Growing up I was never much of a comic book guy.
This was well before the comic book movie resurgence of the past ten years, and while I knew the Big Three (Superman, Batman, Spiderman) and a spattering of other popular names (the Fantastic Four, Flash), I never spent my hard-earned lawn mowing money as a kid buying comic books.
But because of the recent movie crush (and because of my profession), I’ve found myself becoming much more embroiled in the comic book culture as of late. Add that to my other profession (Dad), and it’s been interesting to see how these comic book characters cross over and present themselves to my almost-three year-old son, Clayton.
What amazes me most by my son’s reaction to superheroes is how it embodies a tried-and-true tenant of any storytelling – simplicity is king. The reason Superman, Batman and Spiderman are the Big Three is because they are based on concepts that easily crossover to the general audience. They each have a hugely identifiable concept at their core. This identifiable concept is even recognizable to kids, as evidenced by my son’s quick understanding of their nature. For Spiderman, it’s that he’s a spider. For Batman, it’s that he’s a bat. (We haven’t quite gotten into Peter Parker’s school life or Bruce Wayne’s tortured past yet.) But what about Superman?
Superman is a tough one. If you ask my son to describe Superman, it’s not that he’s “super”. It’s not that he embodies “Truth, Justice and the American Way” (although from the recent movie MAN OF STEEL, I’m not sure even Superman knows that he embodies that anymore). But to my son, the one concept that crosses over is the one thing that makes Superman king, at least in the wide eyes of a three year-old boy.
Superman can fly.
From the first time my son learned about Superman (coincidentally enough from a commercial for MAN OF STEEL), he was enamored with Supes ability to take to the sky. And it’s not like there aren’t other heroes that have this ability, but there’s something about how Superman does it. One fist in the air, the effortless speed at which he travels. The commercial wasn’t thirty seconds long before we were replaying it again and again just so my kid could see how it was done. Then we were “flying” across the room and up the stairs and into bed at night. While Spiderman and Batman have the cool characteristics of something he understands, Superman has the cool characteristic of something my son can’t even fathom.
It was this fascination of flight that piqued my son’s interest in two toys from Mattel’s recently released MAN OF STEEL line (which were graciously provided by Mattel for this article). The first was a set of MAN OF STEEL Quick Shots. This pack comes with a set of two figurines that works on a basic principle – it’s a slingshot. One of the figurines from the pack is the launcher and is made of rigid plastic with the character’s arms extended (my launcher was General Zod). The other component is a flexible, rubber-soft figurine (in my case, Superman) whose arms latch onto the launcher and with a slight pull-and-release flies through the air with the greatest of ease. My son loved shooting Superman all over the living room, and the figurine was soft enough to not cause any real damage. It was amazing to see how just the simple act of taking a toy and getting it airborne under his own power fulfilled that sensation of flying for my son that makes Superman so unique.
The other toy that helped my son experience a sense of flying during his play was the MAN OF STEEL Flight Speeders Strike Ship Vehicle. It might be a complicated name, but it was a simple and fun product. The toy is a ship that can be piloted by a MAN OF STEEL figurine and shoots out a Superman glider. The glider is a rubber Superman figure that’s attached to a small fan (think of a fan boat down in the swamps). While it was a little difficult to setup for my son on his own, he had fun “pressing the button” that launched the glider up to thirty feet across the backyard. A little fetch and reload later, and we were back shooting the glider again and again.