When I was a kid everyone was excited about outer space. All of us kids couldn't wait til we grew up and could go to other planets and battle monsters of indescribable ferocity.
Wally Wood nailed it in this picture (above). Every kid had his trusty tricycle and his
Davy Crockett and Prince Valiant paraphernalia. The only inaccurate thing about this picture is the space helmet. None of us kids, at least in my area, could lay his hands on one.
(above) around the bottom? That says mass production to me.
I have to face the possibility that my parents lied to me. Maybe parents had a boycott going. It's possible that some psychologist somewhere went on the road with an EC comics-type scenario where a kid falls off his tricycle, causing his helmet to shatter into shards and disfigure him for life. It was the beginning of the age of parental hysteria, egged on by so-called "experts."
I'll bet warehouses were full of unsold space helmets, including the premium "Space Patrol" helmet shown above. Eventually many tens of thousands of them were probably crushed and used as landfill. I and millions of other kids were left bereft. Now I'm an adult and I stand before you a mental and physical wreck. I sleep in doorways and life is what happens while I await the solace of death and oblivion. Like so many of my generation I was lied to and denied a basic necessity of kid life, and this...this has been the tragic result.
Geez, Eddie, all that excitement and disappointment over that???? What about all the fun comic strips, two reel comedies, cartooons and illustrative work you got to indulge in when you were a kid? To me, it sounds like you still had the ultimate kid friendly childhood back in the 50s and 60s. I would certainly travel back in time just to see it all for myself. You should be lucky you got to grow up with all that fun stuff firsthand!
ReplyDeleteEddie, you should totally get one from ebay. Dunno if an adult head fits in that bubble tho.
ReplyDeleteHere is a link with some more information on that last helmet you posted:
http://spacemanstoychest.blogspot.com/2011/01/space-patrol-commander-helmet.html
Man, thats a bummer. I'd of liked a space helmet myself.
ReplyDeleteAh yes, I dealt with the same malarkey with action figures during my childhood. I'm sure some companies just put extra toy images on the back of their boxes so they could have kids like me running along the toy-store aisle making an impulse buy on another item instead. It's a conspiracy!
ReplyDeleteI pods will eventually look like those, but it'll be called I am a Pod.
ReplyDeleteThank you Eddie. I always assumed that one day there would be bubble helmets for the kids in the back seat of my flying car.
ReplyDeleteMaybe they made it difficult to hear your parents, which could lead to juvenile delinquency. When we were kids, we had to improvise with plastic drycleaner's bags.
Tek: Wow! Thanks for the link! So they WERE mass produced! But why couldn't I find one? The demand was there, but the shelves were empty. Maybe only one store chain carried them, and they weren't in my area.
ReplyDeletewhatever happened to that vision of the future?
ReplyDeleteInvert a goldfish bowl and get over it, fer Chrissakes!
ReplyDeleteIf you really wanna cry over '50s Sci-Fi stuff that coulda been, how about Kurtzman and Wood's "Prefabricated Disposable Robot Women" from BLOBS! (page 2, panel 2, from EC's MAD #1, 1952)
BLOBS!
What? That's so odd. I see lots of old pictures of people in space helmets, I would think they were as common as Campbell's Soup Cans.
ReplyDeleteMike: Haw! Many thanks for the nifty link! Yes, that was a real glimpse into the future, no doubt about it.
ReplyDeleteTalking: The hippies ruined it!
Roberto: Yeah, I was lucky to see some of that, but I'd have been luckier still to have been alive in the 30s (provided my parents could find work).
This reminded me of something George Carlin said in one of his stand up routines. That children should not be preventing from playing with marbles because natural selection takes care of the children that are stupid enough to eat marbles.
ReplyDeleteI had an awesome toy space helmet. It was very much like this one:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.amazon.com/Realistic-Astronaut-Space-Helmet-Costume/dp/B000NAA2U0
It had a set of headphones, and a separate "tank" for water, with a tube you suck water through.
I probably wore it while playing with my Major Matt Mason figures.
Great compendium of space helmet goodness.
ReplyDeleteAlien, the Moebius designs, partially brought the bubble idea back.
Eddie, you should count your blessings that you never had one of those space helmets for kids. Yes, they were available in your neighbourhood Woolworths, but not for long. Not after all of the accidents that followed their purchase.
ReplyDeleteSeems that once dad blew up the inflatable neck piece, little Johnny only had about ten minutes of actual play time before the air in his helmet ran out and the tubes from the neck piece started filling his tiny lungs with dad's carbon dioxide. Poor hapless little space pioneers....
Pete: Interesting comment! Tek put up a link to pictures of the Space Patrol helmet that showed the different parts as they came out of the box. It didn't look to me like there was any way for the dad's breath to get into the helmet. Besides, the helmet had a big cut out hole where the kid's face would be.
ReplyDeleteI hope you're right, though. Having your dad's cigar breath in the helmet with you sounds hilarious. Ditto for the flacid, under the helmet balloon. These would make great details in a movie about that era.
I like the way Wally Wood drew himself wearing a space helmet with a cigarette and cigarette holder sticking out. The ultimate in cool!
Jonathan: Sorry for the delay in answering! So that helmet is still available! It's not to my taste, but it beats having no helmet at all!
ReplyDelete