That's a pretty neat toy. You might wonder how it works. It seems to be just a small directionally controlled fan that pushes a balloon around in the air. Truth is, it "pulls" it more than it "pushes." The fan creates a column of moving air which the balloon "follows." There's something at work here akin to the Bernoulli effect: a moving column of fluid air creates a pressure differential -- a vacuum -- which the balloon "feels" and moves towards. Move the column of blowing air right or left and the balloon follows. It works like a tractor beam of air. This was good for hand eye coordination as it was easy for the balloon to lose the column of blowing air. You needed a steady hand to work this toy, especially to land it. It was also a very early application of the "joy stick" in toys and games.
You might ask why I bring this up. Well, I recently sent Chip my "Voice Of The Mummy" game from 1971 and he's absolutely delighted to have it. I don't know why I carried that toy around with me for so long. Part of it was the fact that my mother had saved all those things and then off-loaded them back onto me. Another part was my desire to regift them to my kids. But Chip was the perfect recipient because he appreciated the Egyptian aspect. Egyptologists are rare in my circles.
My Johnny Astro is even older - from 1967-8, I believe. I even had the coveted Mars and Moon landing bases. I spent countless hours playing with these things:
Then one day I broke it: I snapped the neck - the connecting piece which attaches the olive-colored fan to the red base. Or maybe somebody else broke it - I really don't recall. But I must have been upset. My dad couldn't fix it. In those days, the sort of plastic glues available now weren't around yet. So my mom asked her older brother, Bud, to have a look at it. Weeks (months?) later he paid us a visit and he surprised me with a good-as-new mend:
Uncle Bud found that .45 caliber shell perfectly sleeved the broken piece of cylindrical plastic.* He
Uncle Bud has been dead for years, so I asked my mother about him the other day. Born in 1927, he dropped out of high school, lied about his age, and joined the Navy very late in the war. He didn't see any action, but he did get to cruise up and down the West Coast out of San Diego until his hitch was over. More importantly, he got out of Dodge. When he did return to Wisconsin, he moved to Madison and got his G.E.D. and then went to a local Tech School and trained as a machinist. He then had a long career at the Oscar Mayer plant in Madison as a machinist.
I never did properly thank him for fixing that, and it bothers me still. I can't bear to part with this part of my childhood.
__________________
*He was a reloader as were both my grandfathers.
5 comments:
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Best toy ever.
I made one similar from our vacuum cleaner. Reversed the tube to blow hole on the opposite side so it blew air through the hose instead of sucking air. It was made to do that but was never actually used for that intensive porpoise.
What was it supposed to do, blow dust around?
I got the idea from store that had a similar set up. There was a red balloon just floating in the air.
Is that fantastic, or what?
If they could do it, then so could I. And it worked!
I viewed it as a column of air that surrounded the balloon then met again on the opposite side as a continuing column of air. A steady stream interrupted by a balloon and holding it in place as two hands. The trick was finding the correct distance. I could control the direction of the air stream, but not its intensity. So the distance remained constant.
But that was fine because f'k'n A, it worked!
Had I known such a marvelous play thing existed I'd have bought one.
Now on eBay these Johnny Astro things go for $250 y arriba.
Physics students might note that this toy perfectly demonstrates the spherical polar coordinate system. The spherical polar coordinate system is an alternative to the Cartesian coordinate system. Whereas the cartesian system has 3 degrees of freedom, x, y, z, the spherical polar system also has 3 degree of freedom: angles alpha & beta and distance r. In Johnny Astro, the left hand controls r and the right hand controls alpha and beta. Sucks if you were a lefty and probably grounds for why this toy was discontinued.
Bet he brazed it rather than braised it.
Sometimes the grace we've received from others can be difficult to fully recognize or acknowledge at the time and the weight and significance of being seen, taken seriously, attended to, or granted an unusual or unexpected gift quietly grows with us until we are able to return that respect as you did here with this post.
Thank you for that comment, MamaM.
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