In every age there is a great and fearless hero. For my aging generation of space cadets of the baby boomer era he was the quintessential hero of the space age. The astronaut who led the charge forward as humanity blazed a trial forward in its conquest of space. Where have you gone Major Matt Mason? The world cries out to you in its hour of greatest peril.
If your were a child in the late 1960s during the great heyday of the Space Race, chances are you spent most of your time playing with Space toys. Lots of space related toys started popping up all over the place in the late 60s. And, leading the pack and my all time favourite was Major Matt Mason an action figure created by Mattel. He was the quintessential hero of the space age, an astronaut who lived and worked on the moon.
I have been a fan of both the Major Matt Mason toy line and of the space program for the past forty odd years. It was a major surprise to find so many web sites and discussion groups devoted to Major Matt Mason when I performed my initial searches on Yahoo and Google.
The Major has reportedly accompanied several US Space Shuttle flights as an "unofficial crewman", and it has been confirmed that the figure did fly on John Glenn's Shuttle flight in 1998.
