Free! Lone Ranger Western Town!

That's what the ad said and I always wanted one, but I'm not sure why I never mailed away for it! If you were a comics fan like me there was lots of merchandizing out in 1981 for the release of The Legend of the Lone Ranger movie (which I didn't learn till later was an utter bomb).  It was on the back of nearly every comic book I had back then. But the problem was I was much more concerned with other toys. The problem was they occupied a time where I was getting into D&D, and was a huge Star Wars fan (and the toys) with the new smaller GI Joes just on the horizon. I wonder if this is an early precursor to the Toy Story movies? Lone Ranger supplanted by Star Wars in out national consciousness?

In any event, it was for the smaller line of Lone Ranger toys from Gabriel. I was not of the right age where toys were 13"  action figures. I'm fine with that however as the older toys always seemed "too big" to me. There was The Lone Ranger and Silver, Butch Cavendish and Smoke, Tonto and Scout, General George Custer (he was a Lieutenant Colonel at the Battle of the Little Big Horn folks) and Buffalo Bill Cody. Now, never having seen the movie I wonder how (and if) they crammed that all in?

In any event, I wanted the town and the action figures, but seeing the Lone Ranger the other week made me think of childhood memories of the last time the Lone Ranger was on the big screen with disastrous results.

But enough of that this was about a stroll down memory lane, all at a time where I was getting into RPGs too. I mean if you were around 8 as I was at the time, how cool was this? The answer is/was very.