Major Matt Mason and Callisto

Christmas 1969
As a kid, I totally got into the whole U.S. space program.

I remember sitting in Don C.'s lap and watching Neil Armstrong step onto the moon, although I must admit that my memory doesn't provide the detail of whether this was the first showing, or if it was on the news.

I suspect it was on the news. In the central time zone, the news comes on at 10pm (which is something I miss in the Eastern time zone, Central time zone is great for TV watching and still getting to bed at a decent hour), and I think, think, mind you, that I was in my PJs. I have the sense that they had let me stay up long enough to see it on the news.

At this time in my life, I could have TOTALLY lived on Pillsbury Food Sticks and Tang, simply because that's what I heard that the astronauts ate and drank in space. Alas, my parents didn't make enough money for me to eat three meals a day of Food Sticks and Tang, but I still remember liking the chocolate as well as the peanut butter flavored Food Sticks. Tang? We all remember what Tang tastes like.

That Christmas, we received space related toys. Big Brother got a Major Matt Mason, and I got the alien, Callisto, from the same series of toys. Big Brother got the Uni-Tread Space Hauler thingy for the Major, and I got a massively cool XRG-1 Reentry Glider for Callisto.

Big Brother tended to get the "first line" toy, if we got something similar to one another, and I would get the "sidekick" action figure. But like I mentioned in my old post, Only Girls Play With Dolls, I'm the type who would have picked the clear-green-headed alien over the Major anyway. I was a happy camper.





According to the box in the photo above where I'm kneeling, you can see the box for this rocket, an Apollo 11 Battery Operated Space Rocket.
Half the fun of looking at old Christmas photos is the stuff in the background that you forgot about until you took a close look at the photos after all those years.

Our tree looked particularly sad that year, but it was real! (I haven't had a real tree in my adult life.)

You can still buy mint condition, and even still-packaged Major Matt Mason figures on ebay, but the ones still in a blister pack sell for $200-$300 each. A little too pricey for me.

P.S. Oh. Yeah. I assume Big Sis got some stuff that year, but I didn't have any pictures of her scanned.