This ad feels less like a concert promotion and more like somebody accidentally invented a pop-culture convention four years before San Diego Comic-Con began.
It’s 1966, Batman is one of the hottest shows on television, and Shea Stadium is advertising Adam West appearing in person as Batman, Frank Gorshin as the Riddler, 26 Batusi Girls, Cousin Brucie, and then, almost casually, throws in the Young Rascals, the Temptations, Jr. Walker & the All Stars, the Chiffons and Skitch Henderson’s Tonight Show Orchestra.
What gets me is the mixture. Today we’re used to conventions combining television stars, characters, music, celebrity appearances and spectacle under one roof. In 1966, that idea must have seemed completely bizarre — yet here it is at Shea Stadium.
It wasn’t technically a “Comic-Con,” and comic-book fan conventions were already beginning to appear in the 1960s, but this sure looks like an early glimpse of the kind of TV, comics, music and celebrity mash-up that would become commonplace decades later.
And I have to know: if you were a kid in 1966, would Adam West and Frank Gorshin have been enough to get you to Shea Stadium — or were you going for the 26 Batusi Girls?