OnBooks

Classic toys have much to say in '18

There isn't an awful lot of text in Leslie Singer's Do You Read Me?: Vintage Communication Toys (Schiffer, $24.99). On a couple of counts, that's a genuine shame.

Because longtime Little Rock advertising guy Singer has a lovely wry voice that perfectly suits this whimsical subject matter, which is mostly pictures of his personal collection of toy walkie-talkies, cup telephones, telegraph sets and related bits of paraphernalia. And because so many of the toys depicted in this beautifully photographed (by Willie Allen) and art directed (by Patti Woods Rye) book cry out for further explication. For example, I'd really like to know if the Solar Space Phone depicted on page 77 actually works.

It probably does, seeing how it uses an "official U.S. photo electric solar cell" and was "seen in Newsweek." (Though it's not clear as to whether Newsweek acknowledged the existence of the Solar Space Phone or the official U.S. photo electric solar cell.)

Looking at the box illustration and the packaging, I surmise that the communication with this device is strictly one-way. There's a "receiver" that looks like an oversize kazoo with a pistol grip wired to a stethoscope and a "transmitter" without the stethoscope, the busy end of which is angled. I can tell from the box that it was manufactured in the USA by ®Hear Ever. As someone who grew up staring at ads for Magic Sea Monkeys and mail-order submarines in the back of comic books, I'm skeptical.

So it's on to the wonderful World Wide Web where, er, there's not much about the Solar Space Phone. But I do find where someone has archived a UPI photo of Danny Gray, 9, using the device to transmit a message some 2 feet to Jackie Meegan, 8. The caption for this photograph says that "messages can be transmitted and received at distances of more than 100 feet -- and even through glass." Cool! The caption also says the "ingenious toy" is "approved by the Boy Guidance Council."

But there is a Magic Sea Monkey caveat here too -- "the sun must be reflected from the speaker ... and aimed directly into the receiver cone of the second unit." So good luck lining the device up at a distance of 50 feet, much less 100. To get it to work over that distance you'd need a theodolite and a working understanding of the parallax effect. And if you're going to make it work through glass, you're probably going to have to allow for some refraction. I'm guessing most kids probably found Solar Space Phone a little disappointing. But it still looks appealing in its vintage packing.

(Oh, and about that vintage. Singer and company have it leading off their section on the 1970s and beyond. The UPI photo is dated Nov. 04, 1960. But that's a quibble, strategically placed in the review to show that the critic isn't completely in the tank for the book.)

Seriously, this is fascinating eye candy and a long overdue companion to Zap! Ray Gun Classics, Singer's 1991 book about his toy ray gun collection that Dr. Atomic, who as far as I can tell is the world's leading blogger on such subjects, called "a major milestone in the history of space-toy collecting."

Apparently Zap! was responsible for raising the prices of vintage toy ray guns. I've always thought that the first Foo Fighters album, which came out in 1995 and featured an art deco Buck Rogers XZ-38 Disintegrator Pistol on its cover, owed a debt to Zap! (Singer prominently featured the 1936 toy in his book. Chief Foo Dave Grohl says the album photo, taken by his wife, fit in with the band's sci-fi theme.)

I suspect that communicators aren't quite as sexy as old ray guns are, but even the casual browser is likely to be struck by the art deco lines and sense of quality inherent in many of these toys. There's very little here that can be dismissed as kitschy junk, certainly not the toys from Remco, a company Singer singles out "for their imaginative and beautifully designed toys of all kinds." ("Every boy wants a Remco toy," the company's television commercials intoned, only after they added a line of dolls in the late '60s did they append "... and so do girls.")

I didn't count them -- I kept getting pulled into rabbit holes while I was paging through the book -- but the Schiffer website says there are 150 color images in Do You Read Me? Almost every one of them evokes that mingling of memory and yearning we identify as nostalgia. While I wish there was a bit more of an attempt at interpretation, Singer may be right to let these colorful bits of bakelite and metal speak their own poetry.

Most of them feel like artifacts from a future never realized, from that midcentury dream of flying cars and cities in the sky. A future some of us somehow outgrew and now look back on with wonder and delight.

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We might be a little skeptical about the efficacy of the Solar Space Phone, but it sure is pretty.

Style on 11/11/2018

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