Milton Bradley’s “Starbird” Toy in 1978
We’ve glanced at the Starbird before (commercial posted here), and while running a Google archives search I encountered this 1978 Popular Mechanics article about electronic toys that also shows off the Starbird toy. Awesome fun wrapped up in these three pages from the seventies; my only complaint with the article is that it’s not printed in color.
Games and toys appearing in the article, besides the Starbird, include electronic Battleship, Alphie, Speak and Spell, and the Mego Toys 2-XL robot . . . and hey, the 2xlrobot.com site even shows this toy in color!
Many different companies before Mego absolutely hated the 2-XL concept! They felt that since it was an educational toy it would bomb, because kids only wanted action toys; since it would have to cost over $29.00, it would be too expensive to ever sell enough to be popular; and since it relied on seperate cartridges to work, parents would refuse to buy it because their kids would lose the tapes.
Related articles
- 1962 Popular Mechanics and Toys of the Year (battlegrip.com)
- Transformers, G.I. Joe, M.A.S.K., and More from 1988 (battlegrip.com)
- Google Hangout Video Chat with the Transformers Design Team (tfw2005.com)