As a cultural study and ardent exploration of humanity's love for the childhood tokens that inspired our dreams, Dark Horse is releasing a book that Toy Ray Gun guru Gene Metcalf is calling "the first truly comprehensive, and undoubtedly the best, book on space (toys)." Blast Off!: Rockets, Rayguns, Robots, and Rarities From the Golden Age of Space Toys is the collective effort of three men who have lived and studied the multi-generational fascination with the stars and beyond.
Mike Richardson, S. Mark Young, and Steve Duin are the creative and investigative master minds behind Blast Off! Comics fans know Richardson as the founder, president, and publisher of Dark Horse. Richardson is also a well-respected writer (his Star Wars miniseries Crimson Empire is an all-time favorite with fans), and an experienced toy collector. Duin is an acclaimed writer and columnist for thePortland-based news daily The Oregonian who joined Richardson in writing the intensive Comics: Between the Panels -- an anecdotal, encyclopedic history of the world of comics. Young is a new-comer to the world of pop-culture research and documentation, but his background as a business researcher and professor at the University of Southern California -- along with his near-fanatic appreciation of space toys and collectibles -- made him a perfect fit for the creative team of this book.
Blast Off! will be available in comic shops, bookstores, and through online retailers starting September 26. Read the following interview with the authors of Blast Off! to learn more about the most talked-about toy book of 2001.
Shawna Ervin-Gore: At this point we're still a good few months out from the publication of Blast Off!, but a very respected expert in the world of space toys and collectibles has already labeled Blast Off! "the first truly comprehensive, and undoubtedly the best, book on space (toys)" based on chapter galleys of the book. What would you credit this reaction to? What's so different about this book compared to others written on the same topic?
Mike Richardson: First of all, the book is written by people who have a real love of the subject matter. I had been considering a book about space toys for a long time, and thinking about how to put the book together. I mostly wanted to create a book that would satisfy myself and include the subjects that were near and dear to me.
Eventually I met Mark Young, and we began discussing the book. He offered his ideas on ways to make the book interesting to a wider audience. We eventually decided to focus on a narrow range of toys and include every bit of information we could find about them: who made the toys, the companies that produced them, little known facts about how they were made, where they were made... I don't think there's ever been a book on toys written like this.
Steve is a fantastic writer, and having worked with him on Comics: Between the Panels, I knew he would be a great addition to this book. And Mark is a research specialist. His contributions to this book, and the facts he uncovered, are astonishing.
S. Mark Young: Let me first say that I was really thrilled to see this review from Gene Metcalf, the Ray Gun guru. It means a lot because Gene follows the field closely and is a well-known author himself.
There are a number of things that make the book very different from any toy book that I have seen. First, the author team is rather unique, but that has basically been explained.
Second, the images presented in the book are connected to specific story lines for the most part. Some toys books just present image after image with no text or story behind them. We sought to provide a framework for the vintage space toy field by grouping items by characters such as Buck Rogers, Flash Gordon or companies such as Archer Plastics. Within each chapter there is a specific story that ties many of the images together.
In many cases we provide information about individuals and companies never before seen in print. We have actually tracked down owners of major toy companies of the 1950s, for instance, and conducted interviews with them. Some of these interviews have helped resolve questions that collectors have had for years about the objects their companies produced. We also tell the stories of some very well known collectors and the lengths they have gone to, to chase down the items they had eluded them.
A very large percentage of the items and images we show in the book have not been seen anywhere else. For instance, we show many incredibly rare toys, hard to find catalog pages, very unusual packaging variations, and quite a few paper items such as pulp, magazine and comic book covers.
We have also been able to resolve some nagging issues that have stumped collectors for years. I don't want to elaborate on this right now - it would ruin the surprises.
Blast Off! is not really a toy price guide. It is a book with a huge number of toys in it, but it is meant to showcase the beauty of the toys and what they mean and represent to many people. There are tons of price guides out there and we thought the market did not need another.
Steve Duin: I'm not sure it's all that complicated. We are a trio of collectors who brought a passion for history and a reverence for memory to the project. As someone who doesn't own a single space toy, I was more interested in the personalities of guys who created them and the characters who collect them than I was in the toys themselves. I hope that interest has helped to produce a book with both sharp focus and significant depth-of-field.
SE-G: The subject matter seems suited to a very specific audience, but BlastOff! has already garnered attention from lots of different venues and readers across a broad spectrum of age and interest. Why do you think so many people are compelled by the concept of a book about space toys?
MR: I think that the kinds of space toys featured in this book have the ability to make anyone nostalgic. This is true even if you werenÂ’t a child when the toys were produced. Many of the characters they are based on, such as Tom Corbett, were before my time, but IÂ’ve always been fascinated by them. ItÂ’s the colors, the designs, the approach to these toys, as well as the subject matter, that make them special.
SMY: That’s true. Another key driving force is everyone’s fascination with space in general. While there is little documented evidence, I would guess that people all through the ages have wondered about things like space travel and life on other planets. In the 19th Century, books like, From the Earth to the Moon, by Jules Verne and The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells helped launch the field of science fiction. The Buck Rogers craze that began in the later 1920s and the toys derived from those comics provided the first tangible way for kids to act out their space fantasies. Since the time of Buck Rogers a vast array of space toys have influenced the play of kids over the last 75 years or so. If Buck Rogers toys were not your thing, perhaps Flash Gordon or Dan Dare (in the U.K.) excited you. Or, perhaps, if you were a child of the ‘50s, Tom Corbett, Captain Video, or the Space Patrol TV serial got you going. Many adults who lived through the period of 1927 to 1957 clearly remember the toys associated with all of those characters and TV shows. What we have done is to write a book that places these adults back in their childhood to the times when they were running around their neighborhoods zapping their friends with crazy looking ray guns and wearing those campy space helmets. Who wouldn’t be thrilled to relive those memories? SD: Space exerts an intense gravitational pull on all of us. I can't walk out into the night without searching the sky for Orion's Belt, the constellation a college girlfriend introduced me to, or remembering the way the stars appear in the dead of Wyoming, or recalling the morning I watched the Challenger blow up in a hospital waiting room. Space invites us back and lures us on.
SE-G: Each of you have been involved in book writing at various levels, andyou come from rather disparate professional backgrounds. How did you allcome together to work on Blast Off!? SMY: Yes, as I mentioned earlier, we do come from very different backgrounds. Mike and I met through a mutual friend, Judd Lawson who is a mad keen space toy collector. Mike and Steve had just put the finishing touches on Comics Between the Panels when I met them. The idea for the space toy book came up during a conversation, the three of us clicked, and we never looked back.
MR: Judd was one of the first people with whom I discussed the book idea, and he said that I had to meet Mark, who at the time was a dean of the business school at USC. I was too busy at the time to make it to LA to meet with Mark, so he came up here, and the three of us went to one of my daughterÂ’s softball games. I told him we couldnÂ’t talk until after the game (laughs), but he waited and once the game was over we started talking. It turned out he had a lot of great ideas for the book. We sat down and started planning the project that night. We had a rough idea of what we wanted to do before going to Steve. I approached him to see if he would be interested in going forward on another book with Dark Horse.
SD: In the beginning, I was skeptical this book would ever come together. Mike and Mark were obsessed with the toys; I was unmoved. But Mark supplied huge resources of energy until I had several discussions with Robert Lesser, which helped to give shape not only to the Buck Rogers chapter but to the book itself.
SE-G: How did you choose the timeframe for the toys examined in the book --why not include Star Wars or other '70s toys?
SD: I am much more drawn to the toys -- and comics -- that were around before I was born in 1954. I lived through Star Trek and Star Wars, and they are lacking in mystery as a result. These time capsules of my parents' generation are another story altogether.
MR: Also, with the launching of Sputnik, space toys changed. We see Star Trek as part of that. There were more elements of science and realism coming in to the space toys of that time, and we were already dedicated to focusing on pre-Sputnik toys.
SMY: The period we call the Golden Age of Space Toys is between 1927 and 1957. This is our favorite period for space toys because real space travel had not yet taken place. The toys of the Golden Age are the result of unadulterated fiction. They are weird, comical, campy and bizarre. As Mike pointed out, once Sputnik was launched in 1957, space toys begin to change. All of a sudden, space toys began to look a lot more realistic. While I like Star Wars and other toys of the '70s, they do not have the same appeal to me, probably because I grew up during the '50s.
Also, we hope this is not the only book that we write. We felt that there was plenty of material to put into Blast Off! from the Golden Age.
SE-G: I noticed all the pictures in this book are in color, which seems rare for a book on older toys -- many guides I've seen in the past present their images in black-and-white. Why the color approach, and did this mean a lot of new work in the photographing and cataloging of the images included?
SMY: Yes, 99.9% of the images are in color. Those in black and white are either catalog pages or rare black and white photos from the 1950s. One cannot really appreciate how stunning these toys are until they are seen in their original colors. We hired a professional photographer to visit collections and take most of the photos. In some instances, very valuable toys were sent to us to photograph. Many leading collectors were extremely generous in supplying us with toys, and the book is so much better because of this enormous cooperative effort. On top of this Mark Cox, the art director at Dark Horse, and several of his designers have gone to great lengths to produce a truly spectacular book.
MR: In short, the toys are bold and colorful -- made of plastic, metal, or tin, with lots of reds and yellows and blues as predominant color combinations. So, if we were going to try to capture the feel of the toys with this book -- to bring readers as close as we can to the experience of playing with and seeing these toys -- portraying the toys' vibrant colors was crucial to its success.
SE-G: How do you go about researching elements like a dedicated individual's personal collection? Or the people who actually designed and manufactured a specific toy for a now non-existent company?
MR: There are a number of toy companies, such as Archer and Pyro, that are popular with collectors, so it's easy enough to track down information about them. Mark actually went so far as to track down the people who owned the companies, which required real investigative talent. He should have been a private eye (laughs)..
A lot of the collectors we used are well known. Some of the collectors don't necessarily want their collections to be shown or advertised We're not allowed to name several of the contributors to the book.
SMY: The first thing we did was to try to find out who had the best Golden Age space collections in the world. We already knew a number of people who then put us on to others. What is truly astonishing is how cooperative people were. For instance, Martin Hills, the leading Dan Dare collector in the U.K., photographed his collection for us as did Wayne Jagielski, a leading Buck Rogers collector. People like Bill Hanlon who wrote, Plastic Toys, Dimestore Dreams of the `40s and `50s sent us some exceedingly rare items to photograph.
The next thing we did was to try to track down some of the key manufacturers of the era. We were extremely fortunate to find people through the Internet and public records. Everyone we contacted agreed to help us!
SE-G: Most importantly, while you were researching this book, what new goodies did you add to your own collections?
MR: If you're a collector, you're always adding new things to your collection. Did we come across any real finds? Of course, but none for ourselves. One of the fun things that did come up was an idea for the limited-edition hardcover of Blast Off!, and I don't think this has ever been done in any way, at anytime, for any book on collectibles ever. Mark had purchased a warehouse find of Pyro spaceships. These particular space ships sell in the collector's market for anywhere from $30 to $60, and he found about 350 of them. What we're going to do is create a box in which to package the Pyro ship and include it with the signed limited edition as an authentic collectible. To me, this is fun and exciting, and it really captures the whole spirit of the project.
SMY: I can't say that I really added any specific toys, but my appreciation for what I have has grown enormously. For instance, we were able to finally get to the bottom of one of the most prolific, yet enigmatic space toy manufacturers of the 1950s - Archer Plastics. Archer is one of my favorite companies but virtually nothing was known about it. Our conversations with Gloria Genin, former wife of Bob Genin, the founder of Archer, were truly enlightening. So, for me the goodies were new information and some closure.
SD: Because my first love is paper - this may explain why I write for The Oregonian and have large collections of books and comics - I have been particularly drawn to the graphics of the Buck Rogers collectibles. But I didn't dive into that pool - to rescue a scuffed-up set of All-Fair cards from 1935 - until after the book was completed.
SE-G: At any point in your research, did you learn something that truly surprised or intrigued you? If so, please share...
MR: All kinds of things, really. We learned a lot about Archer and other companies, and the people that ran them. There was at least one big surprise -- the wife of one famous toy company eventually marrying the president of a rival toy company. Mark also found the original patent applications for some well known space toys, as well as catalogs that have never been seen before. For myself, one of those -- the Archer toy catalog -- was very exciting to see. I think very few collectors have ever seen it. But the whole process involved constant discovery punctuated by excited phone calls between us as new things were uncovered.
SMY: From my perspective, there were quite a few surprises. Here is one example, but again, I don't want to give too much away. What I can say is that in the chapter on robots, we got to the bottom of how Japanese tin robots were actually produced in the 1950s. The real story is nothing like most people's current understanding.
SD: My favorite "attitude" in the book is Lesser's on the best way to build a collection: Pay dealers twice what an object is worth. Because if you do, Lesser argues, you will turn that dealer into your devoted slave, someone who searches high and low for new items that will please you, offering everything to you first, never factoring in the cost of his time as he mentally calculates that he's playing you for a fool.
SE-G: So there are some tricks to be learned as well (laughs)??
I understand that Blast Off! is also being used as a companion book for a prestigious exhibition of space toys as the California Center for the Arts, which is an important new museum in Southern California. Mark, I think this was something you helped arrange. How did this come about? It seems like such an honor!
SMY: It really is an incredible honor. Gene Metcalf who will be curating the show, and Ellen Fleurov, the Museum Director contacted us. Gene has been closely following progress on the book and was in the process of organizing a show on space toys. When page proofs started to come out he showed them to Ellen and they called us. There is a lot of overlap between the items in the show and those in the book, so using the book as the "show catalog" seems like a natural fit.
SE-G: It may be a bit early to hail Blast Off! as a bonafide success, but judging from the initial reaction of book buyers and excited reviewers, you seem to be on to something here. Any thoughts of picking up where you left off with Blast Off! and pursuing another book project together?
MR: We're looking forward to doing a series of books. They'll be pop-culture related. The book on comics took ten years to finish. The first book on toys only took two, so maybe that means the next one will take just 20 months.
SE-G: So maybe you're getting a little better at it?
MR: I hope so. Depending on the success of this project, we're looking at doing more books on specific kinds of toys the idea is to theme each succeeding book in order to make it a bit more manageable in terms of page count. Blast Off! is over 250 pages, and it is sort of our overview. Now we want to go and look at certain categories in greater detail.
Explore the exciting world of outer space and the toys that it inspires with the September release of Blast Off!: Rockets, Rayguns, Robots, and Rarities From the Golden Age of Space Toys. Blast Off! is a full-color, 256-page hardcover book, available starting September 26 for the retail price of $34.95.