In 1988, DC Comics was due to celebrate the Man
of Steel's 50th Anniversary with a new series,
a new movie, and other scattered odds and ends. Kenner
was making plans in 1985 for this celebration, too. Mainly,
there were planning on painting a bunch of existing items
gold. To start with, the basic superman figure would be
re-released, possibly with new arms and a new "flying"
action feature. The irony here is that Gold Kryptonite
caused Superman to lose his powers. The mock-up
of the card for this figure surfaced a short
time ago (click on the link to see Michael Mensinger's
page about it), but nothing else was know until now. We
can see that in addition to the figure above, they also
were planning a golden collector's case, much like the
golden
C-3PO case long featured in their Star Wars
line. Kenner also planned a gold repaint of the existing
Supermobile, which they made a mock-up of for the presentation.
It's safe to assume that the final products would be
vac-metallized gold, not gold paint. Basically, this is
a chrome-like finish like that on the existing Brainiac
and Cyborg figures. This
process can only be achieved at the factory, so the mock-up
pieces can only use paint to demonstrate the rough concept.
I made a digital mock-up of what the carded figure might
have looked like below, based upon the existing card mock-up
and the concept art above. The card mock-up shows his
shorts as being gold, also, but I went with the red as
on the concept art.
