Happy Valentine's Day...

This is a photo I took in my bedroom in 1978 (or possibly 1979) with my trusty 110 camera.  This was my Star Wars collection, at that point, and I guess I wanted to document it.  Yeah, I've always been a little strange.  Among the items are models, toys, socks, a calender, a board game, puzzle, and even a school folder (I was really "padding" this photo, wasn't I?).  My Dad, frustrated with my obsession with Star Wars, once angrily exclaimed, "You'd even buy Luke Skywalker 'Poop in a Can,' too, if they sold it!" Today, this really cracks me up and I find myself saying things not too far from this when aggravated with my own kids.  There's also an empty can of Slime in the background, if you look closely.  Not too far off the mark.  Eh, Dad?

The usual format of this blog will be to "showcase" an individual toy from the 1970's with new photos of the toy and me blathering about why the toy was so great...or not so great.  However, I felt this photo might be a fitting image to kick things off.  Since today is Valentine's Day, this photo sort of makes sense.  If you look closely, you can see that the large R2D2 in the upper left hand corner is hand-made.  This was a Valentine's Day box that my Dad and I made using a Quaker Oats container and a bit of ingenuity.  This was the sort of thing that you would take to school to collect all the valentines that your classmates were forced to give you on that day.  There was usually a contest for best Valentine box.  R2D2 took home the top prize that year. 

I will eventually feature many of the toys shown in the photo in individual posts as I still have most of them (even the socks, strangely).  I will also be looking at many toys from lines like Mego action figures, The Six Million Dollar Man, Evel Knievel, Gijoe, and many more.  So, stay tuned.