Today is a special day in Bat-History! Actor Victor Buono was born on February 3rd, 1938. Most Batman Fans know him as the Villain, KING TUT, on the 1966 BATMAN Television Series. Later, his KING TUT character made an appearance on the recent BATMAN: THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD cartoon, sort of like an homage, it was pretty cool!
Victor Buono made his very 1st Network TV acting appearance playing a bearded Beatnik named "Bongo Benny" on the 77 SUNSET STRIP series. After many other TV appearances, on various programs, he landed the role of "Edwin Flagg" in a major motion picture, "Who Killed Baby Jane?". He starred opposite 2 extremely talented Actresses, Betty Davis and Joan Crawford. For his role in this movie he was nominated for an Oscar! Over the next 8 or so years he appeared in many other movies. One of my favorites was the 1970's "Beneath The Planet of The Apes".
He then went on to doing many different appearances on various TV Shows of the 70's. Sadly, he died very young at the age of only 43 on January 1st, 1982. He was known to be extremely generous and is missed by many the world over.
Long time BAT-BLOG.COM Readers know that we like to celebrate creativity here so when I saw these cool Custom Toys I knew they had to be posted! Actually, our Good Friend BATMOBILLY spotted them at the 1966 BATMAN Message Board ( Link Button always posted on the far right-hand side of this page ). Some guy named "Turkey Bowinkle" made these amazing figures inspired by his Daughter's Fisher-Price Little People Toys. But the cool thing is that all these figures are characters ( both Heroes & Villains! ) from the 1966 BATMAN TV Show! Plus, they're all done extremely well and also capture the personality of every Actor. We got: Batman, Robin The Boy Wonder, Batgirl, The Joker, The Penguin, Riddler, King Tut, Mr. Freeze, and Bookworm!
( Thanks Batmobilly and Great Job Mr. Bowinkle, Sir! )
Shown in the photo up above are some Custom-Made Toys from a friend to the Bat-Blog. Please be sure to click the picture for a larger, more detailed, photo. We asked him about these amazing pieces of ART & he wrote, "They are made out of Super-Flex Sculptey and painted with Acrylic Paint. They each took 3-4 days to make, and they're plastic army man scale, about 2 inches in height. They are not for sale at the moment. I make them for the sheer fun of it". WOW!! These are really beautiful, good job!! I love that you did some of the very obscure TV Villain characters. The figures include: Batman, Robin, The Joker, Riddler ( Wow, That face looks exactly like Frank Gorshin! ), Batgirl, Mr. Freeze, Madhatter, Catwoman, Egghead, The Penguin, King Tut, & Bookworm too! The faces on ALL of these figures are amazing. For example, look at King Tut's face. It looks EXACTLY like the actor!!
Our friend Don allowed us to use these cool photos of some amazing figures he has sculpted. ( Be sure to click on the small picture to see a larger, more detailed photo ). They are modeled after the characters in the 1966 Batman TV Show. He says they will be made into a mold & cast in plastic. These are sort of like those "Little Green Army Men", Marx Playset Figures, or really more like the figures in the Ideal Batman Playset, a classic 60's toy. So far there is Catwoman, Robin, Batman, The Penguin, Egghead, & King Tut. Wow! You never see any Egghead & King Tut figures, ha ha! If you're interested, here's a web site where they plan to sell them. Looks like they will also be painted with color.
http://www.wilsonfigures.com/
