In 1962 John Glenn circled the Earth three times, and by Christmas kids were running their own countdowns on the living room rug. This crate starts with a plastic Ideal rocket launcher sold between cartoons, then follows the space race out of the newsreels and into the radio dial, the record bin and the toy company's own paperwork. Some of these finds sit right on the launch pad and some drift off into orbit. Strap in and work your way through the box.
1
A 1962 Saturday morning spot for Ideal's Countdown, a control-box rocket launcher that let kids play Mission Control in their own backyards. It aired the same year America finally reached orbit, which makes it the perfect first stage for this crate.
2
Universal gave a whole newsreel issue to Friendship 7: Glenn suiting up, the walk to the pad, the Atlas blasting off at dawn. This is the real countdown every kid with a toy launcher was copying in the backyard.
3
The Tornados' satellite hit lands here through two radio mixes, one pairing it with Matsuo Ohno's electronic Astro Boy sounds, alongside Martin Denny and Les Baxter records from the same hi-fi era. Put these on and you have the twangy, far-out soundtrack of a 1962 rec room launch.
4
We went looking for the Christmas catalog and found the toymaker itself instead: a patent office gazette where Ideal Toy Corporation of Hollis, N.Y. is still registering names like Cross-Fire and Chop Stix a decade later. It is a tangent from 1962, but a lovely peek at the name factory behind the Countdown box.
5
Buzz Corry, Tom Corbett and Planet Man were selling kids the dream of blasting off years before the hardware showed up in TV ads. The mystery reel transfer is a real treat, a collector's tape where Tom Corbett shares space with Jack Armstrong and Captain Midnight.
6
Here are the gantries and the real launches the toy's control box was dreaming of, all from Pad 14: Glenn's Friendship 7 liftoff, Carpenter's Aurora 7, and an aerial shot of Missile Row. The last frame jumps to 1999, when new astronauts posed at the big Mercury monument left standing on that same pad.
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