham City Thug.

This figure represented one of the many nameless and (literally) faceless henchpeople employed by the Joker. Much like the Bob the Goon figure from 1989's Batman, the Gotham Thug was a placeholder toy, something that kids could load up on for their Batman figures to knock around.

The only interesting thing about this figure is that, like others in the series, it came with a sealed 'Evidence' box that Batman could examine.

Presumably, he was trying to solve the mystery of how this dull figure was greenlit by Mattel.

In this post: 
Batman
 
Posted On: 
Contributor

Child of the Canadian '80s. Fan of Star Wars, Marvel (films), DC (animated films), WWE, classic cartoons. Enjoys debating with his two teenage sons about whether hand-drawn or computer animation is better but will watch it all anyways. Making ongoing efforts to catalogue and understand all WhatCulture football references.