A Return to the Stars
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After a veeeeerrrryyyy long, and mostly unplanned, hiatus, Stuart and I got
together to play more Stargrave in recent days. It was good! It was also a
bit ...
Thursday, September 23, 2010
a long time ago in a tiny plastic galaxy
I've been on a bit of a jag on old Star Wars action figures. Here's the state of play in tiny plastic space dudes as of the 1979 Sear Christmas catalog. Hope you find it as amusing as I do.
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I call "shennanigans"! That's obviously a Power Droid and not a Death Star Droid in the Chewie, Threepio, and Artoo pack.
ReplyDeleteSears need to pay more attention to their catalogue copy. It's that sort of shoddy production that led to their reduction of prominence in the marketplace.
Blue Snaggletooth, baby!
ReplyDeletePlus, it came in a clear plastic bag, so no nonsense about losing value after taking it out of the box.
If you've got $75 to blow, you can pick up the Buck Rogers Space Fortress on ebay: http://cgi.ebay.com/1970s-Star-Fortress-Play-Set-/190335259183?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item2c50dd922f
ReplyDeleteWhy again don't they make toys this cool anymore?
One of the joys of my childhood that my kid won't really get to experience - the arrival of the Christmas catalogs. My and my sister laying on the living room floor, going page by page through the toy section, circling what we wanted, knowing we might get one or two of those things, but not knowing which ones. It was a different world.
ReplyDelete@Jay: What amazes me is how expensive these toys seemed when I was a kid. $11.44 for an X-wing? Outrageous.
ReplyDelete@Matt: Very happy memories.
Side note: I like how the kid with the Falcon set up his figures: looks like our heroes made ol' Ben go outside to deal with the Man while they stayed inside to watch 3PO and Chewie finish their chess game.
Only three micronaut toys??!
ReplyDeleteThe fully poseable Micronauts were far superior to the stiff Star Wars 'action figures'. Besides, the Micronauts Battle Cruiser was remote controlled and shot things. It was a million toys in one! Much better than the plastic shell of the Falcon.
~Nuff Said!
Oh, see for yourself:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ITMYl_oygRU
Somewhere in spacetime my seven year old self is looking at those pages and dreaming of Christmas.
ReplyDeleteI posted this other bit of Sears catalog nostalgia on my blog back in 2009:
http://castledragonscar.blogspot.com/2009/03/enter-magical-world-of-adventure-gaming.html
Ah, to be a 5 year old again! I used to spend hours paging through my mom's Sears catalog picking out the toys I eventually wanted for Christmas and/or my birthday. Those were the days.
ReplyDeleteMe loves the Wish Book.
ReplyDeleteOh yeah! I had the cantina playset, which was a Sears exclusive, and for awhile was the only way you could get Hammerhead, Snaggletooth, and pals (and before they got names, backstories, novel tie-ins, etc.)
ReplyDeleteMicronauts ruled above all else.
ReplyDeleteI got that cantina for Christmas... still have it, and the blue Snaggletooth. I wonder how many hours I've spent looking at those catalogs, making mental wish lists.
ReplyDeleteI got the cantina group from Sears as well. As I sit here, I'm looking up at the green Stormtrooper lizard on my shelf... Micronauts DO rule... I think I have a bag of the mutant ones somewhere in my garage... :) Thanks for the post!
ReplyDeleteMan. It was a stroke of sheer brilliance on Sears' part to include not just one, but MULTIPLE Stormtrooper figures in their catalog scenes. Up until then, for some reason the notion of owning more never occured to me. "But surely Mom and Dad, you must now invest in an army of Stormies to truly complete the Star Wars playtime experience! For a lone white shark-faced soldier hardly comprises an Empire, after all!"
ReplyDelete*crickets, chirping*
The sad thing is, they caved to this reasoning (read 'incessant whining 24-7'). Pretty sure I later persuaded them of the multi-cultural necessity of owning both the Asian and black Bespin Guards, too. Gods, what a @#$%ing brat.
ZOMG!!!! Micronauts FTW!
ReplyDeleteI loved my Micronauts. They combined the best of Lego and spaceships!
I never kept them assembled, I just tossed all the bits into a big box and then built whatever I wanted out of them.
You know, kind of like what I do with RPGs today. :) Some behavior patterns never change. (And, of course, now I'm getting into fantasy modeling w/Hirst Arts molds, and so, it's the same thing. My hobbies have barely changed in 40 years.)
Page 616, please! (I sorely miss Micronauts.)
ReplyDelete