The Baby Bat Kite

A Classic Kids Delta!

Very few designs beat the Baby Bat Kite for long-term popularity. Modern versions of this little kids Delta have hardly changed from the original. You can still see it promoted here and there as an ideal starter kite for kids! Also, particularly in the U.S., older kite fliers still reminisce about the timeless Baby Bat.

Try this if you're not living in the U.S.

Which brings me to 2 other related kites from the same company... I might as well mention them since they are based on a very similar sail outline. The Super Bat Kite, at 110 cm (50 inches) across, was a little bigger than the Baby Bat, which was (and is!) about 93 cm (42 inches) in span. Also, the Super bat had a somewhat more realistic 'head'. If you could call it that! The other one was the Sky Spy Kite, which had similar 'monster eyes' to the others, except on a plainer-looking white sail. I guess the emphasis was those ghoulish eyes, hence the name. Spying from on high, in the sky, logically enough.

Looking Even Closer At The Baby Bat Kite

Right from the earliest one, the sail was jet black plastic, with a scalloped trailing edge, to give it that 'bat' kind of feel. As already mentioned, 2 'monster eyes' adorned the nose area of the sail. Complete with livid red veins, which, if you looked very carefully, actually spelled out the name of the company which created them. Some people out there weren't aware of this quite subtle detail for many years, even decades!

A generous keel was intended to keep the kite stable. I suspect though, that quite a few would have swerved into the ground at high speed during enthusiastic handling by child fliers! The standard flying line was generally 60 meters (200 feet) of cotton or twine, packaged with the kite.

Someone might care to correct me, but as far as I know all these kites used plastic rods as spars, right back to the early 1970s. Despite all the plastic, the very earliest Baby Bats are now worth a lot more than the materials! Apparently, mint condition examples from 1972 and 1973 have fetched close to US$100 when auctioned.

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Last updated: 22 Sep 2009