Searching for Johnny Astro

Ever since people started dumping and cataloging their stuff on the Internet, I've been looking, fruitlessly, for a particular toy I once owned. I couldn't recall its name, but it was the best damned toy I ever had. (It wasn't even really mine, it was my younger brother's, but he was too young to use it. So I expropriated it.)

Killing some time on the internets today, I found it. It's called Johnny Astro. And it is exactly as I remember it. The best part of the Johnny Astro fan site is reading all the comments of men, the same age as me, who'd been thinking about the toy for the past 40 years. (And couldn't remember its name.) It's a little like the scene in Close Encounters, when Richard Dreyfuss finally connects with all the other obsessed freaks out there who shared the same vision...

What made this toy so unforgettably cool was the precision it had, and the freedom it made you feel. If you were good, you could launch the balloon, maneuver it across your bedroom, drop it onto the floor, pick up a plastic soldier, and return it to the base station. (Which seemed impossible since the fan only blows air in one direction, until you started to understand what you could do with air currents.) All it was was a fan, a variable-speed throttle, and a steering stick. Driving a car, later in life, wasn't nearly as sweet. I love you, Johnny Astro.