"Spunky" Spencer was an actor who played the popular character of "Cousin Spunky" in Love that Baby.
History[]
To battle plummeting ratings, Cousin Spunky was added to the cast of Love that Baby in the last season and quickly replaced Dahl as the favorite character on the show. Even people who hated the show like Dick Grayson liked him. Furious about being upstaged, Mary Dahl left the show. Later, when Dahl went after her old co-stars, she left Spunky for last. However, by this time, Dick had caught wind of this. He took advantage of the fact the real Spencer was vacationing in order to impersonate him and allow himself to be kidnapped, revealing himself as Robin when he tried to rescue the hostages.
Background information[]
Cousin Spunky is based on Cousin Oliver (played by Robbie Rist, who appeared as another co-star in the episode) from The Brady Bunch. Oliver was introduced in the last season of the show because all the Brady children had grown over twelve, and the networks still wanted to appeal to the younger demographics. Cousin Oliver proved so unpopular that he killed the show, and similar situations with other television shows are known as the "Cousin Oliver Syndrome".