Tuesday, January 15, 2013
Rocket Ride '77 (PART ONE)
'77 was a rockin' year for rockets-- for one, KISS released ALIVE II which featured the best Ace song ever-- ROCKET RIDE! And following up the space traveler theme of our previous post, is the first in a two-part series of scans from the Estes 1977 Model Rocketry Catalog. Building and then launching your own model rocket was very popular when I was a kid, maybe it still is today. I was nine years old in 1977 and the prime age to be obsessed with this exciting hobby (I know it kept me interested for at least a few minutes anyway.) So here's the first half of the cool ordering catalog, ahh so many great kits to choose from, and colorful page lay-outs too, highlighted with pictures of super groovy, feathered haired, bell-bottomed kids having a blast (get it?) with their rockets! And feast your eyes on DER RED MAX pg 20-- that was the one I had!
i had absolutely no idea there were so many of these things. seriously. i thought there was, like, one. or maybe two.
ReplyDeleteWell obviously there's like more than a handful.
ReplyDeleteyou don't say.
ReplyDeleteI'm personally disowning all your blogs if you think Rocket Ride is the best KISS related Ace Frehley song. You, good sir, have obviously never heard Ace's KISS solo album! :)
ReplyDeleteRocket Ride and Parasite are definitely my favorite Ace songs (Rocket Ride was intended for his solo album!) I got all 4 KISS solo albums the day they came out at Woolworths-- Ace's album is great, but personally I say Paul's is the best one.
ReplyDeleteDisown away, my friend!
Paul's is the BEST???? I don't even know you anymore!
ReplyDeleteThere's Ace's album, and then there's 3 hunks of vinyl that would only be useful if melted down for bottle caps on off-brand grape soda.
What next, "Music from the Elder" is the best KISS album? :)
No you're right Brian... everyone should only agree with your opinion, even us dudes who've been listening to Kiss since we were 5.
ReplyDeleteKars, don't take it personally, tiz all a joke, by the :). It was meant to be a humorous discussion done in the style of a fan who won't take any other opinion as anything but gospel, and leads up to a chance for me to mention "Music from the Elder" as a joke.
ReplyDeleteThat's why I put in all the :).
In the 70s I really listened to zep, sabbath, and embarrassingly, Styx, so I don't really have a dog in the race!
The Elder has some good tunes on it, it's definitely far from being the worst KISS album.
ReplyDeleteWhat's wrong with Styx? I love Styx.
Nothing wrong with Styx, I love them too, but they stand out as the one oddity in my listening collection. The 70s was all zep/sabbath type stuff, early 80s was all Ozzy/Dio stuff, late 80s was all thrash and punk (and that's when my classical training started, so there's that, and yes, I know how snobbish that sounds.)
ReplyDeleteStyx was always the most pop oriented (though early was more prog) stuff in my collection, and always the one band that when I hung around the punks or the thrasher they would make fun of me for!
My 70's was mostly Kiss but everything else in between too. I wasn't all hung up on just being a metal or hard rock kid because I knew I liked certain things about pop music whether it's top 40, classic country, real soul, etc... I dig all music from as far back as classical, big band era up to punk and new wave. Having played in punk, metal and industrial bands for the last half of my life most people are surprised when I tell them my favorite style music is actually 70's bubblegum rock and cartoon theme songs.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, any comments on rockets?
I wish I could comment, but I never did rockets. I always kinda wanted to, but they were pretty pricy for something you could only do, like, at most three times before having to pay all over again. Dug the idea of strapping fireworks together and shooting them into the air, though.
ReplyDeleteInterestingly, good fireworks were illegal in North Carolina when I was growing up, but "rocket engines" that could send these things six times higher than Cat III fireworks were perfectly okay. Can't believe I never built a bazooka out of the available parts. Or strapped real engines to my Battlestar Galactica and sent it into low orbit. Or something. But I didn't.
I had two different rockets and each one only went up once. Der Red Max exploded in mid air (I think I forgot to insert the flame proof wadding), and the other one parachuted way up into a treetop, unretrievable.
ReplyDeleteNext post has Rocket Cars-- something I had a little more luck with!
These are still sold to answer a question in the original blog post. They do cost a lot more than $1-4.oo though.
ReplyDeleteI appreciate the trip down memory lane. I had a lot of the rockets in this catalog and basically built them but never launched them - I could never figure out how. After literally years of buying these I one day had my eureka moment and launched a couple. The fun lasted the rest of that summer and I moved on to other interests.
Thanks for sharing, Joe! Speaking of sharing, thanks for sharing a lot of my Xmas card posts on your own blog too! Please feel free to link back to my blog here when you do so. Thanks again!
ReplyDeleteI still build and fly rockets! In the back of comics there used to be an ad for "The Olympic Sales Club" where you could send away for their catalog then go door to door making sales for them to earn points you could use to ear prizes. One of them was a rocket starter kit. I went out and made door to door sales to earn it and I'll never forget when it came. Estes Alpha III with a red launch pad and solar controller. 30+ years later and I'm still at it lol
ReplyDelete