Top ten Xmas toys from my childhood (Honorable Mention)
Adventure People (1975)
Before Star Wars action figures there were the Fisher Price Adventure People. Kind of a post pre-school toy line to role play neat adventures. Recently you may have seen the concept of these toys transformed into the Rescue Heroes by fisher Price. There was a wide assortment to choose from. Check out the photos, you may see something you had as a kid. I had the kayak, the skydiver, a sea explorer boat, the rescue copter, and the blue news van.
That was a great toy line! I have the grey space ship on the bottom left.
Adventure People were great! I had most of the sets they made (all of the ones pictured since you used my picture, but that’s cool)
Anyway, the main reason I wanted to comment here is because you said “before Star Wars action figures there were the Fisher Price Adventure People”. You’re not the only one who recognized that. There is new evidence that Kenner used the Adventure People as their model for the Star Wars figures and actually made some proto-type Star Wars Adventure People! You can see the picture at http://www.toys2remember.com/2010/07/star-wars-adventure-people.html
Pretty cool!
So many good times spent with my FP Adventure People , I’m now 40 and my mother says I’ve accomplished almost all of the activities of my little tribe. I grew up in the mountains with an older brother and spent a lot of time with those little guys and my imagination, it defiantly wasn’t a childhood wasted. A couple of those figures survived threw my kids early years, one of which (pilot with blond hair and blue suit) shows up in different parts of the house, almost like a house gnome, little guy keeps reminding me that we are all just little kids inside.
I have many fond memories of hours spent with FP Adventure people. I had the blue TV van, adventure set including yellow airplane with attachable catamaran/floats; the helicopter rescue set, a red race car, and a daredevil guy with parachute that I played with until I was about 12! Me and my friends would have competitions to see who could throw the guy the highest into the air, preferably with a strong wind blowing, and then see how far he would “drift!” My father had to clamber onto the roof of our house a couple times after the wind deposited the parachute in the eaves trough! Great toys..timeless… encouraged non-violent imaginative play adventures… incomparable quality..I know because I tried a quality control experiemtn when Iwas about 6 to see if my race car could survive being thrown from the top of the basement stairs onto the concrete floor below.. It survived admirably and is still around somewhere. I have found some on ebay and am starting to collect it for my toddler son. I am sure he will enjoy it smuch now as I did a generation ago. Bring it back FP!!
I received the Motorcycle and the Jeep/canoe campers as hand-me-downs during the early 80′s
I made a blog-post about them last week, as I think they may have had an influence on what I do now as an adult
http://motojournalism.blogspot.com/2011/01/under-influence.html