Nostalgic for the thrilling days of yesteryear

Nostalgia is a feeling sometimes known as “I had one of those when I was a kid.”

One of the weird and cool things about Facebook is having so much of the past brought to the present. Whether it’s pictures of toys and events from long ago or videos of opening themes to long-forgotten Saturday morning TV programs, there is no shortage of nostalgia on the social media site.

Sometimes it’s just downright painful to be reminded of things I once had. As a young boy I had a huge collection of Mego action figures. I was especially attached to the superheroes and Star Trek figures. I played with them, broke them, repaired them and replaced them frequently.

One day I left them at my best friend’s house. That happened to be the day his parents packed his room – my toys included – and moved to Oklahoma. I never heard from my friend again and have often longed to find out if they kept my toys with the unfulfilled promise they made to return them.

I’ve thought of rebuilding my collection, but with the figures going for upwards of $100 on eBay, it hasn’t been practical. I don’t want them for their dollar value (though in hindsight they proved to be a great investment); I want them for their nostalgic value. I had many happy memories with those. Now that they’re making movies based on all those characters the feeling of loss is deepened.

At one point I had all the original Star Wars action figures. But the “grown-up” teenager that I was in the early 1980s was more interested in the 50 cents each I got for them at a garage sale. D’oh! I have nobody to blame but myself for that mistake.

I still have my favorite toys from my early childhood. My Lone Ranger and Tonto figures and horses by Gabriel are proudly displayed on a shelf at home. I also have my rubber pterodactyl and, thanks to the generosity of a former neighbor, I have my Charlie McCarthy ventriloquism doll.

The Lone Ranger figure, however, is hands-down my most bestest favorite of all. I’ve always been a big fan of The Lone Ranger and even created the Lone Ranger Fan Club. It began in 2002 when I took over a quarterly Lone Ranger newsletter called The Silver Bullet. The next year I created the fan club.

Ever since 2002 I have been following rumors, development, cancellation, and ultimately production of a Lone Ranger movie. For nearly a fourth of my life I lived, breathed and published every nuance of this movie that I could. Just as Disney was finally moving the movie into production, personal circumstances changed and I had to pass on ownership of the fan club and newsletter to another fan. It killed me to do it.

I wanted to be cast as an extra in the movie, but couldn’t afford to travel to Colorado or New Mexico for the auditions at the time they were held. I stayed in regular contact with Jerry Bruckheimer’s office throughout production and even had pre-production email exchanges with one of the writers.

After years of stalking this movie and promoting the heck out of it, the time arrived last summer for it to ride across the silver screen. It was – how to put it politely – different. The moviegoer in me loved it. The Lone Ranger purist in me didn’t. The average moviegoer and nearly all of the movie critics hated it.

If the filmmakers who dumped $250 million into making it were crushed by its reception, imagine how I felt after 11 years of eager anticipation. I had been emotionally invested in the movie nearly twice as long as the people who made it.

At least the movie received two Oscar nominations – for hair and makeup and special effects. Unfortunately, it didn’t win either one.

Maybe now that this Lone Ranger phase of my life is passing by I will return to my efforts to build my Mego action figure collection. Or maybe I’ll just grow up, save my money, and relive my childhood vicariously on Facebook. At least I’ve had the common sense to save my children’s favorite toys. Maybe someday they’ll use them for their own nostalgia trips – or retirement, whichever comes first.