Surveying the Gen X landscape and the origins of geek
I don’t care how cool that chair is, kid—put a shirt on. And take those sunglasses off inside the house!
The console is a Magnavox Odyssey². I can’t make out the LP behind the second TV.
UPDATE (2/5/15): Lefty Limbo has identified the LP as Merle Haggard’s Someday We’ll Look Back (1971). The title is eloquently relevant, is it not? Nice work, Lefty-Deckard.
(Image via eBay)
Throat, meet lump (or vice versa). 35 years ago this May. Watch the Burger King commercial here.
(Photo via Jimmy Tyler/Flickr)
More exquisite scans from Mikey Walters. Don’t miss the enlargeable finished (and signed!) product beneath each of the front covers. There were seven sets total for The Empire Strikes Back. We’re missing Dagobah Bog Planet and Ice Planet Hoth.
The first Presto Magix sets appeared in 1978, but no “rub-down transfers” were released in the U.S. with a Star Wars theme. UK company Letraset innovated the dry transfer technique beginning in about 1961, according to Wikipedia, developing children’s Instant Pictures in 1964 and Action Transfers in 1969. There were several Star Wars Letraset “scenes” released in early 1978. The original three can be seen at the brilliant old school Star Wars blog Episode Nothing.
The happy kid has diverse tastes, and a sleeping bag (Cabbage Patch Kids for summer, Return of the Jedi for winter?) for every occasion. I think she’s wearing a Care Bears sweater.
Between ROTJ and the Garfield trash can is the Centipede (1983) board game. In a fascinating, sometimes clever, yet ultimately desperate attempt to compete with the new gaming paradigm, Milton Bradley released a number of board games based on popular (and not so popular) video games well into the ’90s, including Berserk and Zaxxon.
I don’t know what the C.A.R.P. box is. There’s a bird feeder kit in the trash can.
UPDATE: Thank you, Bradley Conrad, who figured out that C.A.R.P. is a Biotron clone (Cosmic Android Robot Probe) from the Inter-Changeables line. The Inter-Changeables were post-Mego and not technically Micronauts, although many of the molds are identical. Innerspace Online has the line being released around 1985, but I’m almost positive the photo above is from 1983. (Box images below are via Hake’s.) The title of this post has been updated to reflect Bradley’s great find.
(First image via eBay)
That’s Darth Vader’s Star Destroyer Playset under the Land of the Jawas Playset. Among the figures you can see the Hoth Stormtrooper, my third favorite ESB figure after the AT-AT Driver and Hoth Han. Hoth Luke is also there.
Two items I’d forgotten about are Star Snoopy Colorforms (1979) and Tomy’s Mr. Mouth (1976).
There were a couple of different versions of Mr. Mouth, one featuring a green frog as the centerpiece, the other featuring a dopey yellow guy. The dopey yellow guy is the one I remember, but I could only find a commercial for the frog version. The yellow figure was later repurposed as a Pac-Man bank, seen below via the 1982 Tomy catalog. I got Pocket Pac-Man as a stocking stuffer in ’81 or ’82, but I never did get Mr. Mouth.
I also had the Fisher-Price Play Family Fun Jet, seen at the far left of the original photo.
(Christmas morning photo via the Rebel Scum forums)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=emh6OR8fBPU
The Kenner Star Wars/The Empire Strikes Back stuff starts at 2:43. Brother and sister demo the Wipeout set at 4:04.
The mother of all Christmas morning Star Wars videos is here.
Daniel Baker, you are one lucky kid. I arranged the shots in what I think is consecutive order. First, we see the massive AT-AT box unwrapped. Second, dad works diligently to assemble AT-AT while kids opens the Big Trak. Third, kid puts finishing touches on the Walker as assorted Star Wars figures look on. Fourth, the Big Trak (the separately sold Transporter is in the foreground) goes for a pre-programmed spin. Fifth, kid sits on mom’s lap, admiring his toy domain, exhausted by happiness.
More Christmas morning AT-ATs here.
What the holy hell? Luke and Leia are identifiable, if absurd, but everything else is madness. Is that Manhattan blowing up? Is that a red stretch limousine? And why the holy hell are flying saucers sucking humanoids off of the planet with a tractor beam? I want to see this movie.
I don’t see Star Wars written anywhere on the pattern, so it has to be a knock-off. And it’s a brilliant one.
(Images via eBay)
There are two kinds of nerds in this world: nerds who would kill for one of these shirts, and nerds who would… Wait, I stand corrected. There’s only one kind of nerd in this world.
I don’t have words to express my covetousness of the Lando transfer. It stands among the greatest designs ever devised for a t-shirt.
(Images via eBay)
2 Warps to Neptune 