REMEMBERING BUCK ROGERS (1950, ABC)

THE BUCK ROGERS SPACE KIT!

From Chuck Lassen (November, 2002):

I do remember watching the 1950 live BUCK ROGERS TV program, though I remember nothing about the plots. I did watch it and remember looking forward to it every week while it lasted. There was a giveaway punch-out BUCK ROGERS "space kit" tied into the TV series. To get it, you had to go with Mom or Dad to the local Sylvania dealer, and listen to a sales pitch on a new Sylvania TV (with HaloLight!). I remember my good old Dad hauling me down to the local showroom to get my BUCK ROGERS kit, and I had a lot of fun with it subsequently.

[SpacEditor's note: No wonder; this kit, to judge from surviving ads, had a number of colorfully-printed cardboard sheets, from which you could punch out and assemble the following wonderful array of items: (1) A "space ranger helmet;" (2) a "disentergrator" [sic], a futuristic pistol which could fire small cardboard disks via rubber band propusion; (3) a "space ranger badge;" (4) a "strato-powered space ship," again using rubber band technology; (5) two "interplanetary space phones," which worked via the usual taut string technology; (6) and a "chronoscopic space compass" to wear on the wrist. All this, just for visiting your Sylvania dealer. One presumes Sylvania was the sponsor of this BUCK ROGERS incarnation, although no explicit evidence of this survives.]

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THE BUCK ROGERS STUDIO SET!

From Nancy L. Robison (July,2000):

In 1950, when I was in my early teens, I had the privilege of appearing on television in a [local] weekly series. The set for the show was a malt shop. We actors sat around sipping cotton sodas, singing, dancing, and carrying on sparkling repartee with one another about teenage life....

[Eventually we broadcast from] a huge warehouse that had several sets.... On the set next to us... was BUCK ROGERS, a sci-fi program. Buck had wild adventures with aliens and unexplored territories in outer space....

Anyway, Buck had two rocket ships. One was an open cockpit with no sides, so the camera could see the actors better. The other was a whole ship with doors and sides for long shots. Both were made of cardboard and both sat on [wooden] rockers, like a cradle.

Neither model moved without assistance from the stage crew, and many times anyone standing around was drafted to help out in the "flying" [effect] for these ships. When there was a particularly heavy, rough ride through a field of meteorites or some such thing, we, from the other sets, were asked to help with rocking the spaceships.

"Stand by," the director would whisper into his microphone off-camera. Then, on cue, we would gather on either side of the ship, step up on a seesaw-type thing, and rock the cradle back and forth--- thus travelling into space with Buck Rogers and his sidekick, Lieutentant Wilma Deering!

[You can read Robison's entire article here.]

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