Major Matt Awesome
Posted on | May 7, 2008 at 11:42 pm | 4 Comments
Nothing feeds the nostalgia addiction like the Internet. Well, that and TV on DVD. I got all weepy for the past the other day when I saw this post on io9 (watch the commercial!) about one of my favorite childhood toys, NASA astronaut Major Matt Mason. Now there was a toy. More than mere action figures (or “dolls”), the Major and his buddies were a symbol of American superiority in space, as well as in toy design. All the figures were the same except for the heads and the different colored uniforms. But man, those different colored uniforms were a big draw for me. Collect them all! And one of Matt’s astronaut buddies (the blue one) was an African-American long before a real life African-American went into space.
The thing I remember most about the figures was that the bendable “accordion” rubber joints were cool in that you could really bend these things in all directions, but they broke really easily and you often ended up with a bare wire or two showing. The wires themselves became soft after awhile, turning the figures limp. The outer coating of the uniform also eventually flaked off, leaving black bits showing through. It was often necessary to replace the figures, though parental budgeting tried to put the kibosh on that.
The other cool thing was the vast number of accessories available for these guys, including a lot of awesome battery-powered vehicles. My friend/next door neighbor Mark was also a MMM-aficionado, and so he would try to get accessories that I didn’t have. As such, it’s hard for me to remember who owned what. But I remember playing with the Space Station, the Uni-Tread with Space Bubble, the Space Crawler, and the Star Seeker. Endless hours of fun and endless ways to annoy the dog with big plastic things that moved of their volition.
One strange thing about the toys was that there were no female astronauts. Sure, Matt and his team had some alien friends, but women? Heck no! They don’t belong in space. I remember inventing a detailed fantasy life for Matt that included an astronaut wife named Barbara. In fact, all the dudes had astronaut wives. Unfortunately, the women had to stay at the Space Station and cook all day while the men were out exploring the moon. It was the 60s, after all. My sister was too young (or not born yet) to be playing with Barbie or other dolls, so I didn’t have any material female companions to hook the team up with. Besides, Barbie would seem like an Amazon next to little old Matt, and he wouldn’t know what to do with her. Especially since his NASA uniform/space suit was part of him and couldn’t be removed.
At one point, I may’ve tried to attach breasts and long hair to one of Matt’s buddies, but let’s not go there.
There was no limit to what my imagination could come up with for these toys. The things weren’t licensed from any TV show or movie, so there was no set backstory to adhere to. We were on our own. The only thing the toys were based on was some actual proposed NASA designs. Kids today with their CSI and Desperate Housewives action figures – they don’t get the chance to exercise the creative parts of their brains the way we did. Will the children of today look back as fondly on their Jack Bauer Counter-Terrorist SUV Playsets as I do on my Major Matt Mason Flight Set and Moon Suit? I think not.
This post has been brought to you by The Old Curmudgeon We Had It Way Better Than You Young Punks Nostalgia Patrol.
Latre.
P.S. Steve, you came really close to winning the post-every-day competition tonight, due to problems I was having with the website. Luckily, I finally figured out the problem was with my PC and browsers and not the site itself, and a reboot fixed it.
Appropriate Search Term Of The Day That Led To This Blog: “godzilla final wars toys”.
Poignant Search Term Of The Day That Led To This Blog: “mexican who hates cilantro”.
Comments
4 Responses to “Major Matt Awesome”
May 8th, 2008 @ 5:11 am
When I was a kid, all we had was a tin can and a rusty stick. Or something.
May 8th, 2008 @ 7:59 am
InfK, I don’t want to know about your can and your stick.
May 8th, 2008 @ 5:46 pm
When I was a kid, they hadn’t invented mud yet, so we had to get dirty with brown paint and whatever dust we could rustle up.
May 8th, 2008 @ 7:27 pm
We had a stick, mud, and a Major Matt Mason and Space Crawler. Were we ever spoiled!!! But I had to share with my brother. Now that’s rough!