Surveying the Gen X landscape and the origins of geek
Early in 1984 a group of Wisconsin nerds dressed up in homemade ring mail took several fantasy flyers to the steam tunnels and played “Dungeon Frolf” for two consecutive days and nights. One of the nerds never came back, and it’s Larry Elmore’s fault!
Owl and Weasel (February 1975 to April 1977) was the first Games Workshop newsletter, eventually becoming White Dwarf in 1977. The snippet above, from Owl and Weasel #5 (June, 1975), is probably the first time GW co-founder Steve Jackson mentions D&D in print. He hasn’t even played the game yet, but “watched one in progress the other week at the City University Games Club…”
The very next issue, Owl and Weasel #6 (July, 1975), is a “Special Issue” dedicated to Dungeons & Dragons, described as “a sort of free-form fantasy game.” Jackson delves into the game mechanics as he outlines his party’s adventure, and touches on the novelties of the game: “It is non-competitive in that each player is simply trying to further the development of his own character…”; “The beauty of the game is that any decisions made by any of the players can be incorporated…”
The last page advertises TSR products that GW hasn’t even received yet. The board game Dungeon! hasn’t been released, and it costs more than the D&D set. $10.00 in 1974/1975 is the equivalent of $50.00 today—a lot of money, as Jackson notes in the article. And that’s not including shipping and handling. After meeting Jackson and Ian Livingstone at Gen Con IX (1976), Gary Gygax granted Games Workshop exclusive rights to distribute D&D products in the UK. (Jackson talks about the early days of GW at a 2013 interview at The Register.)
We have Timothy Brannan at The Other Side to thank for the scans, and he has lots more selections from Owl and Weasel to peruse. Brannan is a RPG writer who specializes in the horror genre. Check out his books here.
The ad is from The Evening News, December 8, 1982. The package and shirt graphic are below, courtesy of Yo Joe!
What you see is a series of flash cards designed to explain—to youngsters, I hope—the ordering process at America’s (now the planet’s) favorite fast food joint. Aside from the dark wood decor, I found the steps pretty interesting. First, the employee takes the customer’s order—on a notepad! How quaint. Then the employee gets the customer’s food and drink ready, placing all of it on the tray. Only then does the employee ring up the customer and take her money.
(Images via Jason Liebig/Flickr. Click through to enlarge.)
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)
Pop’s Toy Store, November 24, 1982. (Photo: Walter McCardell/Baltimore Sun)
Serious. Business.
On the top shelf you can see a few Microvision games: Bowling, Baseball, Alien Raiders, Phaser Strike, and Connect Four.
(Photo via Tribune Photo Archives)
Select pages only. I didn’t remember how unwaveringly creepy the Cabbage Patch Kids were/are until the catalog jogged my memory. The “anatomy” lesson seals the deal.
The Coleco tabletop arcade games were at the top of every kid’s holy grail list. Other handhelds were good, even great, but these looked like actual cabinets and you could take them anywhere, especially to school where the other kids (and some adults) followed you around like so many hungry puppy dogs. It didn’t really matter that the screen was so tiny—the idea that you had a real arcade at your fingertips melted the logic circuits. We had some sort of fundraising drive at my elementary school in ’82, and the grand prize was either the Coleco Galaxian or Pac-Man. The number of chocolate bars one had to sell to get the thing was impossibly large, but I have very tangible memories of knocking on doors around the neighborhood all day long with dreams of that little machine dancing in my head. It was not to be, but I did get my beloved Atari 800 shortly thereafter.
The E.T. Rider? No, Coleco. No.
The G.I. Joe Arctic Recon Patrol? Yes. Very much yes.
The actual figure on the kite is not as cool as the illustration on front (which is slightly Warduke-esque), but it’s clearly an attempt to cash in on D&D without going in for the license. This happened quite a bit starting in 1982.
(Images via eBay)
2 Warps to Neptune 