I'm kind of a fan of the Apollo 13 mission for a couple of reasons. Not only was the ill fated mission one of survival in a hostile environment under highly unusual circumstances but the mission commander, astronaut James Lovell and I are graduates of the same high school - Solomon Juneau H.S. in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He graduated back in the 1950s and I graduated in 1971, however I did get a chance to see him when he visited our school in the early portion of 1971.
The seventh manned mission of the Apollo program, Apollo 13 launched on April 11, 1970 but the mission was aborted when an oxygen tank in the Service Module exploded and crippled the Command Module. After a harrowing week and a series of makeshift repairs the crew of James Lovell, John "Jack" Swigert, and Fred Haise returned safely to earth.
In 1995 director Ron Howard released his movie "Apollo 13" starring Tom Hanks as James Lovell, Kevin Baker as Jack Swigert, and Bill Paxton as Fred Haise. Hardee's tie-in to the movie capitalized on two crazes - the Apollo 13 movie hype and pogs. Pog was a popular game/collecting craze of the early-to-mid 1990s that quite frankly I never 'got'. Don't understand the game and don't want to either! All I know is back then pogs decorated for all manner of themes were hitting the market and Hardee's cleverly decided to have a basically cylindrical object like the Apollo spaceship turned into a pog case. They did this in three 'stages' appropriately enough and each stage included two pogs and there were a total of twenty pogs available. Today we'll look at the first stage. Enjoy! Opa Fritz and Oma Bettina
The components of the set. Each stage is designed with removable caps at either end so that each one could be used independently as a case. All three share a common cylinder mold as the case. Stage one has the booster rocket while the third stage has the capsule.
The peel-&-stick appliques. I didn't notice until after they were applied that the scan was wonky!
The two pogs included in Stage 1
The assembled stages prior to placement of the appliques
That's a Matchbox NASA Tracking Vehicle shown for size comparison
The MPC 54mm astronaut is a tad big for this rig
I have one of thease and all the pogs when it frist came out I am 55 years old but I still love it
ReplyDeleteI never even knew Hardee's did stuff like this because we never go there LOL But I'm glad they did because it really is a cool toy!
DeleteI have one of thease and all the pogs when it frist came out I am 55 years old but I still love it
ReplyDeleteI forgot where I got mine when I was a teen, Now that I see it was Hardees, I am confused because we didnt go to Hardees often as there wasnt one in our county, But I did have the whole set.
ReplyDeletefunny, but I don't ever recall even being in a Hardee's! I saw this on an eBay search and thought it was a really cool toy :-). I was also never into pog's and pog collecting but I do think these are kind of neat.
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