My earliest recollection of getting really into a toy was my Dr. Zauis doll, which was about 3/4 of the GI Joe size, but we in the Knapp Elementary ape society wouldn't play with ordinary Joes, and one kid tried to infiltrate with his pint-sized Six Million Dollar Man. Apes kicked his ass! Then Zaius lost a leg, but my wily babysitter tied a shoelace lasso to his little ape hand so he could lasso things and swing around. Those were some crazy adventures, climbing the stairs like it was Everest. Eventually he disappeared... at least I can't remember losing him or throwing him out or outgrowing him. And of course we had viewmasters (above), with which to see dinosaurs, Alice in Wonderland, the Planet of the Apes, and various geographical excursions in exciting 3-D!
The arrival of Aurora monster models changed everything. Dracula was always my favorite, so I got him first, and shunned Dr. Jekyll and Quasimodo, who looked to much like Bruce Glickis a kid I fought with a lot because I couldn't stand his fat dumb face. It wasn't bullying because he was actually bigger than me, and all our fights were bloody nose draws. Fuck Bruce Glickis!
Charlie's Angels was my first big introduction to the appeal of girls. I couldn't stay up to see the show, but I clipped pics from magazines, TV Guide and Time especially, then later Teen Beat and all that crap. Eventually I made a big scrapbook of it all and then sold the scrapbook to a kid down the street for $40, a fortune at the time. And I'd moved on by then.
And then - well, WW2, you can guess the rest. I was a boy! I joined forces in 6th grade with a kid named Alan Pyle -we started drawing and selling our own line of comics, and of course playing a lot of WW2 HO scale campaigns. Later we moved onto designing TI-994A computer games and D&D modules. I left my girl obsession in the dust until the Playboy years began. Next stop: punk rock, real girls, and the dawn of the VCR!
