Favorite Christmas Presents, part 1

With Christmas just around the corner, I thought I'd make a few posts talking about some of my all time favorite Christmas presents. I write about these this year mostly because what I'm going to get for Christmas this year are some appliances that I'm already using! They're expensive, but it doesn't really make for a magical Christmas.

But my childhood Christmases were absolutely magical! And one of my favorite Christmas presents came in 1977, when I got Baron Karza and Andromeda, a Darth Vader like bad guy and his horse-creature. The toys were both members of the Micronauts line of toys. Micronauts were a lot like their grandchildren, the Transformers, in that the toys could transform into various configurations. In some ways, though, the Micronauts were BETTER than the Transformers. While Optimus Prime can only be a big robot or a truck and that's pretty much it, Micronauts had a number of configurations possible. As in the picture above, you could remove Baron Karza's legs and Andromeda's head and attach the two to create a centaur. You could also remove Karza's arms and place the missile launchers that are in the side of the horse onto Karza's trunks. You could even put wheels on the horse instead of legs!

There were dozens of possibilities. And to top it off, the toy shot missiles out of the missile launchers and out of Karza's chest. In addition, the fists shot off of the arms.

There was plenty of creativity possible with the toy, and I played with it for hours. I remember irritating my mother (but not in a bad way) when she asked me what my favorite present was that year. I told her Karza and Andromeda, and she laughed, and said, "You just never know. We spent all that money on BLANK and you want to play with this cheap toy. Amazing!"

And to irritate Mom even more, I no longer even know what BLANK is. I just remember that whatever it was, Mom and Dad paid a lot for it and they thought that it would be my favorite present!

But it wasn't. I had Baron Karza and his horse around for years. And I remembered it so fondly that when I first learned about ebay almost a decade ago I purchased a used Baron Karza to replace my long lost toy. It's in a plastic bag in the basement of our house, but I'm seriously considering putting it on display in my office at work.

I hope someone with some sense convinces me not to do so!