by Patrice Downing, Contributing Writer
Did you know that Hasbro’s initial run of 1964 12-inch G.I. Joe action figures had their thumbnails stamped on the inside of their hands? And that after the “birth defect” was discovered, they left it there? Intentionally? While you might think a mistake like that would be corrected once it was noticed, Hasbro decided to keep the flaw which, proved to be a pretty genius financial move. A year later, following the runaway success of the dapper doll, Hasbro was able to use the placement of that fingernail foible to win a lawsuit. Competing toymaker, Mego, made the mistake of copying the body design right down to the digital disfigurement.
I know it’s been a while, but if it’s your first time here, you might be wondering, “what in the heck does a misplaced thumbnail on a 60-year-old action figure have to do with the Apollo 11 space mission?” Well that’s easy: Nothing. Absolutely nothing! However, the fact that I know this flaw even exists is the reason we’re here. How did I come to store this completely useless fact in the limited hard drive that is my aging brain? After revisiting some old episodes of the G.I. Joe 1983 animated series, I went on quite the fact-finding mission to learn more about the origins of the characters that would “Fight for freedom wherever there is trouble,”weekday afternoons at 3:30 p.m. EST throughout the ‘80s. I binged the Netflix series, The Toys That Made Us, History Channels’ The Toys That Built America, and listened to episodes of the Everything ‘80s and Talking Joe podcasts over the following weeks, and now I know about the infamous thumbnail and that basically everyone that worked at Hasbro in the ‘80s has a figurine in the 3.75-inch line that bares their facial likeness. Completely trivial knowledge to be sure, but it makes me appreciate the series and movies more, knowing where they came from. And that, dear readers, is why we are here. To peel back the layers of fluff and filler, sift through the superfluous, eliminate the embellishment, and ultimately find the Fact on Fiction as it pertains to recently released content.
In honor of the recent release of Fly Me To the Moon, this time around, we’re going to be diving into the events surrounding the 1969 Apollo 11 spaceflight. “Holy Sky Rocket, Batman!” There is an astronomical amount of documentary content available on space and space flight. To whittle down the options, let’s just start, for the purposes of this piece, by assuming that humans have in fact landed on the moon and that the documentaries we are going to discuss are indeed filled with factual content. Because we’re here to gain some insight into more of the feel, look, and events of the time period as it relates to the new film, let’s next ditch anything that isn’t specific to the Apollo 11 mission itself. Surprisingly, that still left me with a week worth of sifting through all variety of space race films, limited series, shorts, feature films, and individual episodes devoted to that specific mission. If you are just super interested in space, NASA, and the Apollo space flights, the Smithsonian Channel has a six-part series from 2019, Apollo’s Moon Shot, that includes a plethora of archival footage and interviews all in top notch product quality. Due to the time commitment (it clocks in at over five hours of watch time) and the final two episodes going past the time frame of Fly Me To the Moon, I decided to go with something a little more digestible to recommend.
So let’s talk about Apollo 11: First Steps on the Moon, a breezy 49-minute 2012 doc that concisely covers the events starting with the lead-up to the Apollo 11 launch, all the way to landing back on earth. This compact little doc has a lot going for it, but that comes with a small caveat concerning quality. Personally, I tend to overlook shortcomings in production quality when watching documentaries, since I am more interested in the facts than the frills. You won’t find a notable narrator, smashing soundtrack, or fancy editing in First Steps On the Moon. It actually feels very much like the kind of film you would see visiting a museum or as part of a lecture series, but don’t get turned off by this scholastic approach. While that may seem like a tick in the con column, it ends up being this flick’s biggest pro.
Most documentaries produced today are filled with a bunch of talking heads and interviews from office buildings. Not this one. The first 46 of the 49 total minutes are nothing but archival footage from the 1960s, with the just final three minutes using computer-rendered predictions of future life in space as imagined by the Apollo 11 flight crew. I absolutely love the complete immersion into the time period without ping-ponging to the present day to watch somebody talk from a conference room at an airport Hilton. And to be clear, I have no problem with that choice being made in other documentaries. I often find it interesting to see the faces behind the events/disciplines. But in this particular case, I wanted to get a feel for the time period, and a film that shows nothing but footage from the ‘60s achieves just that. News reels, home video, and all the different NASA-sourced footage from engineering R&D rooms, to inside the space capsule, to the celebrations following the crew’s return to earth are all edited together to tell a cohesive story without distraction. There is a narrator to tie the events together, but a majority of the dialogue is heard through the voices of Buzz Aldrin, Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins, and members of the ground crew.
First Steps On the Moon doesn’t break any new ground in the documentary genre, but it is the perfect companion piece to Fly Me To the Moon. If, like me, you enjoy comparing how authentic the sets, hair, costumes, and cars really are, as well as get more background, this is the perfect pairing to glean factual context. I got a particularly good chuckle during the celebration footage, watching what seemed like unfettered community access to the control room filled with dapper gentlemen lighting up slim cigars and enjoying a smoke indoors.
That’s going to wrap it up this time around. I hope you had some fun and maybe picked up a piece of obscure trivia to toss out during a conversation lull. Join me next time on my continuing journey to dig through a deluge of documentaries, superfluity of series, and abundance of behind the scenes content as I try to uncover the Fact on Fiction.
You can read more from Patrice Downing, and follow her on Twitter, Serializd, and Letterboxd