My Green Tinted Retro Mind
What makes are person gravitate towards a particular color? Could it remind them of something that brought them joy or an easier time from their childhood? Maybe its simple vanity when a particular color looks better on a person given their skin tone, hair color, or eye color? That might be a fair explanation for an adult, but what about with children? Children will often choose a particular color over others when it doesn’t seem like they’ve lived long enough to really associate it with something that has gone on in their past. They just like it. But, there is a theory called 'ecological valence theory' (or just EVT for short) that says color preference comes from affective responses to color-associated objects. Positive things associated with a particular color are going to make one gravitate more towards that color, or vise versa. That's oversimplifying it, for sure, but I think that is the gist of it!
My oldest nephew will turn 13 this year, and when he was smaller he was ALL about green. If there was ever a choice he was going to choose the green one. Now, he was around my father very often in his early years and would see my Dad using his green John Deere tractor, and soon my little nephew could just about operate everything on that machine with the exceptions of the pedals on the floorboard! I can see where his attraction to the color green might have stemmed from being so closely associated to his grandfather’s tractor and then all of the John Deere related toys that he had as well.
As an adult I am usually wearing blue. My eyes are blue, I have fairer skin, and I think it looks better on me. I do like black, but it’s just for simplicity as I always know that black matches with black! But I was recently thinking back to my own childhood and how I was really fascinated with the color green back then. As I thought more about it I realized that some of my favorite toys and things I was into back in the late 1970s and early to mid 80s favored the color green!
In 1976 toy maker Mattel released SLIME! Sold in a small plastic trash can, this oozy goo was colored bright green and really caught my eye as a tiny kid! I can specifically remember friends of my parent’s coming over to visit our apartment we lived in at the time and having a can of the newly released toy. They let me play with it, I was mesmerized, and wanted Slime of my own – but no! My parents didn’t want that stuff in carpet, furniture, my hair… anywhere? I remember it being more liquid than some of the slimes you see on the toy market today. And they were right; I would have gotten that stuff everywhere! Of course, down the road I would have my fair share as it started showing up inside gumball machine capsules in the vending area in front of stores, as well as being marketed and becoming parts of toy lines like He-Man: Masters of the Universe and others. (Speaking of He-Man, the ‘Castle Grayskull’ play set was green, too!)
But there was something about that color that intrigued me – and being a Gen-X kid liking green was EASY. Toys like the ‘Green Machine’ riding vehicle that my next door neighbor had was simply fascinating! Kermit the Frog was finding it not so easy being green, but it was easy to like him. We had green plastic army men that had been around for decades. Mattel released a toy called SUCKERMAN that was essentially a rubber green alien/monster covered in suction cups that would stick to things you would throw him on. You had great green monster toys like Krusher and even the large plastic Godzilla whose fist would fire off his arm with the push of a button! I was introduced to the classic Universal Monsters around then and had many of the REMCO branded monster action figure toys and my favorite was the very green Creature from the Black Lagoon. I’ve still got him! I even had this awesome Frankenstein mask (sort of green) at a yard sale that I would play with, until it disintegrated in the heat out in our backyard shed. Who remembers ‘Mr. Yuk’? Tiny green “yucky” stickers they would give to us at school for our parents to put on poisonous items at home. Heck… I just liked the color and thought they looked a lot cooler than yellow smiley faces! We had a lot of ‘glow in the dark’ toys back then as well, and one particular glowing toy that I loved was ‘Gilroy Ghost’, who was actually a rubber glowing ghost that came with a lip balm stick through AVON.
Green was prevalent on both the TV and Silver Screen! Lou Ferrigno WAS ‘The Incredible Hulk’, and even Chevy Chase was glowing green after being exposed to nuclear waste when HBO showed his movie ‘Modern Problems’ over and over again! Green plastic glow sticks became affordable and on the market around this time for the everyday consumer, usually around Halloween for safety. Early on, I can’t remember any other color back those sticks came in but green – and they sure looked imilar to the Kryptonite crystals from Christopher Reeve’s Superman movies! I was building ‘Fortress of Solitudes’ in my mind every time I got a green glow stick!
But on the big screen, there was no movie as important to me back then as 'Star Wars'. I was addicted to the Kenner-made Star Wars action figures, and was enamored with the green Rodian alien bounty hunter Greedo that Han shot (first) in the cantina from the first movie. A few years later was the live action of debut of bounty hunter Boba Fett in ‘The Empire Strikes Back’, in his mostly green armor, and the amazing versions of him in the Kenner action figure lines became some of my all-time favorite toys! Seeing Boba ever so briefly on screen and hardly knowing a thing about him made him a bounty hunter of mystery for decades before… well, I just think his legacy could have been handled a little bit better the past few years – but that’s another article!
However, that bounty hunter loaded down with cool weapons was no match for what I saw in 1983 – Luke Skywalker’s GREEN lighsaber in ‘The Return of the Jedi’! A lot of kids dreamed of being astronauts, doctors, policemen and the like as a kid. I wanted to be a Jedi. It was a pretty lofty goal looking back, honestly. It’s something I have yet to achieve, even though I started off pretty strong with my “yellow” Kenner branded toy lightsaber pretty strong. Of course, Star Wars kids these days have a plethora of colors to choose from in their lightsabers! But back then, it was a yellow lightsaber that I could not figure out WHY was yellow, as that color was NEVER in the movie (then), or I could use the knock-off toy laser sword that my granddad bought me. It was pretty a pretty cool white that glowed (guess which color?) green when the lights went off and actually seemed more realistic with that magical green glow than the licensed Star Wars toy! But on Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back all we ever saw were red and blue blades – that is until our friendly little droid R2-D2 launched a brand new lightaber to Luke Skywalker from Jabba’s barge to the Jedi Knight on a Skiff as he was about to be executed! I’m getting excited about that scene just writing about it 43 years later! When that green saber erupted in Luke’s hand against the blue Tattooine sky I think my heart skipped a beat. This was amazing! THIS was my color! I wanted to be a Jedi even more!
I guess I’ve still failed at becoming a Jedi, even into my 50’s. I still love the color green though, and it is my university alma mater’s color that I sometimes wear. And I could probably think back even more and come up with another dozen or so toys that were all the rage in the 70s and 80s that were green. But, most of the time it’s back to blue for me these days. What about you? Do you have any favorite “green” toys that I completely overlooked from the 70s and 80s? Please let me know at [email protected]
