Toy Story - David Benz

Here is a picture of my modest, but much loved collection.
The Sargent Storm on the power limbs, and the Matt on the space sled are mine from when I was a kid.

Original MMM LISTSERV submission from around 2001

Well, I'm 35, one of the young ones on the list it seems! It is interesting to see that a lot of you are 37, 38, because I really feel like I caught the end of the Matt Mason craze.

My own figures (which my mom packed away, God bless her) were all black strapped, including a Storm. My older brother (a year older than me) and I only had the later accessories. XRG-1, cat tracs, Space power suit. The early accessories (moon suit, rocket launcher, space probe, etc.) I don't remember from my childhood at all, and blue strap matts still look funny to me.

I think we got most of our Matt stuff in Christmas of '70 and '71, maybe a few things as early as '69. I do remember both my brother and I getting flight sets (now lost).

Which makes me wonder, did they put black strap figures on the flight cards? Or had they discontinued the flight cards at that point, and gone to cat tracs only? And then you had to buy the flight pak if you wanted those accessories?

I only ask because I doubt my Mom would have bought us flight paks in addition to carded figures on cat tracs. It just doesn't seem something that a Mom would know to do, you know? So, since I remember those items, maybe I did have a blue strap matt or storm after all, they were just trashed and lost by my brother and I (we would only have been four and five at that point) before we received the next round of black straps which survived.

-- Dave

PS: After Matt I moved onto adventure team GI JOE's! Yeah! I still have a bunch of those and actually remember playing with those more than playing with my Matt's (probably because I was a little bit older and so my memories are clearer). I was done with Joe, however, by the time I turned ten or eleven, because I never bought any Kung Fu Grip guys, which came out in '74. So, thankfully, I missed the indignation of owning any muscle body Joe's, Atomic Man, Bulletman, etc. (although my younger brother, five years my junior, had those... Loser!) 

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