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Post by Deleted on Feb 10, 2022 18:38:43 GMT -6
I am decisively not a seventies kids. I was not conceived until the early 80's. I'm interested in what some of the 70's kids around here were into leading up to and around the time Star Wars came out as far as music, tv shows, movies, comic books, sports, whatever other extracurricular activities a young person who would fall in love with Star Wars might have been enjoying in their lives. I ask this because a side-tangent developed in my thread about basing a Star Wars campaign around the original story only, pretending the subsequent films didn't exist, and a few people mentioned popular media and actual government debate about human cloning leading up to Star Wars. That made me wonder about popular media and what was going on in the world in general. I could always read historical accounts of such things but I'd rather hear the recollections of original Star Wars fans.
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Post by thomden on Feb 10, 2022 19:32:44 GMT -6
I am decisively not a seventies kids. I was not conceived until the early 80's. I'm interested in what some of the 70's kids around here were into leading up to and around the time Star Wars came out as far as music, tv shows, movies, comic books, sports, whatever other extracurricular activities a young person who would fall in love with Star Wars might have been enjoying in their lives. I ask this because a side-tangent developed in my thread about basing a Star Wars campaign around the original story only, pretending the subsequent films didn't exist, and a few people mentioned popular media and actual government debate about human cloning leading up to Star Wars. That made me wonder about popular media and what was going on in the world in general. I could always read historical accounts of such things but I'd rather hear the recollections of original Star Wars fans. Micronauts! I had a huge collection, and completely forgot all about them when Star Wars came. I wish I knew what happened to them. Other important toys and shows pre-Star Wars Six Million Dollar man (I had an action figure with the bionic eye) Space 1999, I had the Eagle 1 with action figures. It was really cool! I swear I had these Gundam toys before Star Wars, but Wikipedia says they were 1979. I know I got these Japanese robot toys in the Christmas before Star Wars that look just like Gundam and they were so cool. And lots of other things like an Evil Knieval playset. There was a toy called a Starbird that I still have, though I think it was post Star Wars. It is an amazing toy for its era with engine sounds, blasters, reconfigurable components. Every once in a while my kids ask to pull it out so they can play with it. |
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Post by Deleted on Feb 11, 2022 5:46:22 GMT -6
The giant Mecha genre goes way back in Japan. Gundam is iconic and genre defining but it's likely you watched a predecessor. Voltron maybe? I think that was 80's, though. (Okay wasn't Voltron. Looked it up. Wasn't around yet either.)
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Post by geoffrey on Feb 12, 2022 9:45:49 GMT -6
My credentials:
I was born in June 1970.
I first saw Star Wars in June 1977, within a couple of weeks of my 7th birthday.
Now for the stuff I liked before June 1977:
I read Marvel comics, with my favorites being (in this order): Man-Thing, Hulk, and the Defenders.
I watched King Kong vs. Godzilla and the 1933 King Kong film on cable. Late at night I watched a few other Godzilla vs. __________ movies. I loved them all, especially King Kong vs. Godzilla (which was my favorite movie before I saw Star Wars).
Planet of the Apes movies on cable, and the Planet of the Apes TV show.
Micronauts. Definitely Micronauts. The single coolest toy line ever. Before Star Wars I had Acroyear, Galactic Warrior, Space Glider, serveral Time Travelers, Biotron, Microtron, the Mobile Exploration Lab, Pharoid (the coolest figure ever; mine was blue), and the Battle Cruiser. Gods, I feel sorry for children without Micronauts!
Shogun Warriors? I can't remember if these came before or shortly after Star Wars. I had five of the 24-inch ones: Raideen, Mazinga, Daimos, Gaiking, and Godzilla. Not nearly as much fun as Micronauts, but easily the coolest looking toys I ever had. 24-inches tall!
The Six Million Dollar Man TV show.
Space: 1999 TV show.
Land of the Lost TV show.
Space Ghost cartoons on Saturday mornings.
Definitely Star Trek re-runs, both the TV show and the cartoon.
"Real-world/modern mythology books" that I took for Gospel truth: UFOs, the Loch Ness Monster, Bigfoot, the Yeti, the Devil's Triangle, etc. This stuff was all real. OMG.
A set of full-color children's books in my 1st-grade classroom: Myths of Japan, of China, of Egypt, of Greece, etc.
The bagged set of crazy "prehistoric" monsters from which came bulettes and rust monsters.
Plastic dinosaur play sets.
An Apollo rocket with little astronauts.
I'm sure I'm forgetting some stuff!
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Post by talysman on Feb 12, 2022 11:29:56 GMT -6
Not a Star Wars fan, but I remember being interested in possibly seeing this new movie about to come out. Didn't see it until later, and that was on VHS and laser disc. I actually don't remember much in the way of Star Wars commercials at the time, so I heard about it through Starlog magazine, maybe (I occasionally was able to buy that) and through one of those Scholastic things you'd get in school.
Star Trek of course went into syndication in the '70s. Other fantasy or science fiction shows were very rare. You'd catch a pilot every once in a while or a series might even last half a season. This was because the culture was kind of in an F&SF slump in the early '70s. Previous fantastic series like Bewitched, I Dream of Jeanie, The Invaders, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, and Lost in Space, as well as less successful things like Land of the Giants and The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, had all died off. Prime time was dominated by sitcoms, cop/detective shows, and dramas. There were some fantasy elements on Saturday morning cartoons, but the typical cartoon lasted one season. The animated Star Trek came out in '73 and lasted two seasons. I remember that as a big deal because all the original actors were going to be involved. There were occasional other sci-fi cartoons based off older stuff, like the Fantastic Voyage cartoon, and later when the networks went through a cost-cutting phase and switched to live action, you had The Far-Out Space Nuts, the original Ghost Busters, and The Lost Saucer, as well as Land of the Lost.
The main fantasy/sci-fi stuff on prime time was network premiers of movies from the '60s. This is how I saw 2001 and Logan's Run, and of course the only SF film franchise at the time: Planet of the Apes. This turned into a toy line -- I had the action figures and the tree house -- and later spawned a TV series, which was one of the first signs that we were crawling out of the sci-fi slump. Space: 1999 was another sign, although that was weird because it wasn't a network program, but was shown on syndication. I grew up in an area that had stations for the main networks but no independent stations, and cable was pretty much unheard of outside of major cities, but fortunately one of our stations aired Space: 1999 outside of prime time. Only problem was, it was pretty grim, and I didn't stick with it past the first season.
I assume there may have been kids in the '70s watching anime in the cities, but there wasn't any available for general consumption elsewhere. For one year, we had cable TV, but here's what "cable TV" meant outside of big cities for most people in the early to mid '70s: clear versions of the local network affiliates and PBS, a couple independents from the nearest big city (in our case, Chicago,) and a channel with a camera on an automated swivel that panned back and forth across a clock, thermometer, and barometer while the local radio station played on the audio. Still, that brief cable access is what enabled me to watch one anime, Prince Planet, so I knew what that was. This is probably why I never developed a taste for anime. Especially not giant robot anime. Voltron came out in the '80s, and I was pretty much aged out of the demographic by then. All I could think was "man, this animation looks even worse than typical cheap cartoons."
The first space shuttle, which never actually made it to space, was named Enterprise because of a write-in campaign organized by Star Trek fans. Just before Star Wars came out, we started getting more TV shows with less realism, mostly superhero stuff. The Six Million Dollar Man and the Bionic Woman, Wonder Woman (after an aborted attempt with the first Wonder Woman movie,) a Spider-Man TV series (which didn't last, but it was the predecessor to The Incredible Hulk, which did better.) Star Wars basically came out at the right time, after kids were being primed to like sci-fi again.
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flightcommander
Level 6 Magician
"I become drunk as circumstances dictate."
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Post by flightcommander on Feb 12, 2022 21:37:58 GMT -6
Hmm, I do recall watching Speed Racer in the mid 70's, not exactly sure when, but we didn't have cable and I don't even think we had a color TV yet. My Aunt had also brought back a Captain Harlock book from Italy, which I adored then and still have. It's a "technical manual" with plans in it (in Italian) to make models of the weapons and spacecraft out of cardboard, dowel rods etc, very cool. So there was a bit of anime leaking in around the edges even if you didn't have cable and didn't live in a big city.
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Post by waysoftheearth on Feb 12, 2022 22:32:00 GMT -6
I can't believe nobody has mentioned Doctor Who! It has been showing (more or less continuously?) since the early 1960s. Albeit it's British, so perhaps not a thing in the US? Other shows I (vaguely) recall from back when... Lost in Space, Buck Rogers, Masters of the Universe. The last two were prolly technically after Star Wars, but we didn't get Star Wars in Aus in the first instant it showed in the US, so it seems in my fuzzy memory they were around in a similar period. I'm struggling to recall exactly when PC gaming really became a thing, but certainly by 1980 we had the ZX80, Commodore Vic 20 and the like. I'm sure a few years before that we had hand held, battery operated electronic games, and ATARI console games were around since the mid 1970s, pre- Star Wars I reckon. edit: p.s. I never heard of Micronauts; prolly they weren't available outside the US  |
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Post by waysoftheearth on Feb 12, 2022 23:25:06 GMT -6
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flightcommander
Level 6 Magician
"I become drunk as circumstances dictate."
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Post by flightcommander on Feb 13, 2022 1:45:05 GMT -6
Our PBS station did carry Doctor Who but not, to my knowledge, until the mid 80's. They'd broadcast an entire 2hr block on Saturdays. This was the Tom Baker era of the program, and I found it quite peculiar, hilariously low-budget, plodding, and utterly engaging. I knew literally not a single soul who also watched it.
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Post by derv on Feb 13, 2022 9:03:10 GMT -6
Our PBS station did carry Doctor Who but not, to my knowledge, until the mid 80's. They'd broadcast an entire 2hr block on Saturdays. This was the Tom Baker era of the program, and I found it quite peculiar, hilariously low-budget, plodding, and utterly engaging. I knew literally not a single soul who also watched it. Yeh, you would have to catch Dr Who on PBS in the US back in the day. Each PBS broadcasting location was pretty free in scheduling their programming, which could vary significantly region to region. In my neck of the woods Dr. Who was shown one night a week and they typically only showed half of a program with a "to be continued" or "watch the Dr next time..." closing. It gave the appearance of a constantly running program with no end. I thought the Daleks were kinda interesting, but I never knew what the h*ll was going on story wise because I didn't watch it regularly and usually only came upon it by chance. I am decisively not a seventies kids. I was not conceived until the early 80's. I'm interested in what some of the 70's kids around here were into leading up to and around the time Star Wars came out as far as music, tv shows, movies, comic books, sports, whatever other extracurricular activities a young person who would fall in love with Star Wars might have been enjoying in their lives. I don't think extracurricular activities varied that much between the 70's and 80's. Except for the wave created by the personal computer and Atari game console during the 80's. I don't know, maybe Atari was in the late 70's. Video game arcades definitely started popping up in the 70's and were still popular through the 80's. The climate of the country differed greatly between these two decades. Uh, you know, the whole fall of Saigon thing and Watergate scandal. 1977 was the year Carter became President and the year prior was our nations bicentennial. That was a big deal in our town. I had two older brothers who had just graduated HS and were very influential on me. I was wearing Budweiser logo cut off shorts or bell bottoms, mesh baseball caps, iron on t-shirts like "keep on trucking" (R. Crumb), and maybe a pair of aviator sunglasses. Since Star Wars came out the same year as Saturday Night Fever you might have caught me wearing a disco shirt and gold chain too. Muscle cars were popular as well as Car-toon magazine. I enjoyed trying to reproduce some of the outrageous hotrod and conversion van drawings. Car-toon was sort of along the lines of MAD magazine, except for motorheads. Playboy was a popular publication too  |
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Post by geoffrey on Feb 13, 2022 9:13:30 GMT -6
I'm struggling to recall exactly when PC gaming really became a thing, but certainly by 1980 we had the ZX80, Commodore Vic 20 and the like. I'm sure a few years before that we had hand held, battery operated electronic games, and ATARI console games were around since the mid 1970s, pre- Star Wars I reckon. In those pre-Star Wars days, the best you could hope for was Pong. |
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bobjester0e
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Post by bobjester0e on Feb 13, 2022 14:49:30 GMT -6
I turned 10 years old in 1977. Micronauts! Matchbox had playsets with 2 inch tall poseable men (figures) called Mac Men. They were the near reality job types of fire & rescue playsets, and the largest playset was a 2 foot tall plastic molded mountain cutaway base. 12 inch Six Million Dollar Man line of toys. Steve Austin would regularly go up against the android version of Oscar or Bigfoot. He had a telescopic eye and bionic strength to lift a plastic steel beam. He also went up against Stretch Armstrong in wrestling matches. The win/lose ratio was about 50/50 until Steve tested Stretch's ability to stretch... and accidentally pulled Stretch's arm off! Legos were a new hit toy in the early to mid 70's. I only had a few of the basic sets, but I was able to build vehicles & robots for my growing legion of Micronauts & Mac Men. I know I had a lot of other building toys - an early version of K'Nex, Tinkertoys, Logs, a metal construction kit with a working electric motor and a Tyco train set that took up most of my 12x12 bedroom, but the Micronauts ruled the roost. Marvel & DC comics. I was reading Spider-Man, Fantastic Four, Iron Man, Hulk, & Man-Thing from Marvel. In DC, I read Legion of Super Heroes, Superman, Batman, World's Finest, Metal Men, Sgt. Rock, World at War, and a lot of the weird horror titles. There was also Mad, Cracked, Crazy, Pizzazz, Boy's Life, National Geographic, Playboy & Penthouse. (Well, the last 2 were on a separate rack in the back of the store, but we all knew where it was and how to distract Old Man Watkins...) We were into bicycles & motorcycles. We were all too young to actually have a road bike, but some of the more well-off families' kids had dirt bikes. Until they actually got one, our bicycles were our motorcycles, based on whatever model was popular at the time. Mostly Hondas and Kawasakis, and Yamaha models. But NONE of us would have an AMC Harley! The Schwinn and Huffy rivalry was alive & well then too. The local fishin' hole was about a mile outside of town, to the north, on the north side of the river. We'd pack our tackle boxes & poles & bike up to the "ponds" to fish bluegill, catfish and carp. Hunter Safety! I wasn't old enough to have my own rifle yet, but I was allowed to hunt with Mom's 4-10 and .22 Remington semi-auto with supervision. Magpie, pheasant, prairie-dog mostly. I was drawing by the time I was 4. Mom accumulated stacks of drawings & sketches that I'd done in the 70's. Embarrassing now, but I remember it was more about expressing a creative desire and interaction with my drawings, than actual skill or refinement. One surprising drawing I had made was of a curious creature crawling around in narrow tunnels. This creature held a knife and a ring. Turns out that I'd drawn this after seeing Rankin/Bass's The Hobbit. It was Bilbo lost in the goblin tunnels. lol. TV & Movies. TV... a slew of crappy 70's sitcoms & cop shows. Six Million Dollar Man, The Bionic Woman, Dukes of Hazzard, Dallas, CHiPs, Hee-Haw. Happy Days. Wonder Woman! Charlies' Angels, Three's Company, The Incredible Hulk, M*A*S*H, Hawaii Five-O, The Streets of San Fransisco, Rockford Files, Baretta, Cannon, Mannix, Emergency! S.W.A.T. Adam-12, All in the Family, The Jeffersons, Sanford & Son, Chico & the Man, Welcome Back Kotter, Bewitched, I Dream of Jeannie, I Love Lucy, Mork & Mindy, The Love Boat, Fantasy Island, The After School Specials. The Muppet Show! WKRP in Cincinnati. Saturday Morning Cartoons - Loony Tunes, Scooby Doo, Land of the Lost, Super Friends, Jonny Quest, The Herculoids, Space Ghost... Sunday Mornings was F.C.O. - on PBS, I believe it may have only been aired on Nebraska affiliates, based in Lincoln/Omaha. FCO (For Children Only) featured puppets & Hanna-Barbara cartoons - Snagglepuss, Pixie & Dixie, Jinx the Cat, Huckleberry Hound, and the clay-mation series Davey & Goliath. Sunday Afternoon had Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom and syndicated programs from an era long gone: Mission Impossible, Rat Patrol, Lone Ranger, Cisco Kid, Zorro, Hogan's Heroes, Hennesey, Batman, Space 1999 Sunday Night had the Wonderful World of Disney, featuring a Disney movie - either animated or live action. Kurt Russell's "Strongest Man in the World" & Fred MacMurray's "Absent Minded Professor", Dean Jones' "Shaggy D.A." and "That Darned Cat", "Zorro", "Return to Witch Mountain", "The Apple Dumpling Gang", "Pete's Dragon". The Fox & the Hound, Bambi, The Rescuers, Robin Hood, and the older classics... Movies... at 10 years old, and the nearest movie theater in the next town over 15 miles away, only allowed to watch G-rated movies, or, if Mom thought it okay, the occasional PG movie. I don't remember seeing many movies other than Disney movies, or family friendly comedies like "Paint Your Wagon" or a western. I do remember seeing "Any Which Way But Loose" when it came out. There's a lot more, but I'd have to look them up. PBS holds a special place in my heart for Monty Python, The Goodies, The Young Ones, Fawlty Towers, Doctor Who (Tom Baker), and the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. I saw Star Wars at a drive-in theater. The theater is long gone, but I drive by the screen every day. It's still there. AFTER Star Wars - Kenner Star Wars figures & toys. I had nearly every figure from Star Wars and the Empire Strikes Back. I had some of the vehicles & sets along with them: Landspeeder, Taun-taun, X-Wing, Darth Vader Tie Fighter, Death Star, Mos Eisley Cantina, Droid Factory. I never did get the AT-AT or Millenium Falcon.  lol Star Wars ruled everything for a good long time. Marvel comics, Cracked, Mad & Crazy all had their lampoons of the most iconic blockbuster of all time. Battlestar Galactica became the weekly substitute for anyone who yearned for more Star Wars. BSG also had a run in Marvel comics. I have like the first 15-20 issues. Later it was Buck Rogers in the 25th century. (Really, it was for Erin Grey I watched the show. Just Erin Grey.) I recently found what's left of my GIANT sized Marvel & DC comics. I mean, these books are huge! Star Wars #1 has the first 3 issues of the Marvel SW adaption, #2 has issues 4-6 to complete the Marvel adaption of the movie. #3 has all 6 issues. If they were in better condition, they might be worth money, but as it is, they are only worth something to me. Up til now, as far as music, I only listened to what Mom & Dad listened to. Which was AM radio country & western. lol I remember ordering records. I had the Leonard Rosenman Lord of the Rings soundtrack, Star Wars themed disco hits with Elton John's Rocket Man and other theme songs (lol), and a Neil Norman record with a lot of Star Wars inspired shows & theme songs to go along with them. |
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Post by waysoftheearth on Feb 13, 2022 16:11:47 GMT -6
Matchbox cars.
Meccano.
Lego was huge.
Roller skating was also a big thing in the 70s, which led to roller-discos, which led to music (also huge), which also led to amateur musicianship for some of us. That would have been post-Star Wars for my group, because it required more focus and equipment than most pre-teens had.
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oldskolgmr
Level 3 Conjurer
Can the Cleric heal me? What? Alright, the Clerk will have to do.
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Post by oldskolgmr on Feb 13, 2022 16:59:36 GMT -6
Born 1972.
After looking at the above entries the shows, movies, toys, books, comics that had the greatest impact on me were the following.
Star Trek/Star Wars, neck and neck for first.
Ray Harryhausens's films. I ate those up back then.
Land of the Lost (To this day I want to do a binge of the series, I never saw all of it).
I read a lot of comics, but Marvel had my attention.
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Post by talysman on Feb 13, 2022 18:17:00 GMT -6
I can't believe nobody has mentioned Doctor Who! It has been showing (more or less continuously?) since the early 1960s. Albeit it's British, so perhaps not a thing in the US? I first heard of Doctor Who via one of the sci-fi fanzines, either Starlog or Famous Monsters of Filmland, well before Star Wars existed, and bought a used paperback of Doctor Who and the Silurians maybe around mid '70s, but didn't see any episodes until my local PBS started airing Tom Baker episodes around 1977. Oddly enough, I saw a Dalek on TV before that, on an imported British children's show called Vision On. As I understand it, there was a test run of Jon Pertwee episodes in a few major cities, but Tom Baker's "Robot" episode was the first in part of a major push to get people outside of the big cities to become aware of Doctor Who. |
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Post by talysman on Feb 13, 2022 18:23:43 GMT -6
I'm struggling to recall exactly when PC gaming really became a thing, but certainly by 1980 we had the ZX80, Commodore Vic 20 and the like. I'm sure a few years before that we had hand held, battery operated electronic games, and ATARI console games were around since the mid 1970s, pre- Star Wars I reckon. In those pre-Star Wars days, the best you could hope for was Pong. I beg your pardon, but my family borrowed a Magnavox Odyssey from one of my dad's co-workers for a week. It had Table Tennis, the game Atari copied to create Pong. But it also had Handball, and a Haunted House computer game with the first full-color graphics, which you would tape to your TV screen. You moved a cursor around on the screen behind the full-color transparency until you accidentally found the invisible "ghost". |
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Post by Finarvyn on Feb 14, 2022 17:07:37 GMT -6
Hard to remember that far back!  Television - Star Trek, of course. I think I had the old James Blish novels, blueprints, maybe technical manual by the mid 1970's. Other than Star Trek I watched a lot of police shows and westerns. Others have mentioned the Six Million Dollar Man, and that show was one of my favorites. Also the Bionic Woman. Comic books for me were mostly DC, so Superman, Batman, Green Lantern, Wonder Woman, Flash. Toys - Matchbox cars, GI Joe, legos, and those little green toy soldiers were probably my big toys pre-Star Wars. Games - Dungeons & Dragons in '75 so that by the time Star Wars came out I was willing to try running homebrew Star Wars games using modified OD&D rules. Somewhere around that time I started playing old Avalon Hill and SPI wargames. My dad had a copy of Luftwaffe and a copy of Acquire (building hotel chains). Fiction - Prior to OD&D I was reading Tom Swift, Hardy Boys, Perry Mason, Encyclopedia Brown, general mythology books, and stuff like that. Starting somewhere around my OD&D genesis I picked up Lord of the Rings (didn't understand it) and Conan (not the "real" REH Conan, but the Ace paperbacks) and Fafhrd & Grey Mouser, and Dune, and John Carter. |
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Post by captainjapan on Feb 22, 2022 20:45:55 GMT -6
I just read that activity books full of mazes were a big fad in the early seventies like sudoku in the 2000's. Does anyone remember this?
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Post by Zenopus on Feb 23, 2022 0:32:57 GMT -6
I do. Look up the various 3D Maze books illustrated by Larry Evans. His 3D Monster Maze book was a particular favorite of mine prior to discovering D&D:   |
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aramis
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Post by aramis on Feb 23, 2022 2:28:41 GMT -6
I am decisively not a seventies kids. I was not conceived until the early 80's. I'm interested in what some of the 70's kids around here were into leading up to and around the time Star Wars came out as far as music, tv shows, movies, comic books, sports, whatever other extracurricular activities a young person who would fall in love with Star Wars might have been enjoying in their lives. I ask this because a side-tangent developed in my thread about basing a Star Wars campaign around the original story only, pretending the subsequent films didn't exist, and a few people mentioned popular media and actual government debate about human cloning leading up to Star Wars. That made me wonder about popular media and what was going on in the world in general. I could always read historical accounts of such things but I'd rather hear the recollections of original Star Wars fans. I was listening to top 40 radio, because my allowance wasn't enough to afford LPs; I had small handful of LPs, and my own turntable, radio-amp, and speakers. The LPs I do recall: one was an Olivia Newton-John one. I had a bunch of my dad's 45 EP records... a whole stack of looney toons ones. I had "Play guitar with the Ventures." I kept relocating dad's copy of the Kingfishers' Louie Louie. I was reading some heinlein, and getting chided for it by my teacher. I had a subscription to Analog and Omni. I also got Dad's copies of Games magazine after he read them. I was moving from reading children's readers to juvenile novels; my bedtime stories were classic mythology and saint stories, in roughly 2:1... I was just discovering Heinlein; Mrs Case made me read and explicate before she'd let me check it out. Tunnel in the Sky. I was playing boardgames - Life, Monopoly, Sorry, Aggravation, Mille Bournes, Blockhead, Ohwahree, Triominoes, Mouse Trap. I couldn't figure out Dad's copy of Tactics II. I didn't have access to an Atari until after Star Wars. I'd grown up watching Trek, both the animated (first run) and the live action (in rerun.) Sat. Morning cartoons were JLA, Looney Tunes, reruns of Space Academy, Jason of Star Command, Ark II, Shazam and Isis. Weekday mornings, Captain Kangaroo. (My favorite part was Simon... "Oh, I know my name is Simon, and the things I draw come true, and they take me, take me, take me climbing the garden wall with you"). After school, L-5, Electic Company, A Family Affair, I Dream of Jeannie, Bonanza, and Star Trek. Mother Moose was no longer airing, but had hooked me on Mr. Magoo, Underdog, Mr Peabody and his boy Sherman, Rocky & Bullwinkle just a few years before. Action figures- I had some. GI Joe. 12" ... received Christmas of 1976... I had a calculator (Mom's 5-function electroluminescent; she had just gotten new one, smaller. Both died around the turn of the century...) |
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Post by captainjapan on Feb 23, 2022 9:09:45 GMT -6
I do. Look up the various 3D Maze books illustrated by Larry Evans. His 3D Monster Maze book was a particular favorite of mine prior to discovering D&D: I wasn't sure what to make of the Larry Evans mazes at first. I thought they might be art books rather than activity books, but this Monster Mazes from '84 is clearly paperback. The price on the book is $1.50 which seems more in line with a crossword or a word find that you could pick up at the airport newsstand. That's more what I had in mind, yeah. The publisher of that particular book is Troubadour, who also published the AD&D Coloring Album in 1979. Still, I wonder about there being a heyday for the "maze" style adult activity books during the time when d&d was conceived. It's possible, I suppose, in the same way that elaborate coloring books became a thing a few years ago. edit: Thanks to the Troubador/ Larry Evans lead, I found this interview which is shedding some light on the maze craze: 2warpstoneptune.com/2013/11/25/the-story-of-troubador-press-an-interview-with-malcolm-whyte/ |
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Post by Zenopus on Feb 23, 2022 13:05:59 GMT -6
I had that Monster Mazes book by 1980 or so; I have a copy here and the copyright date is 1976. That's still a few years after D&D got started, but the product listing in the back has a section of "Gamebooks" that includes a number of earlier mazebooks, including Maze Craze, which may have be Troubadour's first Maze Book. Another maze book from the era - I think I had it before Monster Mazes - that I remember fondly was one that made a maze out of the streets of various cities of the world (London, Paris, etc). I've never been able to trace this one down on the internet. There's a much newer book called "City Mazes" that does the same thing, but it's not the one I remember. [Update: *Finally* found it using World Cat. It's "The Great Round the World Maze Trip" (1978) by Rick & Glory Brightfield - who are mentioned in the article below] Here's a NYT article from 1975 about the '70s Maze fad: www.nytimes.com/1975/07/27/archives/labyrinthian-way.htmlSo the above article is from about a year-and-a-half after D&D was released in Jan 1974, but there are already 30 maze books on the market. Koziakin's first book, Mazes, was published in 1971, which is well before D&D. So the beginning of the "Maze Craze" does predate D&D and may have been part of the milieu in which it was developed. |
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Post by captainjapan on Feb 23, 2022 14:51:05 GMT -6
That explains my confusion. I've only ever seen mazes of the toss-off variety like you find on the back of a fast food placemat or in the newspaper. All of it is kids' stuff. These seventies mazes clearly take some skill to produce.
Since they're so elaborate, I wonder if it wouldn't be a better use of the DM's time to grab one of these maze books off the shelf and start walling off portions to produce rooms and chambers rather than mapping the dungeon corridors from scratch. I'll bet somebody's already thought of that.
I'm going to see if maybe there are reprints of any of these books in the NYT article, because finding an original that HASN'T been marked in will be impossible after all this time.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 25, 2022 14:14:41 GMT -6
I don't have much to add in this thread I started, but I will say I've got a lot of reading, watching and listening to do for my Star Wars game campaign prep over the next few years. The idea is to absorb the things that inspired Star Wars and that were big in the world it was released in to get into the proper mind space. I've got a pretty good handle on the things that inspired it already, as Lucas has always been vocal about that. It was the other side of the coin that was missing, and you guys have given me a lot to look into.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 25, 2022 14:17:10 GMT -6
Ray Harryhausens's films. I ate those up back then. Land of the Lost (To this day I want to do a binge of the series, I never saw all of it). These two, I can say something about in the mean time. Ate all those Harryhausen effects up as a kid and still love them, and I grew up on the 90's remake of Land of the Lost and went back later to check out the original. I always loved that "lost land" trope in sci fi and I think it would be a neat idea for a Star Wars game if the Falcon got caught in some kind of temporal vortex and Luke, Han, Chewie, Leia and the droids ended up in a lost land type scenario. Dinosaurs and cavemen, alien lizards with phaser guns, etc. |
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Post by Zenopus on Feb 25, 2022 15:09:17 GMT -6
Since they're so elaborate, I wonder if it wouldn't be a better use of the DM's time to grab one of these maze books off the shelf and start walling off portions to produce rooms and chambers rather than mapping the dungeon corridors from scratch. I'll bet somebody's already thought of that. Offhand, one dungeon that was definitely influenced by mazes was Judges Guild's Nightmare Maze of Jigresh (1981):  |
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Post by Deleted on Feb 25, 2022 15:24:02 GMT -6
Kinda looks like the internal organ of some titanic creature.
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Post by tombowings on Feb 25, 2022 22:27:30 GMT -6
I don't have much to add in this thread I started, but I will say I've got a lot of reading, watching and listening to do for my Star Wars game campaign prep over the next few years. The idea is to absorb the things that inspired Star Wars and that were big in the world it was released in to get into the proper mind space. I've got a pretty good handle on the things that inspired it already, as Lucas has always been vocal about that. It was the other side of the coin that was missing, and you guys have given me a lot to look into. I'd recommend Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell for a better understanding of Star Wars. |
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Post by captainjapan on Feb 25, 2022 22:55:19 GMT -6
That JG maze hits way to close to the mark. It needs rooms or some kind of non-mazey features to be added, but I wouldn't run players through it as is.
note: Today I learned the difference between a maze and a labrynth. A maze offers a meaningful choice of paths to follow, but strictly speaking, all paths in a labrynth must lead to the same place.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 26, 2022 9:30:07 GMT -6
I don't have much to add in this thread I started, but I will say I've got a lot of reading, watching and listening to do for my Star Wars game campaign prep over the next few years. The idea is to absorb the things that inspired Star Wars and that were big in the world it was released in to get into the proper mind space. I've got a pretty good handle on the things that inspired it already, as Lucas has always been vocal about that. It was the other side of the coin that was missing, and you guys have given me a lot to look into. I'd recommend Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell for a better understanding of Star Wars. Read it twice already. One of the earliest things I looked into when I got into Star Wars. You probably noticed I quoted Campbell in my pbp game. |
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lol
