"Marx Memories" Topic

See my blog for my recent rediscovery of my childhood memories.

link

Ah, the good old days. In the sixties it was Marx and now it is Foundry.

The reality is I should have kept my huge Airfix collection of American Civil War figures. Now I have come almost full circle. Back to American Civil War, at least, painting Foundry figs in greatcoats and setting up dioramas on my soldier table.

Maybe some day I will find a person to enjoy gaming with.

Contact a local gaming club in St. Louis. bmhga.org/index.html

Don't forget to add your comments to the blog! I'd love to read your memories!

I spent a couple of years in the early 60s bed-ridden (histoplasmosis), and the blue and gray playset kept me company. Many a battle was waged over mountains made of piled pillows.

I remember fondly one of my best Christmas' ever. My parents gave me two playsets. One was Fort Apache and the other was a WWII set.

The WWII set had a helicopter that you attached to a spring loaded base. After you wound up the rotor you hit a switch on the base and the helo would shoot into the air! Well, for some reason I wanted a top down view of this and ended up getting banged up by the helicopter as it rose up into contact with my nose!

For years I kept both playsets in a locker at the foot of my bed. Memories! Lonely water-colored memories…

'Misty'- how soon we forget.
;-)
As a small boy-fourish- I had something similar to the Fort Apache set one Christmas. Think it was called Fort Cheyenne.
Still look for it on eBay but I've a feeling it was some far east incarnation and has been lost to posterity.
I thibnk I actually fell in love with it.

Rusty musket- got about 2,000 Airfix ACW. And I still play with them!

OH YES I would bet that the vast majority of the "gray beards" still left in the hobby share much with you concerning MARX ACW, FORT APACHE (In several guises), Western Towns ( Both Sides), Cpt Gallant, The Alamo, ZORRO, Super Circus and on and on. I had it all, and the main difference between us is now I have absolutely nothing remaining except the memories! What happened to all that stuff I had??

Hi Scott,

Cool post!

Shalom,
Maksim-Smelchak.
6mm-minis.blogspot.com

Echoing what others have said, I'm pretty sure there would have been no hobby obsession for me without the Marx sets in my formative years. Even today, if dragooned into an antiqueing foray by you-know-whom I'm always looking for any original Marx survivors. A little Davey Crockett has been swinging his musket above my painting desk for years.

SteveJ – smart man!Every so often I decide I have too much stuff and I sell or pitch.

I can still vividly remember one Christmas when I received both the Cape Canaveral and Knights/Vikings playsets – the ones that came in a metal fold out "briefcase".

Not sure if they were Marx or not, but I still get misty when I think of that day. Not only are the playsets long gone, but so are most of the people that were there.

My brother supplemented the playset knights with some Britains – the kind where you could remove just about everything; weapons, heraldry, and visors. They were soon as bare as the Marx knights!

GregS

I never saw any Marx figures, but my Airfix childhood memories are my present day warriors. These guys:

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sport the same HUmbrol gloss colours (with some matts) from about 1973 or 4 and are veterans of my ant wars (setting up figures and sending them to war against an ant hill with a hammer as heavy artillery – I expect thousands of ants will make me run the gauntlet for retribution in the afterlife) and later games in the dirt in my backyard with my friends. Of course, they weren't based until the last ten years or so…

This Fujimi 38(t) is a vet of the same battles above:

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And this Fujimi Elefant, from a pics of battle reports on my web site:

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is shown here in the grass in 1977 in the bottom right:

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Greg, I had the Cape Canaveral – wasn't it called "Cape Kennedy playset"? Something I asked for, for Christmas after seeing it in the Sears catalog. I loved it as well, but it too, sadly, is probably at the bottom of our city's trash site… One of the Saturn rockets you could take apart and there were little spring loaded launch pads too, and I think truck/trailer sets to carry the rockets, wasn't there?

Had one of those sets. No idea who made it but there were about 8 or 9 rockets- all with your spring-loaded 'launchers'.
Happy days.

My first games involved slinging checkers at 1/72nd Airfix guys. It soon progressed to rolling dice, first with Joe Morschauser's rules and then Lionel Tarr's.

Now that i think of it, there is an area where my dad built a huge sandbox around an old oak tree near the old farm house where I used to live. I would play there for hours, excavating trenchs, bunkers, and water filled moats for my soldiers.

There are probably still a bunch of these guys buried somewhere in that yard.

I remember my favorite Christmas gift still…..The Desert Fox playset. Classic Marx figures, I believe. Germans and Allies (in different colors of plastic), tents, guns, boxy white German tanks and APC's (all wheeled, no halftracks) and various Allied tanks, jeeps, guns and tracks! Wow….that was like 35 years ago….but time marches on and I have advanced to better, more elaborate toys!

The Fort Cheyenne set is still offered on occasion on eBay.

auction

Not the same one Scott- the one I remember didn't have any of that card artwork- just hard brown plastic wall sections that clipped together.

Steve.

Steve,

My neighbor had that one, I believe. The Indians were very brightly colored and a little on the small and thin side versus the fleshier Marx Indians. It came with a black plastic cannon, which you fired by pulling on a red wooden ball attached to the springloaded rod. The fort itself was smaller than the Fort Apache.

We spent hours playing with that fort, and then we'd head for my house and continue the battle with Fort Apache.

Gee this one brings back memories. I still have a bunch of the old toy soldiers I got as a kid up over in the garage as well as some Britians IIRC AWI toy soldiers done for the Bicentennial. Depending on how many I have I've been thinking of using those for an AWI game I've been thnking of.

The one set I can't find was a set of astronauts made by the Ideal company. I remember getting them when I was twelve the Christmas before we moved. It was similar to the Cape Canaveral set except it was Project Moonbase or some such. Does anybody remember it?

In the 70's I had Fort Apache, The Alamo, WWII, and knights and Vikings My brothers had about the same sets when they grew up in the 60's. Most of us probably had the American Heritage Battle Cry & Dogfight games also.

Still have my Battle Cry, Dogfight, and Broadside games from Milton Bradley. Never did have Hit the Beach.

Think it was the 54mm Herald figures that did it for me when i was a lad.