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Yes, just what is wrong with the Star Bird? I ask this question as this space toy has virtually never been mentioned on this blog, which seems odd now I think about it. Does it represent a nadir in space toys? A break from the classics of the Sixties and early Seventies? A herald of the commercially-controlled video games pandemic?
Hard to say. Made by Milton Bradley in the late Seventies, it looks like it has everything. Its a big toy with detachable parts and sound effects. What's not to like? A quick google and I can see it's a very popular toy covered on many other blogs and websites. Just not here! There are colour variations, different names, companion toys like the Intruder and Big Trak and custom jobs. In fact one site declares it to be the best space toy ever! Perhaps for some kids it was and is their Zero-X!
Despite finding several Star Birds at Car Boots in the Nineties, in their distinctively huge flat boxes, a possible clue as to its invisibility here at MC is the fact that I never had one as a kid. By the late Seventies I was already in my late teens. Perhaps this is the crux of it. Moonbase readers may just have been too 'old' for the Star Bird for it to mean anything to them.
What do you think readers? Are we simply not the Star Bird generation?
