What I wanted for Christmas #6: Star Bird by Milton Bradley

In looking up all these old things we wanted back in the 70′s and 80′s, I’m struck by the profound advancement in the coolness of toys over the years. What our kids get would have seemed like pure magic when we were their age.

(Yeah, I know…my granddad talks about getting fruit for Christmas and loving it. I’m not complaining. I’m just pointing out how vast the differences are between what’s available to generations.)

Few things illustrate this difference better than the Starbird.

This was a spaceship toy that was downright awesome. And I don’t mean the trying-to-relate-to-a-younger-generation “awesome”. It was the real deal. It looked awesome (still does) and it had awesome electronics in it.

Touchscreens? No. Wifi connections to a worldwide network? No. Uber-cool features du jour with the latest firmware? No. But just look at this advertisement (I think this one is from England…audio is very low…not because it’s from England….that’s just FYI.):

If you tilted it back, it’s engine sound would go up. And if you tilted it down the engine sound would go down. And it had an unprecedented laser sound. Yay technology! Of course we had to have one.

Oh, and that whole front part was a detachable ship–a concept which was strangely central to a certain very popular Scifi show that came just a few years later.

Here’s another recent Youtube video, which is slightly disturbing given that the guy is a grown man. I expect Chris Hanson to bust in at any minute:

We also got the “Intruder” model and eventually the command base:

In some ways the command base was the coolest, because it had plenty of open-ended play opportunities. This made it more fun than even our Star Wars toys because lacking a complete backstory we made up our own adventures.

Which led to the real reason this toy was great. It also provided great sound effects for our cassette tape recordings. I would sit around with a cassette deck and record adventures of my all of my toys, stuffed animals, action figures, etc. This is pre-computer days, remember. (I still have some of these cassettes.)

The Starbird was an excellent toy for making the sound effects in these epic audio masterpieces.

So there you have it. The Starbird.

(And here a couple other articles)