Monday, November 14, 2005

Adventure People, Where Are You?

Do you remember these? I sure do! Fisher Price "Adventure People." I had hours upon hours of creative, non-violent, screenless fun as a kid playing with these sets. I recently found a website that has pictures of all of them. Click here to reminisce.

Am I guilty of a 34 year old's nostalgia? Am I remebering these toys with rose-colored glasses on? I don't think there is anything even remotely as fun, imagination-engaging, and accessible as these wonderful playsets in today's toy market. With a four-year-old and a seven-year-old and Christmas approaching, I am more familiar with today's toy market than I once was. It is not a pretty sight.


With the Adventure People, there were no silly characters. No mind-numbing screens. No attention span shortening computer images. Just people having whatever adventures I decided they would have today.

My safari family, Jim, Mom, Jenny, and Johnny, interacted very nicely with my Star Wars figures, yet they were inherently special to me. They weren't meaningful because they were connected to a movie, a video game, or a Madison Avenue marketing scheme. I just loved the toy itself.

If there is ANYTHING remotely like it on store shelves today, please guide me to it. I have some Christmas shopping to do.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Andy
Have you looked into Play Moblie Toys or Fisher Price Little People? My girls love both of these and will play for hours.

Jonathon said...

I SO had xray man and xray woman!!! I loved playing with them. And they loved to hang out with my tron actionfigure and Hawk and Scarlet from GI Joe.

EyeRytStuf said...

I realize none of these were generic characters, but my older brother had the Star Trek crew action figures, the bridge of the Enterprise, the Planet of the Apes action figures, and a much larger Bionic Man action figure. There were many adventures on and around the bridge involving these people/apes.

Myself, I lived for two things: board games and pop-up books. I never got a pop-up book as a kid, no matter how much I begged. Eventually, a friend in college heard me bemoaning this fact and bought me a couple.

And they were taken by my great-niece.

::sigh::

John said...

Transformers rule! How I loved them! And the early ones were the best because they were cleverly made out of durable materials.

Anonymous said...

Andy - If you find a source, I get first dibs! Mom

Anonymous said...

Im thirty six myself.

Just googled the Adventure People, and found myself here..I love the internet.

I suppose the greatness of that toy-series is the generic quality (a fine description that you offer) of the toy.

It left the creativity, soley to the toys owner.

I had the construction crew, the divers, the moto cross types, and the sky-divers.

Some are still laying around in my mother's house (in a big pickle jar) waiting for me to pick them up again, these twenty plus years later.

P.S. the construction dude in the white tee got lots of action from the diver-chick in the green wet-suit.

LOL!