Hot on the heels of TV Guide's recent photo of Michael Shanks in his Hawkman duds for an upcoming deluxe episode of "Smallville," Topless Robot has pointed out one of the hero's far less awesome television appearances in a 1997 Baby Ruth candy bar commercial.

It's pretty horrifying. Hawkman is depicted as too fat to fly well, blind enough to smash into windows, shallow enough to care about his villains' opinions and his wings are essentially sprouting from his butt - until he eats a Baby Ruth anyway!

I actually don't remember being mad about all this when I saw the commercial as a kid. Of course, back then most comic fans were just happy an actual hero was getting some kind of attention - even if it equated to the hugely negative Hollywood Z-lister sex tape variety.

Fortunately Hawkman was the only "real" hero to get picked on, with a Flash stand-in called "The Blur" humiliated (although considerably less so than his bird buddy) in the other "Moments With Great American Heroes" ad campaign. Weirdly, doesn't Clark go by a "Blur" moniker on "Smallville" these days? What a cosmic connection to candy!

Watch it all go down after the jump...

Is it bad that I kind of want a Baby Ruth now?

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