One Extremely Rare DC Collectible Depicts Adam West's Batman Using A... Toilet?

When William Dozier's TV series "Batman" debuted in 1966, it caused an instant sensation. The show's humor was deeply beloved, and many adored its rotating roster of campy supervillains, often played by classy actors in full-on slumming-it mode. Adam West and Burt Ward, as Batman and Robin, gave comedically perfect performances, presenting the well-known DC Comics characters with wholesome faces so scrupulous and moral that they emerged as parodies of themselves. The series also had a naughty edge, and made West, Ward, and other stars of the show into sex symbols. (You may have heard the story of Adam West and Frank Gorshin being ejected from an orgy for arriving in character as Batman and the Riddler, respectively.)

The series was so popular that a feature film spinoff was hastened into production, and Leslie Martinson's "Batman" movie hit theaters only seven months after the show's debut. Merchandise was produced en masse as well, and Batman costumes have been available at Halloween stores ever since. Most notably for this article, Topps produced a series of Batman trading cards in 1966. The cards lived in a matrix in between the original Batman comics and the popular TV series, each one featuring a hand-painted vignette of Batman, Robin, or various villains, enacting a scene of peril. The paintings were provided by artist Norman Saunders, who had previously worked on Topps' popular line of 1962 "Mars Attacks!" trading cards. 

Of this set, the rarest card was titled "Batman on Bat Throne," and pictured the Caped Crusader sitting on a commode with his pants down, idly holding a strip of pink toilet paper. On auction websites, the toilet Batman card fetches prices as high as at least $30,000.

Norman Saunders is a notable figure in the collectibles world. When he first began working for Topps in the 1950s, Saunders was part of the baseball card department, hired specifically to paint over the uniforms of baseball players who had recently been traded to new teams. The Batman cards that Saunders painted were released in three "series," all throughout 1966. The complete set consisted of 236 cards, with each series marked by a different color Batman symbol on the front. The painted vignettes were mostly just out of Saunders' imagination, and only rarely pertained to any extant "Batman" story, either from the comics or the TV series. One such vignette ("Holy Rodents") features Batman and Robin fighting a giant rat. When the movie came out, some of the cards featured mere publicity photos of the "Batman" cast.

The backs of the Batman cards featured small captions, sometimes merely describing the scene or character on the front, but sometimes also providing lines of dialogue. The cards were popular enough to be reprinted multiple times by various international printing agencies, so finding a genuine first-run Batman card is difficult. Some of the reprints can be found on eBay, and they still cost hundreds of dollars. First edition cards (provided they are graded and in good shape) can still go for thousands. 

The "Batman on Bat Throne" card was something Saunders painted as a laugh, and was manufactured as a proof, but that was never meant to leave the Topps office. Only a few were ever made. The card became the stuff of legend, passed around as industry lore for years. It's hard to say who owns the Batman toilet cards to this day, but they seem to be notorious and coveted.

Back in 2022, Jay Lynch, a member of the Topps development team, spoke with Mental Floss about the Garbage Pail Kids cards from the 1980s, and he remembered the "Bat Throne" card legend well:

"Saunders painted Batman cards for Topps in the 1960s. There was an extra space for a card on one of the proof sheets, and so for fun, he painted a secret Batman card with Batman taking a dump in the Bat-toilet. There was even copy on the back: 'In the middle of an adventure, Batman must answer nature's call.' There are about a dozen out there, just for the people who worked on it. Nobody ever told upper management."

Word got out eventually, though, and the card is now highly sought by collectors. It's the most valuable card in the series by a substantial margin. And it's just Batman, uh, releasing some villains, as it were. 

But this sort of thing likely happens all the time. Artists get bored at work and start cussing or drawing dirty pictures. One can easily find audio and video compilations online of cartoon voice actors and puppet performers getting bored on their children's shows and unleashing strings of obscenities. This is anecdotal, but a friend of mine once took a tour of Disney's animation studios, and found a pornographic drawing of certain licensed Disney characters in a trash can. (Sadly, they weren't allowed to keep it.) Norman Saunders, then, was just making a fun  joke at Batman's expense. He likely couldn't have imagined that his dirty painting would become a hot-ticket item at auction.