One of the advantages of doing a weekly blog is that you can
cover topics that may not be directly related to your main topic. This week’s
post is a case in point. A couple of posts ago I commented on how Disney
inspired the U.S. government’s space program. Today, I’m going to talk about
how that space program inspired everyone else.
One of the coolest things about being a “child of the 60’s”
is the toys. Sure, we didn’t have video games and such, but it didn’t matter.
We had real toys that did real things. Our toys were massive and flashy and, in
the case of many of them, futuristic!
The baby boom of the late 50’s met with the space race of
the 60’s to give us such great lines as Major Matt Mason, Billy Blastoff, and
Mighty Zeroids. Of course this was also the golden age of model rocketry, with
many timeless designs being released every year. On TV, Star Trek was blasting
through “the final frontier.” It truly
was a great time to be a red blooded American space-lovin’ kid!
One of my favorite toys from the time was the GI Joe space
capsule. It was huge and hefty, and after daring space exploits could actually
survive a splashdown! As for what it actually did, well, not a lot. It held a
12 inch Joe (decked out in his Jiffy Pop inspired foil space suit). It floated.
And, that’s about it. However, I can assure you that mine travelled millions of
miles through my imagination. The fact that it was a pretty good approximation
of a real Mercury capsule helped keep the fantasy alive.
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| Me and my cousin, Tamra, on Christmas, 1967 |
However, years later, we were blessed with something called
Ebay. On Ebay, you can find anything (and seller blue_art_dog sells great
stuff…shameless plug) Anyway, I was able to get a replacement capsule that was
in pretty good shape, for a pretty good price! It now sits proudly in my
display case. And yes, I do play with it occasionally…
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| The Mighty GI Joe Space Capsule |
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| The business end |
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| The real business end |
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| The finest in space age plastic seating and restraints |
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| The controls that could take Joe to anywhere in the universe! |
Very cool Stuart. I know you just got it and all, but I am thinking that 3 E30's would make for a very cool flight...:)
ReplyDeleteWell, I've had it for a while, but I can't get the image of a certain star destroyer out of my mind!
ReplyDeleteCute kid!!!
ReplyDeleteCute kid!!!
ReplyDeleteGive me a second to wipe this up. I'm afraid the drool will short out the keyboard.
ReplyDeleteNow I gotta get the guy and the suit!
ReplyDeleteMy best friend growing up had the whole set, a hand-me-down from his older brother who is probably close to your age (I was -1 when you got this). We only played with it once, though - he was afraid of it getting messed up. And then it disappeared somewhere along the way.
ReplyDeleteIn 5th & 6th grade, I spent a lot of Saturday mornings taking astronomy classes at the McDonnell Planetarium (which has since merged with the St Louis Museum of Science and Natural History to form the St Louis Science Center). While I loved the classes, my favorite things were actually all of the cool space program stuff in the good-sized, glassed-in gallery surrounding the planetarium. They had Ham's Mercury-Redstone 2 capsule, a Gemini capsule trainer, and a full-size Apollo capsule mock-up. There was also this really cool moving diorama/audio-visual presentation about the first Lunar base, which the soundtrack claimed had started construction in the late 1970s ("...something that 20th Century man dreamed...and did!"), but it's best not to dwell to much on that or we'll both get sad...
The whole reason for this long missive is that my absolute favorite things in the whole darned museum were these detailed, cutaway scale models of the Mercury and Gemini capsules. They were probably 1:6 scale, with detailed model astronauts inside. I'm guessing that McDonnell - who built the 1:1 scale models of the capsules that NASA launched as manned PMCs - used them at trade shows and retired them to the museum at the end of their respective programs.
There were two examples of the Mercury capsule - one in the gallery upstairs and one at the bottom of the stairs to the basement classrooms with slight damage to it (I think the astronaut was missing an arm or a hand or something). I would spend long periods of time just staring at them and wishing I could take one home. I mean, they didn't really need two model Mercury capsules, right?
No, they didn't. And I would think no jury would have ever convicted you if you had "borrowed" it for a while. Then again, love of space collectibles just might be damaging my moral compass....Just saying...
DeleteNo, they didn't. And I would think no jury would have ever convicted you if you had "borrowed" it for a while. Then again, love of space collectibles just might be damaging my moral compass....Just saying...
Delete