Toys? You Want TOYS??

I have a lot of guys I've come to know on the internet (Dave) and not a few of them are really big into toys.

They will wax poetic about their LEGOS and the infinite variety of extras and add-ons and expansion sets now available. they will go goofy for their Star Wars figures, and basically tout all the great kits and sets that represent everything that modern toymaking has to offer.The 21st century, if you listen to these fellows too long, has been the ultimate in toys.

But I feel sorry for them because even considering that modern toys are somewhat cool, they were unfortunate enough to miss the Golden Age of Toy Sets. This was basically from the mid-1950's to the early 1960's.

In this glorious pantheon of toy sets there were endless scenarios and possibilities that a little boy (yeah, sorry, this is a boy post) could wrap himself up in. And when we got tired of recreating the standard plots, we went nuts, combined all the sets, and invented this crazy, wild, magnificent, hodgepodge of a mess that had everything flying in from everywhere.

But that's what we did with things back in the day. We had building blocks to do it with, though. And I don't see the same possibilities with any of the toys I look at now. Not, at least, in the intimate, visceral sense that these things were played with in olden times.

Regardless of that - we could argue the merits of today/yesterday all you want and that of course will never be resolved.

But you guys didn't have these. And I can see the holes in your imaginations and personalities because you were so deprived.

It started simple enough. There was a TV show starring Buster Crabbe that was called Captain Gallant. And Captain Gallant was this French Foreign Legion guy who had a fort and killed Arabs. Note - you will no doubt notice, as you review these sets, that there was a great deal of killing involved in the play. So what? Don't be such a wuss.

The Legionaires fought the Arabs from inside a fort that was made of heavy-duty plastic that came in sections that was put together. There were palm trees, machine gun posts, camels, horse-charging Arabs, flagpoles, even a replica well. And it looked something like this...
(Clicking should make some bigger)

But that's pretty simple. If that wasn't your cup of tea you could just default to the Robin Hood set. More or less the same principles - only I think the castle and walls were tin segments that snapped together. But in here you had all the classic figures. Robin Hood, Friar Tuck, Maid Marian. The works. And it looked something like this...

But, you know, there's a limit to what you can do with those. They made Civil War sets, The Alamo sets, Fort Apache sets, all based on the same model. Good guys - fort - cool equipment - vast hordes of lowlife fodder for the good and noble guys to slaughter. But then in 1960 someone got the bright idea of taking the stuff from a popular movie and making a toy set out of that. One of the biggest - if not the biggest - movie of 1959 was Ben Hur. The one with the chariot race and the Romans fighting non-descript hordes of whatever lowlife fodder that was at the time. So NOW you started to see a whole new realm of possibilities. Which looked like this...

And Ben Hur pretty much was the apex of the craft. It had it all. The chariot races being the big thing. The Ben Hur set, also put out by Marx (which did most of these) was probably the most popular of them all. the grand-daddy. Buuuuuuttt.... None of them held a candle to Rex Mars. In fact nothing you have today is anything like Rex Mars was. I have no idea who Rex Mars was, or what the set was based on, but remember this is 20-30 years before Star Wars. I give you the toy set of toy sets. The magical ultimo. The unbelievably retro, antiquated, and dated space opera toy set that was ever made. You ain't got nothin' on this baby. And at the time, you got the whole thing for 6 bucks. Gentlemen and... er.. gentlemen... I give you Rex Mars...

Ah yes. Thems were the days. LEGO. Pleh...