Ah, the memories. The joyous days spent imagining the future...

As a 70's child, I grew up with the UFO Interceptor[1] toy, a treasured possession, and fondly remember blasting it around the house, scraping it on the floor, shooting off the rocket missile, chasing the cat, pew pew... but gradually getting tired of it, losing the missile in some corner of our backyard.

I wasn't allowed to watch the TV show, but occasionally caught glimpses of it, mostly only ever interested in the scenes involving the models and spaceships, never quite getting the gist of the story...

A couple years or two later, I received the SPACE:1999 Eagle[2] toy for a birthday, must have been my 6th or 7th year - my Mum obviously realizing I'd outgrown the UFO Interceptor, having long lost the rocket bit that made it the most fun. For some reason by then I was allowed to watch the odd SPACE:1999 episode, but stopped after the trauma of the "Dragon's Domain" episode. (If you know, you know.)

I was enamored with the Eagle for a few months, but after a short period of use it then sat mostly unused as a trinket on my shelf, alongside my Capsela[3] constructions - themselves later supplemented by Denshi Blocks[4].

I have this sense that these devices were how the consumer cycle was imprinted on me as a kid, as well as a deep longing for a computer of my own.

The Interceptor->Eagle path was obvious consumerism, but something else happened .. losing the Interceptors rocket frustrated me immensely, so I fashioned a new one out of a pencil. My engineering mind was thus born.

As I recall, the latch mechanism that made the UFO Interceptor so satisfying as a projectile launcher required that I notch a groove into the pencil, a process that took me an afternoon of whittling, my first practical use of my Swiss Army knife, resulting in various waves of fun and disappointment as the latch/spring eroded the pencil down with each launch .. there was a curve of fun at which the top of the crest the pencil being launched was so satisfying, but after repeated blasts, also kind of boring as the wood wore down. I jammed the pencil in one last time and sat the Interceptor on the shelf, my own space-age Mr. Squiggle[5].

I was also, as a kid, immensely frustrated that the launched projectiles never went straight, rendering it quite useless for shooting things. Especially the cat. Still, my engineering senses had been cracked, the seed began to grow ..

I moved on to Capsela, which was an utter delight to build things to take to the bath tub, and then I was gifted a Denshi Blocks kit by a wise old HAM-fanatic uncle of mine.

Capsela and Denshi were mind-expanding to an 8 year old kid who by then was utterly enamored with any electronic technology I could get my hands on, and I even attempted wiring up the Denshi Blocks and the Capsela to try to make a kind of robot, which never got too far, although my imagination took it into cosmic realms. An imagination flavored by the UFO and SPACE:1999 model sequences, indeed.

This all faded away of course, until I touched my first computer - a Commodore Pet some business associate of my Dad had added to his office without knowing what to do with it whatsoever, just knowing he had to have one .. I think the only use it ever got was as a babysitter for me while he and Dad did whatever it was they did, as I tapped away and learned all the key combo's to make pretty pictures that were, in my mind, maps of the universe. And then, BASIC, and oh what a journey that became!

There was a sexual awakening happening in me too amidst all of this, although I didn't realize it at the time but came to know too well - the crush/trauma I'd had on the lost female crew member from "Dragon's Domain" resurfaced in my teens, and she's still the kind of girl I like. Fatal, pretty, technologically savvy yet doomed to be a victim of the dragon. A smart, imperiled girl I probably could've saved with my Capsela Denshi Robot.

(Replaced not long after with Leela from Doctor Who as a fantasy figure, I recall now fondly .. the Doctors sonic screwdriver sending me into a life-long dedication to the hobby of synthesizers, too!)

What a time to remember how the future used to be...

I've still got the Denshi Blocks kit, managed to keep them for my own kids, who haven't quite engaged as much as I'd liked, but it'll be there for the grandkids when they arrive.

I wonder what they'll do with it, if anything.

[1] - https://www.brightontoymuseum.co.uk/index/UFO_Interceptor_(D...

[2] - https://dinkytvspace.com/359-eagle-transporter/

[3] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capsela

[4] - https://www.elektronauts.com/t/gakken-denshi-blocks/136198

[5] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr._Squiggle

UFO Series Home Page: "UFO" TV Series from 1970