Collecting Cars

I’ve never really understood collecting things other than comics and toys. I’ve had some dalliances with other hobbies, most notably in my childhood when my parents desperately tried to widen my narrow range of interests and turn me into a real human being.

Football? No. Try as I might, it just seems pointless to me. No real stakes.

Collecting stamps? Difficult to see the appeal. As an adult, I can maybe appreciate the history behind…. Oh Heavens I just got bored even typing that out.

Coins? Nope.

My wife collects depression era glass. This I find interesting. It’s obviously not for me, but I think that it’s neat that she does it. She’s picked a pattern that she likes. She ‘inherited’ the hobby from her mother. It has its origins in a time period I’m highly interested in. There’s an actual goal to fight for. And it all ends up in a fancy display. So yeah, there’s that.

But that’s girly.

Now collecting toy cars is not girly. I’ve crossed paths with Hot Wheels collectors a couple of times in my hobby days. They seem to be a tad more intense than your usual comic and toy collector. Directly after the one Toy Fair I attended in New York one February I was approached by a toy car collector on the street who offered me fifty bucks for a toy car that Mattel had been handing out to Toy Fair attendees. I didn’t give mine up, but instead took it home to Lorie where she put it on eBay and got quite a bit more for it. So yeah… those people seem a little intense.

I never really understood toy cars, nor my attraction to them. As a kid in the seventies, I had a brief phase where I got really into cars. Put them all in a car case, pestered my mom for more and ‘played cars’ with the other kids in the neighborhood. But the WHOLE TIME I was searching for some point. Are we really just pushing a car around a road that we made in the dirt? Where was the action? Where was the intrigue?

One of my earliest signs of obsessive compulsiveness was centered on toy cars. I was on the porch of our New Hampshire house with my box of cars and the neighborhood kids. It was my porch and my cars; therefore it was my rules in how we picked who got what cars and what scenario we would play out. I kept switching the rules for how we would pick our cars. So much so that the other kids revolted and left to go play at someone else’s house. As an adult I realize it was the act of organization that I was enjoying and not so much the actual play.

I was ten.

Of course… there WERE some cars that I completely understood as a kid.





















The history of toy car companies goes back a ways. Hot Wheels hit the scene in 1968 and proved to be so popular they changed the way toy cars were made. Matchbox is probably the closest runner up, and they’ve been making toys since 1953. Corgi was always the company I remember as a kid, as they made the super-hero cars I ended up loving so much. They’re an England based company and have been in the business since 1933. And then there’s Dinky. Dinky makes die-cast metal toys and has been around since 1901. In the seventies, they made the Enterprise.





I got this from Santa one year for Christmas. We moved around so much that I don’t have many of my childhood toys. But I have this little beauty. As an adult, it’s one of the more treasured pieces of the collection. I remember even as a kid being fascinated with its construction.

That might be what attracts me so much to the toy cars. The engineering. The lines and metal and simple functionality.



I could stare at this Batmobile all day.





Currently, they make super-hero cars in three different ways. There’s the model of something actually seen in the comics:


Or movies:



And then there’s something that the hero would never actually drive, but the design is inspired by the character:






And then there’s just a car with the hero’s picture on it:





As an adult, I’ve been able to slim my collecting hobbies down to the bare bones. I don’t buy physical comics anymore, just digital. I’ve stopped toy collecting, except for the occasional Aquaman or Hawkman figure. Or maybe the rare impulse purchase if I actually go to Target. I don’t buy DVD’s anymore, as I prefer to stream things through Netflix where possible and buy digitally through iTunes when I want to. The act of minimalizing the physical things in my life is pleasant. One of the things I continue to buy are super hero cars. They’re small, relatively inexpensive, they don’t get produced often, and they’re great to display.

Which, I think, is the point for all those toy car collectors. The display.











Alex arranged this last one at my request. Ugh. I take no responsibility for the chaos and lack of architectural design. I'll speak with him.

Thanks,
DCD

My Contentious Association with Eggs

My mother’s a cook. A very good, Southern born-and-bread, cook. And I was always very appreciative of that growing up. We would sit down to meals that were the norm in the 1950’s and fading out in the 1970’s. For instance, homemade bread. We always had homemade bread at every meal.

However, even at an early age, I was never much a fan of breakfast. Breakfast foods in general make me a little queasy. Bacon is glorious, of course. I am a guy, after all. Waffles and pancakes are okay. Toast. Who doesn’t like toast? It’s generally all other breakfast foods that send me South. Oatmeal? Ugh. French toast? Shudder! Even sausage seems somewhat questionable.

But let’s talk about eggs.

I hate eggs.

I can’t stand eggs. I can’t even stand the smell of eggs. The consistency drives me nuts. Even writing about it is making my throat close up in disgust. I used to at least be able to eat deviled eggs, but no more. All eggs are beyond my taste at this point.

I don’t believe it was always this way. I think as a small child I ate them without question. I don’t really remember. I just remember one day in New Hampshire putting my fork down with a heavy sigh and a plate full of scrambled eggs and feeling like I was going to throw up.

In my house, we cleaned our plates. No matter how long it took. We sat and cleaned our plates. Powering through egg dishes were the worst part of family breakfast.

As an adult, I’ve actually developed a gag reflex. I believe it’s all mental, and that means it’s controllable if you care to control it. But you know what? I’m an adult and no one on the planet is going to make me finish off a plate of eggs.

Several years ago we took the kids to visit one of Lorie’s aunts for the afternoon. The house was immaculately clean. The kind of clean that you don’t want your three kids anywhere near. For lunch, Lorie’s aunt had slaved over a fancy casserole from a recipe she had just learned. We sat down to heaping plates full of eggs.

It’s seriously making me nauseous just to think about it.

Lorie was visibly concerned. The kids and Lorie’s aunt were oblivious to the problem, thank God. Not wanting to cause a fuss or anything like that, I ate the plate of eggs. I used every mental control trick I know, and even some I made up on the spot. It worked. I got the plate down, feeling like I had won some sort of karmic battle.

Lorie’s aunt promptly stood up and heaped a second helping on my plate, saying something about me being a big guy and needing a good lunch.

Uuuuuuuuugh.

There were other dramas at that small New Hampshire breakfast table that we ate at from Fall of 1978 to Spring of 1981. We constantly argued over who would get the little car from the Flintstones vitamin jar. And the belly button of the freshly opened tub of butter was another point of contention. But for me, eggs were the deepest, most personal struggle.

Until the day we got a dog and suddenly my morning chores including cleaning up the poop from the basement where the dog slept.

NO WONDER I HATE MORNINGS! It’s all starting to make sense.

I get a queasy stomach thing every morning and have as long as I can remember. My father says that he gets that too and that’s why he doesn’t eat breakfast. My daughter Katie says the same thing happens to her these days. But I make sure she eats something. Our breakfast table is much less formal than the meals I sat down to in the 1970’s, so it’s her choice on what she eats. As long as she eats something.

Lorie loves eggs. But thankfully, she tries to only cook them when I’m out of the house. One morning when she was staying home for day care reasons, I had to come home from work because I wasn’t feeling well. I walked into a house full of that egg smell and Lorie was less than happy to see me stroll in the door.

In the 1980’s, we lived in Fairfax, Virginia from 1982 to 1988. During that time period, my mother found a new recipe for dinner on the nights that my father worked late at the Pentagon. She called it “Cheeseburger Surprise” and I was very excited to see what this new dish was all about.

Eggs. It’s all about eggs. There’s some hamburger meat in there, and glorious amounts of cheese. But not nearly enough to cover the fact that it’s all eggs. I was doomed.

In closing, let me tell you about the Sunday morning conundrum. Sunday mornings were a thing of routine in our house, as everything was. There was Neil Diamond loudly blaring from our eight track stereo, there was the long drive to church, there was me doodling Star Wars and Buck Rogers and Super Friends and Star Trek all over the pamphlet at church during the sermon, and there was breakfast. Sticky buns. Every Sunday. Sticky buns. The problem with sticky buns wasn’t taste or consistency, mind you. The meal itself was always quite good.

The problem was … they were sticky!

Who wants to be sticky on Sunday morning after having had a bath and gotten dolled up in your best clothes!!

It was madness. And then I had to clean up the dog poop!

Thanks,
DCD

The Hardy Boys

I know I've been yammering on about the eternal, timeless quality of so many characters. Dracula, Sherlock Holmes, Superman, Batman, Captain Kirk, James Bond, and even certain cartoon characters like Mickey Mouse. One set of characters that don't seem to have this eternal quality is the Hardy Boys.


I would like to tell you that I loved the Hardy Boys as a kid. Truth be told, I don't really remember if I loved them or not. I read a lot of their books. A LOT. But loved them? They were just there. It was an easy series to go to. And I don't remember there being a lot of book series aimed at kids the way there are today. I remember the Hardy Boys. I remember reading the Chronicles of Narnia series of books. I remember the Black Cauldron series. That's about it.


Today, my son Ashton is into several series of books aimed at his age group. Harry Potter. Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief. Last Apprentice. Series of Unfortunate Events. Spiderwick Chronicles. Chronicles of Ancient Darkness. Vampirates. And many more. Ashton has proven to be a very prolific reader.

In 1977, the Hardy Boys came to television in Glen Larson's the Hard Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries. The show made immediate stars out of floppy haired, dreamy gazed Shaun Cassidy and Parker Stevenson. I watched the show as much as I could. It obviously didn't have the effect on me that Star Trek, Six Million Dollar Man or Buck Rogers had. But I do remember looking forward to the show and thinking it was somewhat popular.


In the summer of 1979 my mother laid down the law about library book consumption and summertime reading rules. The specifics of which are lost to my memory. But I stocked up on Hardy Boys book at the library to fulfill my required reading goals.

This was in an age before my time planning exercises ruled my life and the iPhone to do list told me what to do and when. Therefore I would often find myself fighting a deadline for when to complete my summer reading.

One afternoon I asked my mother to time me and let me know when an hour had gone by. I took my Hardy Boys book and headed out to the front porch of our Rochester, New Hampshire house. My logic was that the TV show was an hour long. So reading one of the books should only take me an hour. I was pretty sure.

It ended up being one of the longest hours of my life. It actually kick-started one of my sub-obsessions concerning the way time works. I honestly enjoyed reading the Hardy Boys. But now that I knew a clock was ticking towards a goal, the book became miserably long. And with each passing moment it became more obvious that I would not complete the book in an hour. And how long had I been on this porch anyway? And was it always this hot? And what's with all these insects? And what time was it?

After having gotten a ways through the book, I broke. I ran inside and asked Mom how much time had passed.

15 minutes.

So yeah.... time and the brain can play tricky tricky together. Which can make 30 minutes on the treadmill LOADS of fun if you're not in the right place, mentally. So a big 'thank you' to Jack Benny.

I've really digressed.

Remembering how much fun I had as a kid watching the show and reading the books, I've made several attempts to introduce the characters to my family. Ashton finds the Hardy Boys "boring and slow moving". I think Katie has read one Nancy Drew book. She gave me a smiling nod and said she 'really liked it', which I can use my Daddy-powers to know on a Katie level that it bored her senseless and she spent the time picking her toes.


Netflix streaming has the TV show, so we gave that a shot. The kids like the opening theme, and they like to see the outdated clothes and hair that will eternally date the show, but then the novelty wears off and the toe picking begins. I had to physically remove Ashton's electronics from the room and separate Alex and Katie. I declared the hour of time to be a family moment and device-free. Lorie supported this notion by sitting at her desk and playing Tiny Tower on her iPhone. A fact which Ashton was quick to point out.

So the characters aren't really gaining any ground in our house.


I don't see them as eternal. I remember thinking how 1950's they were even when I read them as a kid. They always seemed too wholesome and had way too much expertise in a wide range of subjects. Their hobbies were endless! This same character problem never seems to bother me in comic book super-heroes.

In researching this article, I came across this enticing line from wikipedia.

"The Hardy Boys have evolved in various ways since their first appearance in 1927. Beginning in 1959, the books were extensively revised, largely to eliminate racial stereotypes. The books were also written in a simpler style in an attempt to compete with television. Some critics argue that in the process the Hardy Boys changed, becoming more respectful of the law and simultaneously more affluent, "agents of the adult ruling class" rather than characters who aided the poor."


A mystery is afoot! I feel myself compelled to do more research. Maybe the pre-1950's Hardy Boys were actually interesting from a historical perspective.

Thanks,
DCD

Teen Titans through the Decades

One of the things my main hobby, collecting and reading comics, offers is the ability to traipse through the decades and enjoy the same title in completely different eras. I can't think of another genre that pulls this off quite like comics. Maybe animation, but comic books offer an unbroken publication history. When doing a re-read of a particular title from it's inception to today, you can see the changes in era and culture happening slowly. If you were to pick one issue from each decade and read that, you would see the changes as being drastically different.


I think the title that most closely marries itself to the culture of the time period it's published in is the Teen Titans. Created in the 1960's, the Titans were all the younger sidekicks of the main heroes banding together. But larger than that one trick concept, the Titans were about teenage heroes getting together and having adventures.

In the 1960's, the Titans were a quant little joke. Their dialogue, culture, and youth-hipness were in the hands of middle age white men in business suits. As such, they reflect a culture that never really quite was. It wasn't until 1969 that the Titans fell into different writing hands of a much younger generation of comic book creators.


The seventies didn't see much activity for the Teen Titans. But the 1980's saw a huge boom of popularity with the "New" Teen Titans. New characters and a new approach which can be summed up with two words: "Teenage Drama".

Being thirteen in 1982 when the New Teen Titans hit their popular high point, I thought it was the greatest thing ever. Re-reading those same issues thirty years later in 2012 I'm struck at how ridiculously teen-drama-ish and melodramatic everything is. It seems to me... very eighties.


In 2003, the Teen Titans got there very own cartoon on Cartoon Network. I felt the cartoon was nothing short of genius for several reasons. It looked and felt very different from other super hero cartoons of the time. It had a Japanese Anime influence with quick action, sharp art, and heavy doses of humor, drama and action.


The cartoon was definitely set up to appeal to younger kids. At the time, my son was four and my daughter was two. They loved the show. It had snappy music, colorful heroes, action, and laughter. The characters would even change into smaller, cuter, weirder versions of themselves when something silly or embarrassing would happen. The creators of the show were NOT catering to the older comic fan crowd, but definitely went for the current day audience.


However, they included the popular characters from the eighties as the main cast of the show.


And they had villains with roots in the 1960's and the silliness of the Titans title of that decade. Even some guest stars from the original Titans line-up.

The main villain was Slade, who first appeared in the eighties as "Deathstroke the Terminator" and ended up encapsulating the look and feel of comic books in the nineties with over the top violence, a silly name that sounds cool to video game players, and a costume covered in weaponry.


The producers of the show did not limit themselves by the history of the Titans. Yet they took that history and crafted it into something they could use to make nods to the Teen Titans forty year history and still have major appeal to current day audiences.

AND... in appealing to current day audiences they attempted to do what the Teen Titans have always tried to do... be modern.

It was genius.

Thanks,
DCD

The Hunt for Aquaman

I wanted to take a minute to tell you why I feel this is the golden age for enjoying entertainment of the past. More specifically, I wanted to give you a personal example of it.


It was 1985 when I learned that Aquaman had his own cartoon in 1967. I remember feeling a wave of shock in my stomach. The feeling a collector gets when he misses out on a rare piece. I felt overwhelmingly irresponsible. I had no idea that my favorite character used to have his own cartoon. I had never seen it, never heard of it, had no knowledge of it's existence.

I found out because of this advertisement in a comic book:


As I said before, it was 1985. And all I knew at this point was that the cartoon existed, and that I would soon spend $24.95 of my lawn mowing money to own it. But what questions could I answer beyond that?

When did the cartoon air?
Was it in the same style as Super Friends?
How many episodes were there?
Were they being aired on local stations now?
Was the cartoon any good?

No. Idea.

This was 1985. What were my options? Let's run THAT down...

Ask my peers at school? (No.)
Ask my local library for more information? (No.)
Try to find fan magazines with more information? (Not likely)
Ask my Dad? (No!)

My first step was to call Errol's, a precursor to Blockbuster, and pre-order my Beta copy of the video. That's right... Beta. So I would run into a problem just three years later that I didn't foresee at the time.



Secondly, I had to find out if the cartoon was aired locally. I did this by getting out the local TV guide from the newspaper and going through every day, every hour, looking for all possible interpretations of the show. And at this point, I didn't even know the official title of the show was the Superman/Aquaman Adventure Hour.



Third, I saved up my money, waited, waited, waited, and waited for the release date, biked to Errols with my wallet and backpack, and finally bought the thing.



I loved the cartoon, of course. There are aspects of cartoons from the late sixties that are vastly preferable to cartoons from the early seventies. You can thank parents groups for that. But I'm not here to do a review of the cartoon at the moment. Pertinent to the story... my new beta tape had "8 Aquatic Adventures".

Just eight. And still I had no more solid information. I knew what the cartoon was like. I loved it. I could guess that the cartoon pre-dated the Super Friends. But I had no way of knowing if there were any more episodes.

Three years later, in 1988, I had to find a friend that had both a beta machine and a VHS and who could transfer the cartoons to the VHS format. As beta had died. But at least I had my cartoons in a tape that would play on my Grandmother's VCR.

It was about five years after that, 1993, when I found a guy at a comic book convention who knew anything about anything. I was shocked to learn that not only were there 36 episodes of the Aquaman show, but that the show also had a few 'guest shot' episodes of Justice League, Teen Titans, Green Lantern, Flash, Hawkman and the Atom. This all pre-dated the Super Friends.





This type of dealer isn't selling video that's been officially released by the companies that own the properties. This dealer is selling VHS copies of cartoon episodes that he had gotten from local TV stations and transferred the film to VHS. I paid the guy whatever he was asking and left with many of his cartoons on VHS tape.

Which would prove yet another problem several years later.

Having the 36 episodes was completely worth it. I love every single goofy moment of every single one.





In 2007, Warner Bros finally released the full series on DVD. Much more than "8 Aquatic Adventures". I now knew far more about the cartoon than I did in 1985, but more from learning bits and pieces along the way then being able to pull up information on the all-knowing internet. I bought the DVD without hesitation.

A couple of years later, the cartoon is available on iTunes for digital download. i bought that too.


So yeah, I have the cartoons, have seen them, and have had all my questions answered. It only took about fifteen years.

My buddy Steve just texted me with the name of a TV show he thought I would find interesting. Five minutes later, I knew all about the show without asking Steve a single question. I didn't need the TV guide, the library, a comic book convention, an illegal VHS dealer, four different formats, and fifteen years to find out.

Golden age.

Thanks,
DCD

Super Friends in Jars

I have a lot of action figures. I mean a lot of action figures. Primarily DC figures, as those are the figures that I've never sold off or traded away. I don't really collect action figures any more. The occasional action figure here and there, but nothing where I would consider it actively collecting. My wife used to be boggled by the character selection. "How many different versions of the same character do you need?"

I've never really explored where the genesis of this sub-passion to my main hobby came from. But it occurred to me as I sat down to write about what I wanted to write about today.

The Super Friends trapped in jars.


When the Super Friends cartoon first started out, it wasn't the polished show that it came to be. In fact the first sixteen episodes are vastly different from what most people remember the show to be. It was a full hour long, much more simplistic, environmentally conscious, absolutely devoid of violence, and totally awesome.





The episode I remember most from the first run is called Gulliver's Gigantic Goof. In that episode, a mad scientist (natch) has devised a shrink ray. He's not evil, oh no. The bad guys were rarely evil in the first season of the show. This dude wanted to solve the worlds hunger problem by shrinking the population. Therefore, there would be more for everyone.





The Super Friends stopped him, but not before being shrunken, trapped in jars, and put on the shelf for display. Also, guest star Green Arrow showed up to help. His only appearance in all 109 episodes.





This particular episode aired in December of 1973. I was four. It was re-run for years before the show was green-lit for new episodes. I believe in my heart that I caught EVERY airing.


Is this where my love of action figures comes from? On some level, do I really just want to stick the Super Friends in jars?

Yes.

Yes I think that's exactly what it is.


Thanks,
DCD

2069

Recently, my wife and I celebrated our fifteenth wedding anniversary. It was much more of a milestone for her than for me because… well… she’s easy to live with. And what did we end up doing to celebrate our anniversary?

We went grocery shopping.

I’m exaggerating, of course. We went for lunch at a hibachi grill in Charles Town and went to check out the downtown area, take pictures of buildings, and explore antique stores. The kind of stuff that we used to do many many years ago. Before kids.

But on this particular anniversary afternoon, we found ourselves at Weiss. Getting groceries and some Angry Orchard Hard Cider for our planned dinner, which would be grilling over our brand new fire pit.

We went through the line with the incredibly young cashier. In supermarkets, it’s usually the younger cashiers that are faster. However, there is a breaking point where you get one that’s too young and doesn’t care all that much. That’s what happened to us.

Since alcohol was involved with our purchase, the cashier asked Lorie for ID and had to type in her birthday to get the computer to continue with the transaction. The cashier glanced at Lorie's drivers license, and then turned to type, asking Lorie what her birthday was.

"Two, seventeen, sixty-nine." Lorie said.

That’s when the problems started. The cashier took way too long trying to enter this information. The computer was acting up.

Lorie leaned over to see what she was typing. I couldn’t see the cashier’s screen from my angle, but I could see Lorie’s face and the dark look that crossed it. Lorie leaned back.

“NINETEEN sixty-nine.” Lorie sighed.

“Oh!” The cashier giggled.

“TWENTY sixty-nine is actually in the future.” Lorie explained further.

“Yeah!” The cashier giggled again, and then went about completing her order.

I don’t see this as commentary on our culture, or an indicator of the intelligence level of the girl, or anything like that. I do find it interesting. It was the first time I had become aware that we’re dealing with a person who had probably never written the year as ‘nineteen’ anything on anything, unless it was a history paper. Her default mode was actually ‘twenty’.

This I found disturbing. My head started to do that thing where it swirls through the decades and the inter-relationships between the decades and how could Martin Landau be so YOUNG when filming Mission Impossible in the sixties and how can Sean Connery look so OLD when filming Untouchables in the eighties and have you seen Clint Eastwood lately and where IS Jack Benny, anyway?

Then Lorie punched me in the chest and said “Wake up. Let’s go.”

And we went home and grilled over our new fire pit while the kids ran around the yard being solidly in the year 2012.

What do they know?

Thanks,
DCD