Will the real Batman please stand up?!
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I remember seeing the poster for “Batman hält die Welt in Atem” - and my friends and I thought, this is like the Superman film, a real adaptation of the comics we loved. And then… well, we were not prepared to see that.
But we were not ready to admit that we were disappointed either. So… wow. That was… The costumes were not quite… But the car was great!
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Everyone thought that. I’m certain you remember that time in the 80s when they had the Saturday night “Wunschfilm” on ZDF (they had a choice of three movies, and there was a phone-in vote for which one they were going to show). One weekend, that Batman movie was up for choice, and to my surprise and amusement (I knew what to expect), it won. But from schoolyard talks the following Monday (it was the time when on Mondays, people still talked about the movie that was on TV on Saturday), I know that it was a major disappontment for most people.
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Oh, yes - der “Wunschfilm”!!! Kind of a great idea, actually.
But I missed the “Batman”-win on that!
Quite frankly, these days, with me being in my 50´s, I absolutely enjoy Adam West as Batman. Probably one has to grow into it to appreciate it fully.
Those were the days 
Wikipedia actually has a listing for this: ZDF-Wunschfilm – Wikipedia
Reading this now, I reckon that they always had a pretty wild mix with their choices.
Batman was in July 1987.
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Fantastic! And those choices, absolutely magnificent! Very German, too…
Editorial in ‘Gong’ (German tv weekly for the uninitiated) made the Batman win to be a major scandal, a vote rigged by thousands of kids who bombarded TED - remember, TED! - with calls for Batman, while the grownups supposedly just called once for their choice.
I remember this because that Saturday evening I was invited to an 18th birthday party - though I strangely don’t remember anything from the actual party…
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Editorial in “Gong”, haha! IIRC, their editor-in-chief was Helmut “Fakten, Fakten, Fakten” Markwort back in the day. No need to say more…
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Oh, yeah - too great.
I actually bought “Gong” for as long as it featured the “Star Trek-The Movie”-Photo-Strip (for lack of a better word). They never had a Bond film in that form, had they?
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Didn’t need to buy. My grandmother had a subscription 
(the subscription still exists, it’s now used by my mother).
Bond films, no, I certainly would remember that. Not certain if they had Star Wars, it’s possible that I have that old Panini sticker album in mind (still have it, it’s complete 
), but they definitely had Battlestar Galactica
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Oh, yes - those I collected, too. And when I missed one week, man, I was so bummed out. Wrote to the publisher even, hoping to get that issue anyway. Completism, it started then…
And the Panini albums for Star Wars and Galactica - I remember when I had five DMs and used them all to buy pictures. Pure heaven.
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There was supposedly a brief retelling of OCTOPUSSY in several parts in either ‘Happy Weekend’ or ‘Praline’ (or some other softcore semiporn weekly, I forget which). I saw it in a bistro I used to frequent that summer and looked out for a film tie-in at the usual bookstores. No luck. I don’t even remember whether there was an author mentioned, I think not.
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And who can forget the Playboy issue with Maryam d‘Abo for TLD? I felt very courageous at the cashier of our local supermarket.
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Fun fact couldn’t buy playboy in Ireland ever
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More catholic than the Italian and the Polish combined
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Buying Playboy used to be the first major black ops assignment of our generation: finding an agent fitting the age bracket - or decking out yourself to fit the bill - recce a target where the desired product was in store, tracking the movement of the guards and singling out one (usually an old lady at the checkout counter) who was likely shortsighted. Finally pooling funds into a reptile fond for dirty ops and pulling off the operation.
After which the product was sighted in a reading room (read playground or park bench) and shared with all involved parties…
Can one even run an intelligence service without people who went through this as kids?
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Hahaha the closest we got was trying to rent the lovers guide from our local video store.
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Ooh, naughty!
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I always looked too young for stunts like that, they always checked my ID card. After I turned 16 (old enough to stay in a pub after 10PM or buy yourself a beer - beer is age 16, hard liquor is age 18 in Germany) I couldn’t expect to proudly show my ID to anyone who asked. It was just that no one asked anymore (except for the things for which you needed to be 18)
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