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Batfink

TATTY-LOOKING CARTOON Batman spoofola which looked like it’d been drawn by a child, documenting evil-thwarting capers of bat thing and sidekick Karate against recurring comedy villain (with requisite mad-German-sounding voice) Hugo A-Go-Go. Deployed stock “freeze frame” cliffhanger trick to allow booming narrator to question viewers “Is this finally the end for our fearless foolproof crimefighters?” every bloody week. Ditto reminder of eponymous creature’s wings being “like a shield of steel”. Characters moved in jerky motion like they couldn’t afford to film it properly. Neat titles though, with BATFINK being spelt out in – gasp – bullets.

5 Comments

5 Comments

  1. Applemask

    August 31, 2009 at 9:54 pm

    Made up of approximately eight distinct pieces of animation.

  2. Lee James Turnock

    May 18, 2012 at 2:15 pm

    Eight? I didn’t think it was as many as that.

  3. Joanne Gray

    November 15, 2017 at 11:44 am

    Your insults cannot harm him. His wings are like a shield of steel, lol!

  4. Droogie

    November 16, 2017 at 9:47 am

    I remember some of the early Batfink cartoons had Karate drawn with racially dubious comical pointy teeth, which eventually disappeared. Maybe it was just one less thing for the cheapskate animators to draw.

  5. Tom Ronson

    March 25, 2022 at 2:27 pm

    There was a raft of cheapjack American animated cartoons from the sixties all over British telly in the eighties, clearly bought by the ton and shunted into the schedules to fill five-minute gaps as and when required. Along with Batfink there was George of the Jungle, Underdog, Super Chicken, and Rocky and Bullwinkle – all of which looked as if they’d been knocked out by the same handful of can’t-be-arsed animators in a single afternoon. Hanna-Barbera were purveyors of richly-textured Disney goodness compared to whoever produced these things (and the less said about Ruby Spears, Filmation and bloody DIC, the better.)

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