Toy Shop
Revell's Space Station Kit
I had one of these during my model building stage (late 50's early 60's). It was actually a great idea with the only drawback being that it took up a lot of display space. Needing to scale back on my possessions when preparing to move in 1966 I burned it in our backyard - pretending it was a fire in deep space spreading from compartment to compartment of the huge space station. Unassembled and complete with the box, these are currently bringing about $1000. Who knew?
Marx Marine Beach-head Playset Series 2000
Probably my most memorable toy. One birthday my mother drove me to a toy store in Mansfield, in a strip mall most likely out on Park Avenue West. It was a relatively large store devoted entirely to toys and hobby materials, the first one I had ever seen. From a large selection of playsets displayed high on the walls and circling most of the inside of the store, which I viewed with wide-eyed wonder, I selected this one for my big present that year. I spent hours playing with it. Although an almost effortless toy shopping outing for my mother, my parents never did anything this spontaneous again. As I recall they solicited my input each Christmas and birthday and more often than not came through with something(s) at the top of my wish list.
The Marx Modern Service Center
This and a Marx farm set were my first playsets, probably age five because my dim memories are of playing with them at our old house on Edgehill Avenue. I have examined a lot of the gas station sets over the years and believe that this is the one that I had. There was an elevator to the rooftop parking deck and the gas pump island looks especially familiar.
1963 REMCO MIGHTY MATILDA Giant Motorized Aircraft Carrier
There was a Kroger store a couple blocks from our house in Ashland and each year just after Thanksgiving they put up a display of boys and girls toys, back to back along an entire aisle. The toys were on shelves high enough that you could see them but not touch them, below them were frozen or refrigerated foods compartments so they toys were not that high but were out of reach. They were all expensive toys like the Mighty Mitilda, probably a lot of Remco stuff. Back then toy stores were few and most Christmas toys were bought by catalog. These displays gave parents in-person access to these toys, riveted kids to the frozen food aisles so parents could grocery shop without distraction, and gave kids source material for their Christmas lists.
The commercials featured a catchy song:
"Mighty Matilda, Mighty Matilda, Mighty Matilda the pride of the fleet."
1959 Nu-Card Western
Baby Boomers caught the tail end of the exhibit card era. The Nu-Card Western set was sold in 3-card cello packs rather than single card coin-operated exhibit card machines. Many were television stars from shows during the 1958-59 season.
Marx Blue and Gray Playset
I think that this was the set that I had, several different size versions were issued in the early 1960's. It was quite a bonanza for me the Christmas morning I first opened this box.
Often playset assessories got mixed in with each other, sometimes from entirely different historical periods, but these all appear original to to the Blue and Gray playset. Marx used several of these, the ruined house and the exploding earthwork, in several of their playsets (both the civil war and WWII).
Venus Paradise Coloring Pencil Set
Whirly Bird Play Catch Game
Back when ball players didn't make big bucks they endorsed silly stuff like the Whirly Bird Play Catch Game. As endorsements go this had at least some relationship to pitching a baseball, and these were a fun backyard toy. Spahn could have done worse - and probably did.
Broken Arrow Hartland Statues
In addition to very popular sports figures, Hartland did a series of figures based on television westerns. This box is for one of a horse and rider based based on the Jeffords character.
Playing off the 1950 Jimmy Stewart movie of the same name was this television show which ran for 72 episodes starting in September 1956 and ending in June 1958. These were my first and second grade years and I watched it avidly although until I looked it up I could have only approximated the time and the number of episodes.
Indian Agent Tom Jeffords makes friends with Chief Cochise, becoming a blood brother of the Apache. Together they fight white schemers and renegade Indians.
Michael Ansara played Cochise and John Lupton played Tom Jeffords. Both would have long careers in movies and televisions.
Much disposable income and countless hours went into plastic model kits like this one. Apparently the building of things is an innate human drive as these completely engaged my mind and their completion and display gave me considerable satisfaction. And during those years that my mind was in a really bad place the focused solitary concentration required for these projects allowed the healthy part of my mind to assert control and temporarily go somewhere better, and by that preserve what was still good inside me.
Tom Booker: Sixteen, strong kid, good kid. He and I were really, really good friends. One day he went swimming and dove headfirst into the lake... and right into a rock. And it snapped his neck, paralyzed him. And after the accident I'd look in on him from time to time. But he wasn't there. It was like his mind, his spirit, whatever you want to call it, just disappeared. The only thing left was just anger. Just sort of as if the... the boy I once knew just went somewhere else.
Grace: I know where he goes.
Tom Booker: I know you do. Don't you disappear. You do whatever you have to do to hold on.
The above page is from 1952, slightly ahead of my time although we had something very similar to the basketball game.
Cadaco-Ellis made a variation of that Electric Football Game for decades, it was a huge disappointment and quickly found a place in the closets of many a baby boomer. It used a vibrating sheet metal field to move the players from a formation but it was better as a way to demonstrate of the concept of entropy than as an exciting toy for children. I'm sorry that I did not think to use it for that purpose in a science fair project.
I am surprised that none of these were handed down by older brothers in our neighborhood, but we cobbled together a homemade version of the idea and would use baseball cards for the players and dice rolls for each pitch.
A toy catalog page from 1955, the Jaymar's game Disneyland Electric Tours with Davy Crockett is on the lower left.
This is a game that I would have loved to have gotten for Christmas in 1955 as a five-year old. Today it is the best means of time travel that I know of, just imagining how I would feel mastering this game puts me right back in my kindergarten mindset. It would have given me a head start on reading.
There were a number of games that utilized this concept, a board with conductive metallic layer underneath the graphics which would activate battery powered lights when a circuit was completed by the pointer.
Also by Jacmar and first appearing in 1953 is the Robot Sam - The Answer Man game. It is a quiz game where you touch the metal hole of a question with the metal hole of what you believe is the answer. If correct a circuit is completed and the light flashes. I considered this electric circuit concept absolutely fascinating back in grade school.
This 1959 Daisy Cheyenne Set did not include a BB gun but the rifle tried its best to simulate firing one. I don't recall anyone in our neighborhood having either of these sets although they obviously were targeted (pun intended) at our market segment. "Cheyenne" was a little too sophisticated a western to have much branding success with eight and nine year-old boys. If anything girls watched it more than boys because the producers used any excuse to have Clint Walker take off his shirt. Even the Air Force soon tired of the MP designation and changed it to SP.
Another gimmick gun from a television series, in this case "Wanted Dead or Alive". I suspect that those pitching the show to the network were quick to point out the merchandising potential of this gun which was probably the silliest and most contrived nonsense to be inflicted on the genre.
As far as I know the anti-aircraft gun (item "E" above) did not make an appearance in Ashland. Calling it a set by including a helmet seems a bit of a stretch. The description says that it fired "iridescent tracer pellets", meaning that kids would use it after dark and then parents would wonder why their son kept whining about not being able to find the pellets in the lawn the next morning. Like a lot of these toys there is no provision for the retailer to stock replacement parts. So potentially much of the allure of this expensive gun would be lost on the first night. Sometimes it sucked to be a little kid.
I had both the electric B.A.R. (Browning Automatic Rifle) and the electric .50cal. machine gun as a child. The B.A.R. was the better toy, its two "D" cell batteries fit inside the ammo clip giving it a healthy heft. This meant less suspension of disbelief when playing army. The machine gun was relatively useless without the tripod and the tripod was not very durable; the tripod broke well before the firing mechanism. I think I asked for the machine gun one Christmas. The B.A.R. was my father's surprise gift to me another Christmas, his brother Bob had carried one during the Korean Conflict and one of the few war stories he was willing to relate concerned using it to wipe out a group of enemy soldiers as they emerged from a tunnel.
It wasn't all guns and games, I had a number of these Venus Paradise Pencil By Number Coloring Sets. I burned many hours engaged in completing these pictures and never spilled a drop of paint because there wasn't any to spill.
