The Vintage Vibe

While I was laying in bed last week with a messed up back, it gave me a good chunk of time to think about many subjects. Of course toys pushed to the forefront of my mind, as always. As I churned through plans for the next set of steel tools coming up, I was also busy reading a very special book.

Back in July while I was at SDCC I got to meet a bunch of great guys, one of which was Rain Infinity, a customer from up in Canada who had made the trip down for the show. He surprised me by giving me a great book on sci-fi toys from the 60's called, appropriately enough, Space Toys Of The 60's by James H. Gillam. I have literally looked at it hundreds of times since receiving it. I highly recommend that you guys try to track it down, as it chronicles the great trinity of 60's space themed toys, which are: Major Matt Mason by Mattel, Zeroids by Ideal and The Outer Space Men by Colorforms. I believe that these three toy lines lead directly to another three of the most unique toy lines of the 80's. It would seem that many of the people who went on to design action figures in the 80's played with one or more of the toys from the great trinity of the 60's, creating lines that almost seemed like sequels to the three classics. Here are the comparisons:

Major Matt Mason = Starcom (originally produced by Coleco then ironically Mattel ended up with it)
Zeroids = Roboforce (Ideal produced both lines)
The Outer Space Men = Power Lords (Revell produced)

If you really analyze the similarities of the different series from above, it is pretty cool to see that some very real homages were happening. In paying respect to the toys that continue to inspire all of us, I built a Glyos version of a Robby the Robot type clunker. I guess a little of that Space DNA goes a long way.