The Childhood Recovery Project: 09/2009

Fortified Oat Flakes

Fortified Oat Flakes
Originally uploaded by Waffle Whiffer

Many of my childhood memories have their root in Saturday morning. Lots of good (well, maybe not good, but memorable) television on Sat. AM. And this was the morning the officially marked disengagement from the school week. This is MY time, dang it.

Any good Saturday morning vegging in your PJ's in front of the boob tube should start with a nuritious breakfast. One of my faves from this time period that has disappeared from the store shelves is Post Fortified Oat Flakes. This was a totally basic cereal: no raisins, no nuts, no crunch berries, no marshmallows. Just basic flakes of oat with a touch of brown sugar flavor. One thing I definitely remember about this cereal is that it did NOT stay crunchy in milk. We're talking zero to mush in about 90 seconds.

But it was good, tasty, comfort-food mush.

Doing some Googling on this classic breakfast food does not yield a lot of useful information, but I do recall it was discontinued sometime in the 80's, but returned in a revamped package for a few years in the 90's. I cannot recall seeing this cereal on the store shelves in the last 10 years. Several discussion boards contain posts from folks who would like to see this cereal return, but so far Post has not listened.

I could not turn up any images of the box, but there was an image of a coupon for this cereal on Flickr. The poster of the image states late 60's/early '70's vintage. I can't authoritatively argue this, but I believe this was the late '70's version of the box. I seem to remember a box the pre-dates the one shown on this coupon which featured a guy playing tennis. I can't remember is this was a "name" tennis player or just some Joe Blow with a raquet. The '90's version of the box was mostly blue in color, as I recall.

At the time I wrote this, there was also a 16mm film copy of a TV spot for this cereal starring actor Van Johnson listed for sale on eBay.

The AMT Starship USS Enterprise Model kit

Today, we reach back into my childhood for . . .

The AMT Starship Enterprise model kit, which was originally released in 1968. This is quite probably the best-selling sci-fi oriented model kit in history, as it was essentially in continous production from 1968 until about 1993. I'm sure I've built at least 5 of these.

Pictured here is a copy of the kit from the late '60's or very early '70's, which I purchased on eBay some years back. This example features engine nacelle caps molded in translucent amber plastic, as well as a grain'o'wheat bulb lighting kit to illuminate the engines and the top and bottom saucer lights. While kits popped from the original molds for this kit yielded a decent-looking replica, starship Enterprise sticklers will quickly find several detail flaws. There is also a MAJOR structural defect in the design of the kit where the warp engines attach to the engineering (lower cigar) hull. It was very difficult or impossible to get these things attached and aligned in the first place, and once they were attached, they were extremely fragile.

Klingons were not the chief nemesis of this model. Mom's feather duster presented a much more grave threat.

The original version of this kit was built and "battle damaged" to represent the USS Constellation in the second season episode, "The Doomsday Machine." The difficult-to-align engines were probably actually helpful in this instance. It was also built "stock" to appear in the window of Space Station K-7 in the episode "The Trouble With Tribbles." In several years of Googling, I have found no evidence that the "Constellation" miniature is still in existence, but a picture of the "Tribbles" Enterprise showed up sometime back after having been purchased at an auction.

The kit was re-tooled in the mid '70's. This led to several detail improvements as well a much more sturdy, easier-to-build replica, but for every detail that was improved, another one was compromised. An excellent and comprehensive history of this kit can be found here, so I won't spend many keystrokes re-hashing that in this post.

AMT never did release an "accurate" version of this kit, and a cottage industry has long been in place to make resin replacement parts to improve the model. It's fair to say the if you want a replica with excellent accuracy from this kit, you will literally need to modify or replace every single part in the kit.

These pictures depict a version that is very close to the first Enterprise kit I had as kid, though by the time I got one, the lighting had been discontinued, and the decal sheet had been replaced with one containing names of "all the ships in the fleet." This would have been a desirable improvement had AMT not switched to a font that looked totally wrong. I imagine there were some kids who bought and built a full fleet of 14 of these kits, but I was never quite that crazy.

Logan's Run - the original novel

Today's element of recovered childhood is "Logan's Run" - a science fiction novel I read mostly in time spent riding Bob Farmer's school bus #23 in about 1977. It is rare that I read a book more than once, but I am sure I've read this one at least three times.

This novel dates from 1967, during war protest/youth movement days. The premise is this: What if "Never trust anyone over 30" were carried to the nth degree, to the point that, in exchange for a life of luxury, hedonism and leisure, all citizens were required to turn themselves in for "sleep" (read as "dirt nap") at the age of 21? Logan is a DS (Deep Sleep) agent, a police officer whose job it is to enforce the age limit using a pistol which fires a very unique assortment of ammunition.

(If you've only seen the movie and are saying to yourself, "That's not how I remember it," you're probably remembering right, as the movie diverged considerably from the novel. The subsequent TV series strayed even farther from the source novel.)

Authors are William F. Nolan and George Clayton Johnson. Nolan (imdb.com, wikipedia) has been prolific in the science fiction and horror literary genres and has several TV and movie screenplays to his credit, including a "Logan's Run" television series pilot. Nolan also produced two "Logan" sequel novels written without Johnson. Johnson's (imdb.com, wikipedia) credits seem to lie mostly in short stories and television, and he may be best known as writer of the debut episode of "Star Trek," titled "The Man Trap," which aired on Sept. 8, 1966. He also contributed eight "Twilight Zone" episodes. As of this writing both authors are still living and have surpassed their 80th birthdays.

I suspect this novel might have faded into obscurity had it not been rendered as a movie in 1976 and a perhaps mercifully short-lived TV series in 1977. I may address both of these in future posts. My copy of the book pictured here features art from the 1976 movie poster with likenesses of Michael York and Jenny Agutter as Logan and Jessica. This rather rare cover features tattered costumes reflective of the end of the movie, after the heroes had spent several days in the hostile land outside the city of domes. Another, more commonly-seen cover showed them in "pristine" costumes.

The novel is much more expansive in setting than the movie, taking place in multiple cities and in the wilderness, and culminates in a space launch, unlike the movie which is set only in the single, nameless domed city and in the ruins of Washington DC. I don't want to give away much about the book since it is still worth a read whether or not you've seen the movie.

There has been an imdb.com entry for a movie remake of "Logan's Run" for several years. The project was once slated to star Leonardo DiCaprio. As of this writing, the entry lists a 2010 release date, but no cast is listed. The lack of a final cast in late 2009 makes it seem very unlikely we'll see a movie in '10. If anything, it seems this project has taken steps backward from actual production and release, though a truer cinematic representation of this book would be interesting.

What this is about

This is all I need. I already have one blog that is all too often ignored by myself and readers. So why not start another one?

Yeah. That's the ticket.

My other blog, Progeny of Light, is about photography, which is my work. This blog will be about my play. In fact, I plan to start by moving a few "off-topic" posts from Progeny of Light to this blog.

The play of my childhood has shaped my play as an adult. As the name of this blog implies, its main focus will be on movies, books, comics, TV shows, toys, model kits, and assorted pop culture from the 1970's, which is when I was growing up. Focus will almost certainly expand to the 1960's thru the 1980's, since much of what I grew up with in the 70's was left over from the 60's ("Star Trek", "The Wild Wild West"), and, let's face it, I didn't exactly rush headlong into adulthood in the 80's.

Who knows? At some point, if other readers, friends and family contribute, all chronological limitation may go by the wayside and treasures of recovered childhood from any era will be aired. Tonka Toys. Schwinn Sting-Ray bikes. Fiesta Ware. All fair game.

I've got a pile of stuff I plan to write about. You do your part by reading and interacting, I'll try to do my part by updating at least twice a week.

Play hard or go home.

Move along. Move along, folks. . .

Nothing to see here. Yet.