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1970s Trekkie-Kid Childhood Stories/Pics

plynch

plynch

Rear Admiral
Rear Admiral
In a different thread I asked for info on ca. 1975 Trek shirts. A number of people responded with stories/pics of themselves as Trek children in the 1970s.

Mine: dredging out that 1975 kids' Kirk shirt while in junior high to go to the premier of ST:TMP at the 12 Oaks Mall in Metro Detroit. I had to slouch so it would cover my gut acquired from too much Life (cereal) and Nestle's Quik. Plus I wore the AMT exploration set phaser and tricorder. Good call. :techman: Other kids thought it was pretty "cool" and let me know how much they "admired" me.

Any other memories as a '70s Trek kid, out there?
 
In 1977-78 when I was in first grade, there was this kid named David and he was what they today call "developmentally challenged", though the rotten, hairhelmeted mongrels who tormented him on a daily basis used more direct, unkind terms. Anyway, David wore a gold Captain Kirk shirt to school one day and as we were walking home that day from school, David and I were talking about how cool Kirk was. Then suddenly, David stopped, moved his mouth around and said, "I'll bet Captain Kirk can't do this!!!" and he proceeded to spit out a large amount of that day's school lunch on the sidewalk that he had stored in the side of his mouth from lunch period on. Sorry, no pictures.

On a less-exalted note, about a year later I was at (another) school and we were playing kickball. I slipped in the mud chasing after the ball--you see, I'm very athletic--and had mud all over my pants. So I go to the office and a secretary rummaged through a box of lost and found clothes and tossed me a pair of crayon red shorts and a Star Trek t-shirt which had an animated Spock shooting a phaser at the nose of what looked to be a (generic) red cobra. I spent most of the day looking down at the shirt and thinking how cool it was...ah, the 70s.
 
plynch said:
In a different thread I asked for info on ca. 1975 Trek shirts. A number of people responded with stories/pics of themselves as Trek children in the 1970s.

Mine: dredging out that 1975 kids' Kirk shirt while in junior high to go to the premier of ST:TMP at the 12 Oaks Mall in Metro Detroit. I had to slouch so it would cover my gut acquired from too much Life (cereal) and Nestle's Quik. Plus I wore the AMT exploration set phaser and tricorder. Good call. :techman: Other kids thought it was pretty "cool" and let me know how much they "admired" me.

Any other memories as a '70s Trek kid, out there?
Click to expand...

I was only two when the series started, so I ctarted watching as a kid in the 70's. I remember watching on our Sony 13" and having that snow effect on the tv. It really made me think I was watching something from far away!

I also remember watching the animated series too. Great stuff for a nine year old on a Saturday morning.

And I had a Star trek lunch box and also that fold out bridge with crew included. Great memories.

I really should post pics of my Star Trek bathroom that I have in my current day man cave.
 
I nearly didn't make it into Trekdom. 1979, I'm seven years old and the parental units take me to see TMP. I was used to the fun, bright colors and happy endings of TOS. The next thing I know I'm watching a dark, scary movie. When the happy shiny transporter melts two horribly screaming people, I was freaked out. A few minutes later, the wormhole hit and I had had enough. I turned to mom and asked to go home! Thank the great bird, mom had the presence of mind to tell me that everything would work out fine. Sure enough, Spock showed up and saved the day and the movie got less scary.

Years later I started drawing starships and the die was cast. I realize now how much the flyby of the Enterprise from TMP affected my sense of what a cool ship looked like.
 
Good said:
I nearly didn't make it into Trekdom. 1979, I'm seven years old and the parental units take me to see TMP. I was used to the fun, bright colors and happy endings of TOS. The next thing I know I'm watching a dark, scary movie. When the happy shiny transporter melts two horribly screaming people, I was freaked out. A few minutes later, the wormhole hit and I had had enough. I turned to mom and asked to go home! Thank the great bird, mom had the presence of mind to tell me that everything would work out fine. Sure enough, Spock showed up and saved the day and the movie got less scary.

Years later I started drawing starships and the die was cast. I realize now how much the flyby of the Enterprise from TMP affected my sense of what a cool ship looked like.
Click to expand...


I think that TMP was the first movie I saw that had one of those advertising campaigns where they "interview" patrons coming out of the theater and record them spout off about how great the movie was. Anyone know of commercials that did this in advertising prior to TMP? BTW, I was bored crapless by the movie in '79; now, I actually find things I enjoy in it.

TMP was also the first McDonald's "Happy Meal" I got. I was eight and wanted the thing just because it was Trek. In fact, that may have been the introduction of the Happy Meal. This was January of '80.

I had that vinyl Enterprise bridge playset from MEGO, along with the figures, I had the "Talos" figure. When my parents divorced, all of my toys were in ahuge pile in the back yard, to be thrown out. I remember looking in vain for the Talos figure. :(
 
I caught up with Trek in the 70's too. Thank goodness my older brother was a fan so he and I would watch it together. Long ago I surpassed him with love for the show. I absolutely had my star trek red shirt that my neighbor bought me and her son...I wore it to death but I was secretly disappointed that it wasn't Kirk's color! That's all the star trek stuff I owned as a kid, I didn't even realize (at the time) that there was anything else available. Well I've made up for that now with all the crap I've bought through the years. As far as the animated series goes...I never saw that until only a few years ago when I bought them on Dvd...animated series is excellent and not dumbed down in the least, maybe that's why it only lasted one season. =P
 
I remember being in 2nd grade, and two older kids were assigned to my class as playleaders. They organized us into playing Star Trek. I got to be Spock. I don't think anyone involved, including myself, actually understood the show, but it had an impact on me. I remember a whole lot of running around and zapping.
 
Born in 60 and only saw TOS first-run twice ... the fight in AMOK TIME and SAVAGE CURTAIN. When TOS went to syndication in the Bay Area, they had a special sat night showing before the Monday start, during creature features.

I stayed up ... and damned if it wasn't Abe Lincoln and SAVAGE CURTAIN again. Part of me wondered if Lincoln did the show alot ...
 
I remembered seeing the original series air on TV... I was about 4, I think. And man oh man, was I intrigued even though I didn't quite understand a lot of it. I started drawing back then and Star Trek influenced me alright. I still have a bunch of drawings of the Enterprise I made using magic markers on bond paper. Silly... remember the triangular shafts of the engine room? I ended up drawing the warp nacels as triangular stalks. I completely left off the rotating domes on the front ends! Very odd, given how prominent they are. I guess I just couldn't reason out how they would fit on a triangular tube. ;)

Of course, I later bought the AMT exploration set and built the phaser, communicator, and tricorder. But I was so aware of how the proportion was all wrong. So I wasn't kind to those chunks of plastic.

I later saw the diecast Dinky Enterprise and was disgusted with how ugly and inaccurate it was. Little would I know how much it would be worth so many years later. :lol:

Eventually I got back to drawing once I had a little better skill. At the time Space: 1999 became popular, I had Federation guys with phasers going against Moonbase crews with lasers. I still have all these drawings. :)
 
Two quick stories:

The tree in our front yard was the Enterprise, and the rope we used to climb up into the tree was the Transporter.

One afternoon, as my brother Danny (McCoy) climbed the rope, it broke and he fell to the ground. It knocked the wind out of him.

When he could breathe again, he went to the garage, got a hatchet, and chopped the "transporter" into tiny little pieces.

From then on, an overturned pickle bucket was the new Transporter.

And I distinctly remember my two older brothers messing with me when I was very young. We would watch the show, and toward the end, when the crew was in dire straights and a damnable commercial would come on, they would say, "You know this was the last episode ever filmed, right, Joey? They all die at the end of this one."

And I believed the dirty bastards every time.

Joe, nee Joey
 
Steve67 said:
Good said:
I nearly didn't make it into Trekdom. 1979, I'm seven years old and the parental units take me to see TMP. I was used to the fun, bright colors and happy endings of TOS. The next thing I know I'm watching a dark, scary movie. When the happy shiny transporter melts two horribly screaming people, I was freaked out. A few minutes later, the wormhole hit and I had had enough. I turned to mom and asked to go home! Thank the great bird, mom had the presence of mind to tell me that everything would work out fine. Sure enough, Spock showed up and saved the day and the movie got less scary.

Years later I started drawing starships and the die was cast. I realize now how much the flyby of the Enterprise from TMP affected my sense of what a cool ship looked like.
Click to expand...


I think that TMP was the first movie I saw that had one of those advertising campaigns where they "interview" patrons coming out of the theater and record them spout off about how great the movie was. Anyone know of commercials that did this in advertising prior to TMP? BTW, I was bored crapless by the movie in '79; now, I actually find things I enjoy in it.

TMP was also the first McDonald's "Happy Meal" I got. I was eight and wanted the thing just because it was Trek. In fact, that may have been the introduction of the Happy Meal. This was January of '80.

I had that vinyl Enterprise bridge playset from MEGO, along with the figures, I had the "Talos" figure. When my parents divorced, all of my toys were in ahuge pile in the back yard, to be thrown out. I remember looking in vain for the Talos figure. :(
Click to expand...

In my sons' room hangs the long poster of the cutaway view of the Enterprise refit. Bought it at the concession stand of the the theater in 1979 along with a program book (while wearing the too-small Kirk shirt).
 
Oh yeah, I almost forgot...my buddy and I used to make old watch boxes into communicators by drawing on the silky stuff inside, though I remember they'd snap back down on my fingers sometimes!
 
I've said before that when I saw TAS for the first time as a 4 year old in 1978, I thought it was the absolute coolest thing ever--Star Trek for kids! My 4 year old daughter feels similarly.

Both of my brothers had Trek toys, but by the time I came around, they were all broken (perhaps some of them by me.. )

They were:

1) A piece of a tricorder
2) A communicator
3) A tribble
4) Half of the pieces to the bridge set model
5) Some of the pieces to the 3 in 1 spaceship set--a D-7 with no booms or head, an intact Romulan Warbird, and a Federation Starship's saucer

I didn't get my own toys until I bought 4 TMP action figures in '79 or '80.

The Concordance, the Tech manual, and the first Spaceflight Chronology were my bibles, but that was 1980.
 
and your star trek lunch box would run for $hundreds on ebay these days . . .
 
I went to a Catholic grade school in the early 70s and was quite the bookworm. The school library has a battered copy of the Star trek 3 book with the TOS episodes in it. I must have checked that thing out about 15 times between the 3rd & 8th grade. At the time I had now idea how many episodes there were in TOS and I would occasionally see new ones on Sunday morning on WAVE3 TV. On rare occasion, I'd get to stay up and watch the 1 AM showings on Thursday night if it was a "new" episode.
Then came the joyious day when I went to the Walden Books at Bashford Manor and saw ALL the other Star Trek TOS books. I bought all the others over the next few months plus the Making Of's. It was just soooo cool seeing pics from episodes that I'd not seen yet. Man, that was so much fun seeing episodes for the first time!
 
I still have Rafe Needleman's Star Trek Trivia Book which had a slew of questions on the series (meaning 1966-69) ranked one's expertise on all things Trek by the various alien races. The highest rating was "Organian" and the lowest was "Denebian Slime Devil."
 
Shatmandu said:
When he could breathe again, he went to the garage, got a hatchet, and chopped the "transporter" into tiny little pieces.
Click to expand...

LOL! Best laugh I've had all week, and I needed it!

BTW, that reminds me of when Larry, after having a bellows blown into his mouth, quietly got up and did the same thing to Moe when they were fighting over some girl.
 
I remember playing with our MEGO TOS comms all the time. They had a range of about 10 feet or so, but they were still cool as hell. My brother had the AMT landing party set, but we broke/lost the communicator (the coolest part) pretty quick and had to make due with just the P2 and the Tricorder. Still, they were great toys!
 
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