
          
          
     Keep Your Eyes Open For Big Max


          
                                             By Gary Bryant


          Remember all of those toys you were given at the 
     ten or fifteen Christmases of your childhood? Remember 
     your  Donald Duck Car with Huey, Dewey and Louie 
     in the  rumble seat? Remember how those neat toys 
     of your youth  seemed to disappear..just kind of 
     melted away somehow.

          Your toys  might have fallen out of an open window 
     and landed in  your neighbors yard.  They might have 
     secretly been  sucked up by the big floor drain in your 
     basement.  The  basement being the place your mother 
     would put all of  your Christmas and birthday junk 
     when she could no  longer wade into your bedroom.  
     And what about Big Max? 

          Big Max was a robot every sane kid living in 
     the year 1958 had to have.  It was manufactured by Remco 
     (remember them?) and was sold in the world famous Sears  
     & Roebuck Catalog.  Big Max was battery powered.  He  
     could lift all kinds of metallic objects with his  
     electromagnetic arms.  If you see Big max walking around  
     your house, you might have wanted to grab him.  
     As a  collector's item, he's worth nearly ten times what  
     Santa had to fork out that Christmas back in 1958.

          If  you were lucky enough to receive a nine inch 
     tall  Sleeping Beauty doll from Walt Disney that was  
     manufactured around 1959, you could cash that little  
     baby in for nearly five hundred bucks!

          If you spot  Popeye on roller skates, a collector 
     might give you  three hundred and fifty smackers.  That 
     is if you can get that spinach eating sailor to skate 
     in the right  direction.

          The fact is, when you're out perusing  garage sales 
     for the perfect dinette set, don't  over look the toys of 
     the fifties and sixties.  Some are  worth a bundle.

          "Mister Automatic", another toy robot  was one of 
     those "cheap tin toys"  with the "Made in  Japan" label.  
     That item would fetch as much as two  thousand dollars 
     today!   What a perfect world it would  be... if you 
     could invest $2.98 for a toy when you were ten years old 
     and trade it in for a Toyota when you turn twenty! 
         
         
             
