At-a-glance information:

Once in a while as a kid you got a toy that you saw in a catalog or at the store, and were SO excited about it, then you got it home and it slowly sunk in as you played with the toy--a thought like: 'Hey, this kind of sucks'.

I first had that feeling when I got my Remco Kennedy Airport (Alot of Remco toys were kind of disappointing when you are a kid, but make great toys of interest from a collector point of view). Although the box fairly depicted the toy and its contents, to me it looked like you got an airfield and a bunch of planes that flew, and you brought them in and landed them! (Hey, I was 6, what do you want?). What I did get when I opened this up was a folded, game-board like runway, plastic planes, and a little record player inside a control tower that played tiny, real records--supposedly of real control tower transmissions. That was it....YOU made the planes 'take off and land'.

I felt the same dissappointment when I got the Johnny Space Mobile, as an adult!

Remember, Topper is the company that made the great Jimmy Jet, with the lighted landscape on the 'jet screen', (see elsewhere in this site), and the Playmobile car dashboard.

So I saw an ad for this, and it looked like it had a viewing screen, and a gun on top, etc. There was also a microphone that did something.

What I got was this thing detailed below.

	From a distance, doesn't this look neat?
	Here is a close up of the viewing window. No, the landscape does not move, nor is it lit, like in the Jimmy Jet. What is behind the screen is a circular disk, and a drawn picture of the moon and earth on it. It is affixed to a rod at its center, and a gear off the flimsy steering wheel will cause this image to rotate around, giving a very bad depiction of movement.
	Here is another shot of the view, caused by turning the wheel.
	Aren't these neat switches? Unfortunetly, they are not connected to anything.     Deluxe Reading/Topper did include fake dials even on their Jimmy Jet, but at least on that toy you could set the needles. On this toy, there are pictures of needles.
	Ok, great, here is the firing laser gun. Looks neat huh. When you crank the handle, the red point on the front of the gun moves in and out. Unbelievably, it also makes a squeaking sound, like a baby's or dog's squeak toy.
	Now, here is the motorized part of the set. What is it? Why, it's a foot pedal that when you push on it, there is a jet whine kind of sound, which increases in pitch as you push the pedal. Well, that is not bad, but how does it affect the main console piece you ask. Well, it can't do much, because....
	...it's not attached to the console by a wire, but by a piece of thin black rope!           The rope plugs into the console.
	The last item depicted here is the microphone. Does it contain a piece of cellophane to make your voice sound funny? Does it buzz? Does it amplify your voice? Does it hiss? No, it is a chunk of plastic tied to the console with a piece of black rope.
	Here, I attempt to get some sort of enjoyment out of my purchase...

Other interesting notes:

I was so disappointed with this that I was going to sell it. Then my wife, bless her heart, said something about it.

"I know you don't like it too much, but since you have such a nice collection of dashboard toys, do you think you might regret NOT having this particular one in the future, even though it is not as nice as others?"

The damned thing remains on my bookshelf.

Take me back home