Sweet fancy Moses.
Nearly
a decade before the "babyizing" of licensing
characters became a huge trend, Kenner was all prepared
to lead the way with these pint sized versions of your
favorite heroes. All I can say is thank God it never came
to pass. Kenner had tried this approach once
before with Star Wars, but that didn't take,
either. Kenner can't take all the blame, though, as these
designs came straight out of the 1982
DC style guide.
Although...it almost did. The art below was from the
final presentation for products to be made in 1987/1988.
Revamped as plush dolls with rotocast heads, the "Superman
Jr." concept got as far as a prototype. Still, it
just wasn't mean to be.
Chris "Earth 2 Robin" Franklin tells us more
about the strange history of the "Super Jr.s":
"There was ONE Super Jrs. comic released in the US.
It was issue #58 of DC's "Best of Blue Ribbon Digest Series".
Apparently, there were other adventures (including this
one) published overseas in the late 70s, early 80s. There
was quite a bit of Super Jrs. merchandise, including the
aforementioned squeak toys, curtains, sheets, wallpaper,
clothes, pillows, etc. My wife and I decorated
our son's nursery in all of this, having
found it mostly on ebay a few years back. The baby dolls
[that were made earlier] from Heroes World are similar,
but not really from the same series.
