Space Adventure – Star Wars, Ray Guns and Orange Soda
Kids today – they don’t know they’re born, eh? I never had a Wii, cell phone or the internet when I was growing up. But I don’t envy the toys and gadgets available to today’s kids. Well, maybe I’m a bit jealous. As a kid I would have happily sold my pet hamster for a cool Japanese robot or for all that Star Wars merchandise. It’s not fair!
When I was a child all I wanted in the whole world was a Star Wars light saber. Every Christmas I’d beg my parents for that glowing plastic sword. And every Christmas I got Barbie dolls and Fuzzy Felts. That was great, but I reaaaallly wanted a light saber. A cardboard tube painted bright blue just wasn’t the same.
Starved of futuristic weapons and plastic movie merchandise, I had to make my own intergalactic entertainment.
Pee-aaawwn, Pee-aaawwn
Every weekend my little buddies and I congregated in my bedroom with a tape recorder, two plastic ray guns and a huge bottle of tartrazine-laden orange soda. We wrote, directed and starred in an awesome space adventure show called, well, Space Adventure.
I played a Princess Leia-type heroine with a flowing white gown and an alarmingly bloodthirsty outlook for a seven-year-old. My friend Sam was the ship’s commander (it’s not fair, I wanted to be commander – so much for women’s lib) and snot-nosed little Danny was DZ-7 the robot. He didn’t really relish the part as he had to spend the whole afternoon speaking in a monotone American accent. “Beep…power-failure-in-reverse-thruster-four…beep”. In hindsight, I think he would have preferred to have played Princess Leia.
We spent the whole weekend running around my bedroom, I mean Starship Eagle-5, battling fires in reverse thrusters and zapping menacing borgatron robots (also voiced by Danny in a snuffly monotone voice). “Pee-aaawwn! Pee-aaawwn!” we squealed as we pretended to fire our ray guns. Commander Sam shouted “We’re coming down too fast!” way too many times.
Aren’t Kids Irritating?
My poor parents. Their peaceful weekend was shattered by the sound of screams, thudding feet and pee-aaawwn pee-aaawwn. They were then treated to our evening presentation of Space Adventure, and were forced to listen to a three hour recording of what they’d just heard all afternoon.
If only we had been able to spend our free time glued to the internet or playing video games my house would have been a lot quieter, not full of rampaging small children waving ray guns and spilling orange soda on the carpet. But what a dull childhood that would have been! I wouldn’t have swapped Space Adventure for anything.
Strangely enough, I recently discovered that snotty little Danny now works for a major electronics company… that makes production line robots. I hope he’s not secretly working on borgatrons.
Pee-aaawwn!
They’re coming down too fast and need to fire their reverse thrusters over at Humor-Blogs.com
Yeah! Those were the times. My kids are too quiet watching TV, playing pc games and basically no creativity, invention etc that we (old folks) had to come up with due to lack of such distractions.
During my time I wasn’t so adventurous – no Star wars or space adventures. But nevertheless my friends and I made up lots of stories, played a variety of games and had lots of FUN:)
Thanks for bringing back those good ole days to my mind:)
Tiggy- I think I experienced part of your childhood. While I was not AGAINST having the Barbies, I really, really wanted some Star Wars Stuff…
And I played some Star Wars variant with my friends, where I was usually Princess Leia AND Han Solo, because I only had the one best friend and there was a whole lot of characters to do.
We were multi-taskers, even at 7. 🙂
Are there any girls out there who DIDN’T get Barbies for Christmas? I recall the toy store carrying more stuff than that, but you invariably got Barbies. Or yuck – clothes. Or worse – “educational” toys.
Battling the Borgatrons sounds like it was pretty tough. We fought the Galtroids, and let me tell you, they had proton torpedoes that were constantly slamming into my bedroom.
…Barbie had NO torpedoes.
you were forging a new frontier! good times!
Yeah all the dumb shit I used to do with the buddies. Got into lots of trouble and as the years progressed, so did the magnitude of the trouble. It’s a wonder I was never arrested.
Back in the day my parents gave me a bag of rocks and a whittled birch stick. Let’s just say the neighborhood hobos sleep soundly after I played with that gift.
Bubbles: Maybe you should confiscate your children’s TV and video games and tell them to make their own entertainment. They’ll thank you for it one day! Unless they leave home within the hour. 🙂
Jenn: Maybe we should have fallen out with Sam, then I could have played the Commander too. Damn.
Nanny Goats: Educashunal toys suck. But I learned alot by trying to destroy them, so it wasn’t all bad.
Damon: Those Galtroids were the worst. I thought we had defeated them in episode #384 but obviously not. Sorry!
Chat: We did forge the new frontier! And afterwards we had ice cream!
Sully: Oh yes, trouble was fun. We didn’t really understand the concept of ‘trespassing’ back then.
Acorn: I admire your parents’ endeavours to make your childhood as fun as possible! You do realize those hobos may come back to haunt you one day.
Thanks for visiting me today! You have a delightful blog!
http://www.gohero.com
retro rayguns & original collectibles. check it.
That’s one thing I can say about the 80s. I was there…in the very first audience to see Return of the Jedi. 3 days waiting by the theater. The cast was there. They flew in a special arcade game they made just for the event. Yeah…it was silly to wait there all that time but what a party and what a little piece of history.
I love Star Wars! My BFF and I tortured our parents by fighting with my brother all weekend. I think they would have rather had you guys.
I’m older than dirt so Star Wars didn’t hit until I was mid-20’s.
I do remember my sister wanting a pair of cowboy guns and a tommy gun so she could hold her own in all the neighborhood battles. She saved up her money and bought them herself (this was in a town where kids could ride their bikes to town)
My parents had ten fits and made her return it all and get her money back. In return, she became a lesbian.
So there.
Still have any copies? Youtube it!
Just want to say what a great blog you got here!
Cheers
Christian
Great blog, I’m laughing my ass off! Keep up the awesome work!
Amazing! I cant stop laughing xDD
I love Star Wars! My BFF and I tortured our parents by fighting with my brother all weekend. I think they would have rather had you guys.
Really nice post, I always wanted a light saber when I was a kid too but well, it was kind of hard to get one here in México i guess 😛
Nice post, and yea I as a kid probably was kinda irritating but i guess is part of being young and not caring at all.
what a great article.
Tenemos que disfrutar a nuestros hijos conforme a su edad porque crecen y todo es diferente porque tienen sus propias ideas e intereses
Un gran artículo me divertido mucho y las historias de los comentarios todos queremos tener los juguetes de moda muy llamativos
Es una pagina maravillosa de mucha utilidad gracias por la información
me ayuda mucho y resuelve mis dudas sobre estos temas.
Informacion amplia, clara y suficiente, gracias por compartairla
Just want to say what a great blog you got here!
Cheers
Happy to see your blog as it is just what I’ve looking for and excited to read all the posts.