Playset Magazine Remembers the Alamo / The Bummer 80's

Whew... I just got done reading most of the way through the latest issue of Playset Magazine. I really enjoyed this issue. It was devoted entirely to the Alamo with pictures galore. I'm sure I've mentioned before that I'm not a big devotee of the Alamo era, but this sure got me interested in a hurry. Near the back of the magazine was an ad from TSC offering a set of recast Marx items for a really good price. Or at least it seems like a really good price. I've checked it against some other places and seems to be a steal actually. Anyway, it looks a whole lot like what you may have gotten back in the original Alamo sets. If you have the magazine, make sure to check it out.

The magazine actually comes to my parents house because my mail service likes to shred my magazines for some reason. My dad usually ignores them, but this one he kept skimming through. I think his generation (the baby boom generation) has a close relationship with the Alamo that my generation never picked up. When I was a kid (or, previously in my childhood), there were no Alamo movies. The John Wayne Alamo seemed dated to an 80's kid, and it didn't inspire the imagination that it did in kids of an earlier generation. Too bad really. The 80's were a bummer. Well, we had G.I. Joe cartoons and Star Wars movies, and those were the toys I chose to get. I had no historical heros. There were none to be had. There were baseball players, race car drivers, and plenty of He-Men and Transformers, but no actual historical personalities. I wonder if that could explain the apathy with which history is viewed today by guys and gals of my generation. Instead of having a cool movie like Ben Hur, we got Barbie and the Rockers. Meh.