My childhood and that of many millions of Fifty somethings were suffused with a fascination about the future and outer space. In the Sixties the two went hand in hand and their combined effect was felt in all walks of our lives: comics, cinema, toys, TV, music and clothes. I was going to add school but I'm unsure if it permeated into the almost-Victorian Primary School I went to. I'm not even sure if adults generally felt the same buzz that us kids did.
The sheer ubiquity of space stuff during that decade is still largely a mystery to me. NASA only landed on the Moon at the end of it so what drove the preceding 9 years? Was it President Kennedy's rousing challenge to get to the Moon? Was it the white heat of new technology after the dour Nineteen Fifties? Was it the work of visionaries like Gerry Anderson and Terry Nation or where they reacting to the same vibe as the rest of us? What do you think readers?
So what about Today? I heard someone say recently that space has never been so hot a topic as it is now. China's in space. The International Space Station has been on UK telly all week. Gravity has won a ton of awards and Mars seems to be the number one place to live by the end of Century 22. So how come there aren't a slew of space comics like TV21 or Countdown or futuristic series like Thunderbirds or UFO? More to the point, where's the avalanche of space toys and merchandise that we were buried under during the Sixties? Am I missing something?
I don't have small kids and it maybe that the new space age is surfacing in modern media like Xbox, apps and Wii rather than toys. Or maybe its a new space age for adults and not kids at all?
What do you think readers?
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