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| Go Figure! No. 3 Feb/Mar 1998 Cover |
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| Go Figure! No. 3 Feb/Mar 1998 Page 28 |
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| Go Figure! No. 3 Feb/Mar 1998 Page 29 |
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| Go Figure! No. 3 Feb/Mar 1998 Page 30 |
MAJOR MATT MASON
Lets face it, the past is goofy. It's full of loud colors, really bad hair, fashions that that make bad hair look good (and that's bad), trends, products, and concepts that are so out-dated to be considered quaint at best. Still, what's quaint one day often turns from kitsch to nostalgia with a few gray hairs. With this in mind, I bring you the funky, far out space line Major Matt Mason, a mainstay for the over-30 crowd who constantly try to sell you on the idea everything was better in their day.
While I don't beg to differ, I would like to put a few things in perspective.
First, the past, at least the 60's variety, was not all hopscotch and buttermilk pancakes. No, amid the bell bottoms and tie-dyed afros of the love generation, everything was in a state of retro and future shock, all rolled into one. And that included toys. Don't believe me, go ask Alice.
Case and point, the little rubber men seen here, the Major Matt Mason line of "heros" (sic) from Mattel. A big hit with little boys for about five years, which is probably about the same time these same boys hit puberty. That's when the allure of Matt Mason gave way for more, shall we say, earthly pleasures. And lets face it, most toys, regardless of the generation, suffer similar fates.
Major Matt Mason was a cute if not obvious name for a boys toy line. The line made good use of some rather simple manufacturing: a rubber body and a wire frame skeleton that, if moved one too many times would, make Matt one limp astronaut.
And speaking of a judicious use of plastic, the MMM line recycled the same body not one, but four times, with only minor alterations to the costumes. This does not include, of course, the race change of one of the figures, Jeff Long.
Major Matt's laser pistol What Major Matt Mason had going for it probably had less to do with the aforementioned figures, and more to do with four co-factors. Namely the space race, the plethora of Matt's accessories, his price point (about a dollar a figure), and the climate toys enjoyed at the time. But more about that in a minute.
As far as the accessories, Matt and friends were loaded with them. If Barbie had her dresses, and GI JOE had his weapon of war, Major Matt Mason had everything, from battery operated moon-buggies, to a space station the size of a small studio apartment in Manhattan.
Well, maybe slightly larger than a small studio in Manhattan. As for th other co-factors, America's love affair with flying through space was at a fever pitch, and economic times were not too bad, either.
But as far as the collector's interest in the line, goes (indeed, any vintage line of toys), you have to wonder what has given Matt such a placard of longevity in the minds of a generation? Was Matt a great toy? Was he even a passable toy? Certainly to this day, there are MMM enthusiast the world over. That, if nothing else, gives credence to his place in toy history.
Lets take a look at the toys through a new set of eyes and try to gleam what it must have been like for a boy of say nine years old in the mid sixties. He's outside on a summer day playing in a sand box with a bunch of his friends, Matt in tow. I've set the stage. Now what's different about this picture from that of our current time?
First off, our boy is actually playing with Matt. And I mean the kind of serious, all-day play only professional kids know about. If you take a good look at our boys toy you'll notice it doesn't have a number on the bottom of it's foot. It doesn't bulge from it's costume with less a than subtle reference to it's "physical" prowess. No, this toy, this space man has, if anything, all the proportions of the prepubescent who is playing with him. Matt is, in fact, a non-threatening role model, his expression, a fixed, determined politician's grin. There is no referential pose to his body. No, he's just a simple wire framed toy begging to be played with.
And that's what we're really talking about. Major Matt Mason was a toy. Not an instant collectable. Not a hot film property with a movie likeness. Not a piece of sculpted plastic ego. Just a toy. It fit into a sandbox as easily as it fit in a back pocket, glove compartment, under a pillow, or in a bathtub as it did sitting atop it's mammoth space station or crawling across your parents kitchen floor in a Space Crawler while Mom made meat loaf.
Volumes of innocent childhood fantasies were invested in these products through hours of play. It's not too mean to say, the whole product line of Major Matt Mason rested on the cusp of a nations innocence. A thousand social upheavals unfolded in the living rooms of nearly every American family on nightly television. But Matt always smiled, regardless of the cathode-ray atrocities that bounced off his very thick plastic skin. The nation's attention shifted from the plastic helmet Matt wore, Matt reflecting it all oblivious to the history that passed him by. And now history rushes towards us in a nullifying stream of sound-bytes we've heard one to many times. Our past has, in fact, become a cliche of sorts. Ready made and prepackaged as anthology albums and videos. Those bell bottoms all over again. And heaven forbid, the possible resurgence of the classic Major Matt Mason dolls, as it is rumored.
But does anyone really want that? And does anyone really think that buying a recast of a toy from the mid sixties will somehow rectify or clarify our collective memories? That Matt can magically transport us to a time when playing in sandboxes wasn't just a fun thing to do, but an essential rite of passage?
The fact is, if Matt did come back, I think he'd be a very lonely toy. Many of us have forgotten how to play. And I think our obsession with holding aloft the idea that toys should be cherished but not touched, collected but never shared, displayed but always out of arms reach has effectively gutted much of the good will a line like MMM created and infected both the children of today, and toy manufactures as well.. If your reading this article, there's a fifty fifty chance you're way below the age of thirty. You see in the pages of this article some wonderful toys, and a few hokey ones. And you might think to yourself, "Hey I really want to collect some of these things." You think such a collection will fetch a really good price at the next toy show you go to. After all, the price guide says...
If that's the way you're thinking, too bad, you've missed the point. Major Matt Mason was a toy from the past, the 60's to be exact. Matt and his friends are collectibles by default, the way the best of toys are; they were toys without apology. They were the toys little boys cherished as they played with them, and not rarified objects that sat on shelves gathering the dust of more "mature" decades.
Think about it.
Ryan Brookhart
Toys photographed courtesy Joe Kerezman and Max Cervantes
John's Take:
The article starts with a tone I'm not too interested in but then wins me over by the end. Some of the toys are from friend Joseph Kerezman's collection (and maybe some of the photography? It's unclear, but at least he's credited).
All Mattel images and captions are copyright Mattel and used without permission. All other content, including images and editorial, is Copyright © 1997-2024 John Eaton and/or contributors unless otherwise stated. If there are any comments or objections, please contact John Eaton.
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