Free! Lone Ranger Western Town!

 

The Lone Ranger, Mail-Order Dreams, and 1981 in the Rearview Mirror

 That’s what the ad said — "Just mail away!" — and man, I always wanted one. But for some reason I never actually did it. Chalk it up to the distracted priorities of an eight-year-old.

If you were a comics fan in 1981, you probably saw the merchandise blitz for The Legend of the Lone Ranger — plastered across the back covers of practically every comic book on the rack. I didn't know it at the time, but the movie was a critical and commercial bomb. That didn’t matter, though. The advertising hit hard, especially for kids like me.

The toy line that grabbed my attention was the smaller-scale Lone Ranger figures from Gabriel. Not the old-school 13" behemoths — those were always a little too bulky for my tastes — but the more manageable, play-friendly action figures. You had the full lineup: The Lone Ranger and Silver, Tonto and Scout, Butch Cavendish and Smoke, even historical figures like Buffalo Bill Cody and General George Custer (who, for the record, was still a lieutenant colonel at the time of the Little Bighorn).

To this day, I wonder how — or if — they crammed all of that into one movie.

I never saw The Legend of the Lone Ranger as a kid (still haven’t, actually), but the toys were definitely on my radar. The problem? Competition. Serious competition. Star Wars was in full swing and I was all-in on the Kenner figures. I was just getting into D&D, too — poring over my Moldvay Basic Set and figuring out how hit points worked. The new 3¾” G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero line was right around the corner, and that would steal what little toy budget (and attention span) I had left.

Looking back, I wonder if this was the early version of Toy Story in real life. Lone Ranger and Tonto, quietly sidelined by Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader. Relegated to the back of the toy box, never to ride again.

Still — that mail-away town? The play sets? That stuff looked cool. Really cool. And while I didn’t get in on the Lone Ranger craze, it still sticks with me as one of those “almost” moments of childhood. One of the few times something slipped by me in that golden age of toys and pulp-inspired adventures. 

Watching The Lone Ranger the other week (yes, that one) reminded me of all this — of a time when the Wild West still had a place in our toy aisles and imaginations, even as the galaxy far, far away was pushing everything else out. 

In the end, this isn't really about the toys — or even the movie. It’s about the snapshot of 1981 it conjures. That brief, weird moment in pop culture when cowboys, space wizards, and dungeon crawlers all coexisted in a kid’s world.

And if you were eight like I was at the time, that world?

It was very cool.