Speaker 1: 0:02

Hey old man, oh, hello there. Hey, prospector, howdy, you look like you're heading off somewhere. Well, actually I am. You see, my wife helped me out. Oh, yeah, yeah, she packed my bags last night pre-flight. Huh, zero hour, 9 am in fact. That's pretty early for you. I'm going to be as high as a kite by then and I miss the Earth so much. I miss my wife. It's lonely out in space on such a timeless flight and I think it's going to be a long, long time until touchdown brings me round again to find I'm not the man that they think I am at hand. Oh, no, no, no, no, no, I'm a rocket man. Rocket man, burn out this fuse up here alone. Well, thank you, old man. Hey, no problem, partner, and just remember this here's the wildest ride in the universe.

Speaker 3: 1:07

Hello and welcome to the Lowdown on the Plus Up, a podcast where we look at everyone's favorite theme park attractions, lands, textures and novelties. We talk in over about and through our week's topic and then, with literally no concern for practicality, safety or economic viability, we come up with ways to make them better. My name is Kelly McCubbin, columnist for the theme park website Boardwalk Times, and with me, as always, is Peter Overstreet University, professor of Animation and Film History in Northern California.

Speaker 1: 1:55

Much to cast members' chagrin at Disneyland.

Speaker 3: 1:57

He will pop up everywhere, which reminds me hey, pete, yes, what are we?

Speaker 1: 2:01

talking about today. Today, we're going to dig deep into a very strange and sordid affair that is a lot more complicated than you might think.

Speaker 3: 2:11

Oh boy, it takes place in Tomorrowland and it's our Rocket Beltman Boy. We need to sexy that up, don't we?

Speaker 1: 2:22

Yeah, we kind of do it doesn't have a sexy title, but, believe me, this story is going to be amazing.

Speaker 3: 2:27

Oh man, this is one of the most incredible stories I have ever read. That's related to Disneyland, and you know we do tangents here. Oh, yeah, of us. No, this is going to be something of a tangent, but I think it's going to pay off, for you it's going to be all right.

Speaker 3: 2:47

Yeah, I think it's going to be all right, I think it's going to be all right. We are going to talk about the flights of the—you may have seen these in, I believe, 1967. It was an episode of what I believe was, at that point, the Wonderful World of Color TV show called Disneyland Around the Seasons, and during that show you saw a man dressed all in white with what looked like an Evel Knievel helmet and we know some interesting things about this helmet that will come up a little bit later. And we know some interesting things about this helmet that'll come up a little bit later With two actual jet engines strapped onto his back. Oh yeah, flying high above Tomorrowland. And you may think, as a lot of people watching TV did, that this is much like Tinkerbell flying over the castle during the fireworks, that this is someone on wires.

Speaker 1: 3:48

It is not no, it's not no. This was a real dude who really like if those rockets went and we'd fall, you know?

Speaker 3: 4:02

Yeah, and those rockets, the flight that we actually see in the show, is not flown by the most famous of the Rocketmen, robert Souter. It's flown by a guy named Gordon Yeager.

Speaker 1: 4:16

Oh, any relation to Chuck?

Speaker 3: 4:18

Ah, I'm glad you asked. No, oh, okay, but the story does have a relation to Chuck. Oh, okay, but the story does have a relation to Chuck. Oh, interesting, because the rocket pack that they are using at that point and we'll back up a little bit and get more into this but the rocket pack that they're using at that point is one that was built by Bell Aeronautics. Oh, okay, and the guy that built it, wendell Moore. He worked for Bell Aeronautics and he worked on the X-1 jet oh, wow, okay, yeah, the first jet to ever break the sound barrier, nice which was piloted by Chuck Yeager. That's right, mighty Chuck. The interesting thing that correlates the X-1 to the Bell Aeronautics rocket pack and we're going to go through a whole bunch of different rocket packs in this story, oh, yes, but this is the first really effective one, unless you believe the Germans.

Speaker 1: 5:15

Because German propaganda— we have been making better rocket packs in the past.

Speaker 3: 5:20

German propaganda about World War II was that they had built a rocket pack that worked. No one ever saw it. You know Wernher von Braun, who was around Disneyland in those early years, oh yeah, and was working at Bell Aeronautics some and Wendell Moore was close to Never said anything about the rocket pack, so the Germans were probably making it up.

Speaker 1: 5:44

But he could always make it to a cocktail party in record time, despite the traffic, don't worry. Now I'm confident where this one is going to land. Little Von Braun humor there.

Speaker 3: 6:02

Nazi schmatzi, said Werner Von Braun.

Speaker 1: 6:05

Oh, Tom Lehrer, we love you.

Speaker 3: 6:08

You know he's still around and he just recently put all of his recordings and all of his sheet music on a website to download for free. He was like I don't want any money, don't send me any money, just take it. Wow, yeah.

Speaker 1: 6:23

That's cool. Yeah, he's an interesting guy. Yeah, tom Lehrer is a weird one, but gotta love it.

Speaker 3: 6:30

But yeah, so the Nazis, they had created the on the rocket thing, which they probably didn't, they probably but Wendell Moore, who worked on the X-1, what he did specifically was he built the jets that were on the wingtips and on the tail of the X-1 to stabilize it, right? So they were not the propulsion jets that were going to get it past the sound barrier, correct, right, they were the jets that were using to kind of maneuver it because they knew it was going awfully fast. Oh yeah, big time. Now those jets are almost exactly the jets that he used for the Bell Aeronautics rocket belt, oh jeez. So if you look at Gordon Yeager in that film flying around Disneyland and he looks a little nervous that's why around Disneyland and he looks a little nervous.

Speaker 1: 7:25

that's why, If one of these goes wrong, my equilibrium is completely off. I'm going to be going around in circles real fast.

Speaker 3: 7:33

Yes, and there's two things that are super interesting about the way that this particular jet engine, strapped onto a human being, works. Actually, there's a lot that's interesting about it. One of the two things is that it is fueled by hydrogen peroxide. It is like 90% pure hydrogen peroxide.

Speaker 1: 7:58

So it can propel you and keep your skin clear. That's right clear.

Speaker 3: 8:12

That's right. The other thing is that it only works for about 21 seconds. Oops, yeah. So this is why you know. I say I may be getting ahead of myself here, but who cares?

Speaker 1: 8:19

I strap this thing on my back. I'm going to make it to Santa Monica in about 22 seconds. Oh no.

Speaker 3: 8:25

The things are deafening and you can see in this clip from Disneyland Around the Seasons, like when it takes off, people in the crowd cover their ears, they're shocked by it. Wow, because it's so loud. Wow, which also means that the little dingley alarm that they put in the helmet for the pilot to hear to say, hey, you're running out of time, that didn't work very well, oh no, so later, what they did was they put this thing in the helmet that would actually vibrate the back of the pilot's skull.

Speaker 1: 9:03

So they put a woodpecker into the yeah.

Speaker 3: 9:06

At about 10 seconds it would go, and then every five seconds after that, because you know you got 21 seconds At about 11 seconds. You better start thinking about where you're going to land.

Speaker 1: 9:19

Oh man.

Speaker 3: 9:24

And this is why one of the more famous appearances after Disneyland and, of course, its appearance at the 1964 World's Fair. Go ahead and say it. Q yeah, this is the one it's in Thunderball, Thunderball, yes, and you know, of course Sean Connery is not flying that rocket pack in Thunderball.

Speaker 1: 9:47

That's why the helmet is so big. It covers his face, but it also is to protect you for a 20-second flight.

Speaker 3: 9:54

Well, so the helmet is a point of contention with Thunderball. So they send Jaeger and this guy, robert Suter. Robert Suter is probably the most famous person to fly the Bell rocket belt. He also flew several other iterations of the rocket belt later. But they sent them out to I forget where they were filming. It was like France something. They sent them out to fly the rocket pack because they wanted this in the film. They got there and they said James Bond would not wear a helmet. And so the two rocket pack of players, jaeger and Suter. They were like no, we can't do this without the helmet. The helmet tells us when to land. Yes. So they had a standoff for a few days where they said they wouldn't do it. Then they decided that they were going to let them wear the helmet, but they were going to paint it to look like hair?

Speaker 1: 10:54

Hey, why not? They had already convinced us that Sean Connery had hair with all of his wigs by that point. So who cares? I mean, he was really digging the Bond scene. His head was swollen enough as it was.

Speaker 3: 11:07

It's just Sean, so they decided eventually that that looked ridiculous.

Speaker 1: 11:15

Okay, so Bond nerd moment here for a minute. Yeah, that part of logic in the story bugged them because, first off, you know he outs the guy who's dressed in drag. You never actually open up a door for yourself. You should have let somebody else open the door for you. And the guy with this four day growth of beard is attacking him and stalking and heels. Then he gets away, but he's up in the parapet of this estate house where the pack is waiting for him. Who dropped that off Right? What's that doing there? Q's like well, first 007, we're going to parachute it out down to the place for you Drop it any time.

Speaker 3: 11:56

Q I bet you know this. Do you know where the rocket pack appears again in a Bond film?

Speaker 1: 12:03

Apart from Die Another Day. That's it. Yeah, die Another Day makes a quick little cameo Right Rockets off the thing, with John Cleese looking very.

Speaker 3: 12:14

Yeah, it's Pierce Brosnan right. Yeah, pierce Brosnan. Yeah, he asks John Cleese. He's like does this still work? And Cleese is like, of course it does. Yeah, zipping off Before we get too deep into.

Speaker 1: 12:29

I guess we're kind of already all over, oh we're so deep, I'm telling you I know we just jumped right in yeah, we did 20 seconds worth of jumping in, 20 seconds worth of jumping in and boy, we are deep in enemy territory now.

Speaker 3: 12:40

Yeah, and I should point out that there were later iterations of the rocket pack that purportedly could go a little bit further, but not much, and that was often in great question as to how useful those rocket packs were. So part of the reason that we're not living like the Jetsons is that they just never figured out a way to really make it work.

Speaker 1: 13:03

It takes a lot to propel a human body out of the gravitational pull of the earth. That's all there is to it. Yeah, because we're heavy beings. We're not birds with hollow skeletons, we just weigh a lot. So it's simple physics, right? And I know Neil deGrasse Tyson is listening in right now. Well, actually, guys, let me explain something to you. You really want to have your mind blown. Birthday cake doesn't exist. So that's the kind of stuff that Neil deGrasse Tyson would probably do to you. It's just like oh, you think you're comfortable, do you? Here? Let me just prove it with physics. You know he just walks around ruining people's. He's like the Debbie Downer of science, like Bill Nye. The science guy is like it's amazing, people can jump really high if they have enough fuel like 20 seconds. And Neil deGrasse Tyson is like you might as well just burn yourself up. You know Like we just ruined your day for you. Kid, you don't exist.

Speaker 1: 14:02

You know, we're all going to die anyway from the next meteor shower that's going to hit us. Thanks, Neil DeGrasse Tyson. Out, Get out of here. Get over there. Let Ludwig van Dijk hit you with his two-by-four for a little while. Sit yourself down there, Neil DeGrasse Tyson. Sit yourself down there, Neil deGrasse.

Speaker 2: 14:26

Tyson Okay, where were we?

Speaker 1: 14:29

Where did the idea of the Rocket Pack come from?

Speaker 3: 14:31

This is a great question, I bet you have some ideas about this.

Speaker 1: 14:36

Well, I mean, probably one of the earliest forms of the Rocket Pack comes from a cartoon, I should say a comic strip. Not a cartoon, but a comic strip called Buck Rogers. And for those who don't know, think of Buck Rogers as like the prototype of Flash Gordon, because Buck came first, then came Flash. Did Buck ever meet Flash? Who knows?

Speaker 3: 15:01

Probably not because Flash was on Mongo.

Speaker 1: 15:04

Yeah, he was on Mongo yeah, it's like he was busy saving the universe. Buck did not get a cool theme song.

Speaker 3: 15:12

No, it's really true, and you know, Buck had his own TV series for a while.

Speaker 1: 15:16

He did and I have a connection to the Buck Rogers TV series Are you ready for this?

Speaker 3: 15:21

I hope I didn't insult anybody, you know.

Speaker 1: 15:23

No no not at all Trust me, it's the Buck Rogers TV show. How much more insulting can you get? I mean, no, my connection is is that when I was growing up I spent a lot of my time. Like a third of my time I spent in LA and about the other two thirds I spent up in Northern California and my grandparents went to a church in Panorama City and they went to a little Presbyterian church and there were a couple of celebrity families who grew up there and went there to this particular church. Yeah, one of whom was the Gilliam family. Terry Gilliam's mom, bea, went to this church regularly. Oh, interesting, his brother, vance, went there for some time. Huh, and even Terry went there very, very briefly, but he did go. I never met him. I met his mom a lot. Yeah, she found out I was a big Monty Python and Terry Gilliam fan, so she was always.

Speaker 1: 16:12

Oh, my son is working on this. It's a great movie called Baron Munchausen. It should be great. Yeah, I hear it's going marvelously, everything's good, everything's fine. You know, don't tell mom, you know. But she got along great with my grandma. But one of the other people is I used to play in the Sunday school with this young kid who turns out. His dad was Felix Silla, a rather famous little person from Hollywood, and he was famous for playing Cousin it in the original TV series.

Speaker 1: 16:38

He was too young to have been a munchkin.

Speaker 3: 16:39

He got that question a lot, so he was never a munchkin.

Speaker 1: 16:41

He was too young to have been a munchkin. He got that question a lot, so he was never a munchkin. He was like I was a baby you know like, how are they going to put? Me in there, so there were babies in Oz, but anyway, there was not actually a munchkin. However, he was also famous for playing Tweaky the Robot on Buck Rogers, which is what he was doing at the time.

Speaker 1: 17:00

Beedy, beady, beady hi, Buck, you know. Voiced by Mel Blanc. Yeah, the most unlikely of like robot voices, let's get Mel Blanc. Was Mel Blanc also Dr Theopolis? I don't know who Dr Theopolis was. I'll have to look that one up. Yeah, but no, mel Blanc was just the voice. Hiya Buck, no problem, buck, yeah, beady. High alcohol content Buck, low neckline Buck. Yowza, yowza, yowza Should like to get my hands on those diodes.

Speaker 3: 17:34

Hey, hey, family friendly show.

Speaker 1: 17:37

Yeah, whoa, I don't know about family friendly, but it was definitely on the network.

Speaker 3: 17:42

We may not be friendly to anybody, really. No, it's Buck Rogers, yeah, but so yeah, he was twe on the network.

Speaker 1: 17:45

We may not be friendly to anybody really no, it's Buck Rogers but so, yeah, he was Tweaky the Robot and, like everybody was like, oh, he's Tweaky the Robot and I go, no, he's Cousin it. My favorite moment was when I found out about this and I was just like starstruck. He goes oh, you watch Buck Rogers? I go, no, but I loved Adam's family. He goes, oh, cool, yeah, I was cousin it. I didn't do the voice, but I was cousin it. And I go okay, cool, that's awesome. Felix was a really nice guy. Yeah, he was really really sweet. Felix passed away a couple years ago, but he was really, really charming, very, very sweet, and his son was really nice. Oh, that's cool. Okay, so enough of Pete talking about himself. So we have the comic strip of Buck Rogers.

Speaker 3: 18:28

So there's a novel that predates it. It was actually anthologized in, I think, amazing Stories and turned into a novel called Armageddon 2419. And that came out in 1928, so it was very early. And in that book, which I've read and it's a lot of fun, it's racist but it's a lot of fun.

Speaker 1: 18:50

See the part where it's 1928, you know.

Speaker 3: 18:53

But in that original novel Buck well, they didn't call him Buck at that point, they called him William Rogers, I believe William Buck Rogers he had what they called a jumping belt, which was a thing that he could strap on and jump over enemy lines and stuff.

Speaker 1: 19:09

Yeah so Buck Rogers had that. And then there was another character who also inspired this. It was a little bit later and you had the birth of cereals. Yeah, for those who don't know what cereals are, cereals in the— Like Corn Flakes and Rice Krispies. No, no, no, no.

Speaker 3: 19:30

Lucky Charms.

Speaker 1: 19:31

Means. Oh, stop it. No, it's short for serialized action adventure films. And the cereals— they're great, they're awesome and again full of racism, full of cringe. So if you are sensitive to this, you are warned, yeah.

Speaker 1: 19:46

But, if you can handle that and you can just let it go and just go, oh my, and laugh it off. They're actually really really fun. They're very low budget, most of them filmed in Simi Valley yeah, almost entirely in the Vasquez Rocks, or in Malibu, yeah, Everyone will know the Vasquez Rocks as being every outdoor scene ever shot in the original Star Trek series Right.

Speaker 1: 20:09

Yeah, exactly, there was a film company called Republic, universal and Paramount. They all dabbled in serials, but Republic was the most successful, right, and one of their big ones was Buck Rogers, that's right, starring Buster Crabb. Yeah, the great Buster Crabb, the mighty Buster Crabb, born in Hawaii. Yeah, I think he actually became more famous playing Flash Gordon, but he was Buck Rogers as well. Yeah, and Buster, he's charming, like you watch him. He just kind of swaggers through everything. Yeah, and he's willing to get sweaty and shirtless and beat up male pattern baldness extras and it's just great. It's like we have gorilla men, lion men, men, men. Here we go and that's kind of it. And Buster's great. And they do make reference to the jumping belt in the Buck Rogers serial. That's right.

Speaker 2: 21:03

Able to lead tall buildings in a single bound.

Speaker 1: 21:06

Yeah, he's close up and he turns a little dial on his belt.

Speaker 3: 21:10

Oh, and they call it. I have a note here. Actually they call it the D-Gravity Belt.

Speaker 1: 21:13

A D-Gravity Belt. I love that, yeah, better. So Republic Pictures put out another one that is and there are a lot of people who play this character Mm-hmm, but the character's name is Commando Cody. Commander Cody, yeah, commando Cody, yeah. And Commando Cody was originally in a 12-chapter Rocketman movie serial, and what I mean by chapter is the way that everybody who's younger than, say, 30, who's listening to this right now? Mm-hmm, younger than say, 30, who's listening to this right now?

Speaker 1: 21:44

In the older days of motion picture cinema the movies would start off like around 10 or 11 o'clock in the morning and they'd run until about midnight, yeah, and they would nonstop. But it was never just repeating the same movie over and over again. They had a whole program of films, yeah, and in the early days it was cartoons and serials for the kiddies and a couple of news reels and maybe a B picture. A B picture, yeah. And then they would show the A-list pictures later, yeah, for the adults and kids could buy a ticket and they could stay all day and all afternoon. So the serials were basically set up.

Speaker 1: 22:19

So the hero usually every episode's about 20, 24 minutes, yeah, and then the hero would progress the story a little bit. There'd be a fist fight right in the middle for an action beat, and then some villain would yeah see what happens. When Buck Rogers is going to enter into our secret laboratory. Dr Technical is going to set up a time device that when he opens up the door, it'll explode with neutrino rays. Oh no, how is we ever going to escape this? Don't worry, I'm going to enter into this room.

Speaker 1: 22:48

And he pushes open the door and you see the explosion, but you don't see anything happen to Buck, and then this title would come out Will Buck Rogers Escape this Horrible Fate? Come in next week to find out. It's the next episode. So they left you on a cliffhanger. This is where the term cliffhanger was really born.

Speaker 1: 23:04

Absolutely, it was during the serial, because it literally came from a Yakima Canute stunted Western in which he literally hang off a cliff. What's going to happen to our hero? And so it became upping the ante Like what ridiculous cliffhanger can we come up with this time Right? And it just became a staple of the serial finger. Can we come up with this time, right? And it just became a staple of the cereal that? That's how you get the kids to come back and spend their 25 cents for their ticket Because they need to see the next thing what happens? I got to find out what happens, you know. So Commando Cody was another one of these cereals and he belongs to, kind of like some organization, military slash police organization of the universe, and they're taking out zombies of the stratosphere.

Speaker 3: 23:47

And he was very. He used the rocket pack a lot, didn't he?

Speaker 1: 23:50

Yeah, well, yeah, it's from 1952. Yeah, it's Republic Serials. It was directed by Fred C Brannan and written by Ronald Davidson Mm-hmm, and the Leidiger brothers were the special effects supervisors. Okay, the Leidecker brothers were Howard and Theodore Leidecker and they were a team primarily working as contract staff members of Republic Pictures, and they were known for doing tons and tons of like wire work and making miniature buildings and models. So anytime you need to make anybody fly or have a building explode, the Leideckers were the cheap alternative to, like the 50s equivalent of ILM.

Speaker 3: 24:31

I have an interesting little bit of trivia about this. Yes, commander Cody obviously very popular, and he did. There was a number of Commander Cody serials, but the very first one, which was Radar Men from the Moon all of the jetpack flying that's in that was from an earlier serial. It was not a Commander Cody serial, it was from a serial called King of the Rocket Men, yes, where they put a guy on wires through a bunch of it and then they just took all of that jetpack footage and reused it in Radar Men from the Moon and said, oh, it's Commander Cody now.

Speaker 1: 25:07

Yeah, and the character's actually named Rocket man. Yeah, and the description is really interesting. Let me read this description off to you of what Rocket man looks like. Yeah, he's wearing nice tan khaki pants that are actually jodhpurs. They kind of flare out to the side. He's got a boot. He carries a pistol, uh, and he's got this. It looks like a backpack where it straps in the front, with this big belt and control module in the front. He wears a bullet shaped helmet with a pair of visor goggles and a little mouth cut out for some reason, where you haven't figured that one out yet.

Speaker 3: 25:42

So it's basically the same thing you wear to go to work Pretty much yeah, and he's got this duo outlet rocket strapped to his back.

Speaker 1: 25:52

And if that sounds familiar to you, that is the inspiration for another character that would feature later on in our story.

Speaker 1: 25:59

So just think about like oh yeah, I know exactly what that sounds like. Well, you're thinking correct, little boy, because that's exactly where we're going. These were very, very popular. There was like five different guys who played Commando Cody and the Rocket man and it's all the same stuff. Yeah, little fun, little trivia. Fact that the pack, the helmet and I think even the jacket are owned, and actually one of the models of the guy flying from the Leidecker brothers is currently owned and curated by Mr Bob Burns. Bob Burns Bob Burns is a collector and an archivist of Hollywood memorabilia and movie props. Okay, and an archivist of Hollywood memorabilia and movie props. He's most famous for playing Tracy the Gorilla in the 1974 filmmation version of the Ghostbusters.

Speaker 2: 26:51

Oh.

Speaker 1: 26:55

And he also found and restored George Powell's time machine, which is in his home, right, I mean, he's a great collector of these items and he has a lot of Republic cereal props. Yeah, this is one of them. He said he owns the helmet and the pack and, yeah, he actually did his own Commander Rocket or something like that, you know, like homage to Rocket man, which is really really cute. Oh, so he's, he's. He's a big geek who loves to do his own, you know, his own stuff. He put on these elaborate Halloween shows, right, but he's the curator. So those props still do exist. Wow, that's Right, but he's the curator.

Speaker 3: 27:23

So those props still do exist. Wow, that's really cool, yeah.

Speaker 1: 27:24

So they make the rounds every once in a while, and so we go from the serials to World War II, right. And then this pursuit of we must have a rocket strapped to a man's back.

Speaker 3: 27:35

Yeah, Supposedly the Nazis had invented this device that they called the Himmelsstürmer Ah, which I guess my German is probably terrible and there's an umlaut in there that I don't know what to do with, but it translates roughly to the.

Speaker 1: 27:54

Skystormer, wow yeah, wait, wait, wait, I'm flashing back. Let's cut to the flashback music. Here I'm hearing Stan, stan Lee, uh inside of the secret layer of the red skull. That's right, dr Zola, we are going to invent what's it called the storm. The Himmelstormer. The Himmelstormer, hail Hydra.

Speaker 2: 28:18

You know, like this is Hydra stuff man.

Speaker 3: 28:21

Oh, it totally sounds like.

Speaker 1: 28:22

Hydra stuff. It's so evil and so good, you know, like the sky storm, like what you know that it doesn't seem like they actually ever did this.

Speaker 3: 28:31

It seems like it was probably just nazi propaganda.

Speaker 1: 28:33

No one's ever found any indication that it happened you know, at the time I know I would be like good yeah. But you know, in retrospect the little nerd in me is like, oh, come on I wonder what that would look like.

Speaker 3: 28:45

What would that have been like?

Speaker 1: 28:46

Yeah, Like you know, it probably wouldn't have looked very good. No, just guys wearing flaps on their heads and flamethrowers or something. Let us say that you are storming a castle in France and if you have to make a quick escape, you leave your rocket pack up on the battlements and you beat up a person in drag and you run out and you grab your rocket pack and jump over the wall. But, mein Führer, the wall is only six feet high. I could easily climb there, shut up. We've spent great experience in making these rocket packs.

Speaker 1: 29:18

You will use it Also no helmets. No, helmets, we will paint it to look like your face.

Speaker 3: 29:25

People will think you're jumping backwards.

Speaker 1: 29:27

There's a happy smile on his face, by the way. Disclaimer, a little disclaimer here the lowdown and the plus-up does not condone Nazism.

Speaker 2: 29:41

The.

Speaker 3: 29:51

Lowdown on the Plus Up is a BoardWalk Times podcast. At BoardWalkTimesnet you'll find some of the most well-considered and insightful writing about the Walt Disney Company.

Speaker 2: 30:01

Disney history and the universe of theme parks available anywhere. Come join us at BoardWalkTimesnet.

Speaker 3: 30:24

The obsession with rocket packs with like human rocket packs is strange and it still goes on today. People are still inventing new ones. They still don't work any better.

Speaker 1: 30:40

They don't need to make better rocket packs. They just need to make lighter humans. Yeah, that's why it'll never work in America.

Speaker 3: 30:45

Yeah, we'll just drill holes in your bones so we can get some of that marrow out and you'll be lighter like a bird 3D printed pilots.

Speaker 1: 30:55

Hi there, I'm Rex.

Speaker 3: 30:57

Remember kids Captain Scarlet is invincible, but you are not. Don't try this at home.

Speaker 1: 31:04

Yeah, super Dave is going to—Super Dave Osborne is going to get on here and we're going to strap this thing on my back.

Speaker 3: 31:16

That didn't hurt. You know who Super Dave's brother is right? No, Albert Brooks.

Speaker 1: 31:24

Of course it is.

Speaker 3: 31:25

And their— I thought you were going to say Chuck Yeager. Their father was the old, like 30s, 40s comedian Parkey Carcass. Oh, wow, yeah, wow. And their real last name—see talk about a tangent. Their real last name Brooks is not his last name. It Wow and their real last name. See, talk about a tangent. Their real last name. Brooks is not his last name, it's Einstein. His name is actually Albert Einstein.

Speaker 1: 31:52

Wow, wow, all right, okay so.

Speaker 3: 32:00

I don't even know where we are now.

Speaker 1: 32:01

No well, so let's, before we really get. I don't think we've made are now.

Speaker 3: 32:03

No well, so let's— I don't think we've made it to like the 50s yet.

Speaker 1: 32:06

No, so let's actually go post-war here and let's actually talk about the development of the actual rocket pack, Because there's other fictional stuff that we'll get into later, but for right now we really need to kind of get into this world of the actual rocket pack, Because it is stranger than any fiction.

Speaker 3: 32:24

Oh man, it's so crazy, what you've told me it's weirding me out, and the further we go into the story or the weirder it gets. I do want to give some credit here. I've heard glimpses and inklings of this story kind of all over the place. I found a great book that tells the whole thing, Just, you know, starts at the creation of the rocket pack and goes pretty modern, and it's a book called the Rocket Belt Caper A True Tale of Invention, Obsession and Murder by Paul Brown. This book is great. It's less than 200 pages. I read it in a day. I couldn't stop reading it. And while I am going to talk about some of the stuff in this book, I would like the listener to rest assured that I'm telling you about a quarter of it.

Speaker 1: 33:19

So buy the book, because this story is really complicated. I cannot wait to read this thing, but Kelly's been regaling me with this.

Speaker 3: 33:26

It's so great. So, yeah, again, the Rocket Belt Caper by Paul Brown really really worth it and I want to give him credit for writing a great book, awesome. But yeah, so you know, like we said before, the guy that did the sort of guidance jets for the X-1 decided like, hey, I think I have an idea Like I might be able to do this. He's actually out at the test sites for the X-1 talking to other scientists and like drawing sketches in the sand with a stick about how to build a rocket pack. And you know the Army is interested.

Speaker 3: 34:01

Of course the Army goes in and out of being interested in the rocket bell for a long, long time and he eventually builds it, wow, and you know he puts it together. He figures out the hydrogen peroxide mixture. It does this interesting thing where it like leaks the hydrogen over this like reactant mesh and that's what causes the explosion. Wow, um, really fascinating stuff. Wendell moore himself tests it for a long time. Uh, eventually there's a mishap there's lots of mishaps in this story and he ends up, uh, fracturing his knee during a test I swear it'll be up here for 23 seconds yeah.

Speaker 3: 34:46

I told you I could do it. So they start training other people with the Bell rocket pack and you end up getting several other pilots coming in. They end up flying the rocket pack for John F Kennedy in the early 60s. Like they literally like fly. You know, flying the rocket pack for John F Kennedy in the early 60s. They literally fly over the White House grounds and land in front of Kennedy and salute him. It's a huge deal. It's really inspirational for Kennedy. Shoot the through.

Speaker 1: 35:17

Yeah, does he do the superhero landing?

Speaker 3: 35:22

So I read the account of the guy doing it and I think it might have been. Who was it? It was Hal Graham, who was one of the early Rocket Pack guys.

Speaker 1: 35:31

That is mighty impressive yeah.

Speaker 3: 35:33

He talks about. He's just like, oh, just get this right, get it right, get it right. You know, there's a ton of people standing there. He's flying straight at the president of the United States.

Speaker 1: 35:45

Doing the shepherd's prayer the entire way.

Speaker 3: 35:48

Oh Lord, please don't let me Don't hit Kennedy, don't hit Kennedy. International incident if.

Speaker 2: 35:54

I hit him.

Speaker 3: 35:56

They'll probably blame Oswald.

Speaker 1: 35:59

It'll be Jay instead. It'll be Jay instead.

Speaker 3: 36:04

But so he does that It'll be Jay instead. It'll be Jay instead, but so he does that. It's a big deal they end up. So the Army's still interested, but they're kind of like. You know, we're noticing that you have to train these people a lot. They're very difficult to fly this. Well, I say these things, there's an A series and a B series and there's just two of them. So could you prove to us that that's possible? Could like, say, a young man with no previous flight experience? Could you train him to do it real quickly? And Wendell Moore says yeah, and takes the kid who is 19, who's mowing his lawn for a living, and hires him this is Bill Souter.

Speaker 1: 37:09

Oh my, that's Bill Souter. Yes, oh my gosh Bill.

Speaker 3: 37:12

Souter was 19. He was mowing Wendell Moore's lawn and a couple other people's lawns. He was doing like handyman work around the neighborhood and he was about to join the army and his dad did not want him to join the army because this was 1964 and things were starting to heat up in Vietnam. Yes, and Wendell Moore also liked the kid and didn't want him to join the army, and so partially because he was the kid that was around and partially to protect him that's kind of sweet Wendell Moore goes out and says hey, you want to be a rocket pack guy.

Speaker 1: 37:54

Okay, yeah, sure thing, can I trim the hedges while I'm here?

Speaker 3: 38:01

And Bill Souter becomes the Rocket Pack guy. He in fact becomes the most famous of the Rocket Pack guys, the Rocket man.

Speaker 3: 38:08

Yeah, he's really the guy, Though he doesn't fly most of the Disneyland flights. I think he flies one of them. Most of that's Gordon Yeager, but otherwise he's the guy. You see. Yeah, his first flight in the Rocket Pack is at the Sacramento Stadium at the 1964 California State Fair. Wow, he takes off from the racetrack nearby Right and he's supposed to go and land on the stage, on this stage. Now there's an orchestra pit in front of the stage and he comes in pretty low. The orchestra, they're all hitting the deck Because this damn jet engine with a guy strapped to it is flying over their head. Oh my god, sheet music's flying everywhere.

Speaker 1: 39:04

Did he fall in the tuba like in a Warner Brothers cartoon? He, actually, he made Get me out of here.

Speaker 3: 39:11

He made it to the stage, okay, but he didn't. But it was close, it was touch and go. He ends up being hired. I think he's hired by Tommy Walker, who is Disneyland's earliest entertainment guy. Right, he's the guy that puts all the entertainment together for Disneyland, but he's doing some work for the 1964.

Speaker 2: 39:35

World's.

Speaker 1: 39:36

Fair.

Speaker 3: 39:37

It wasn't a World's Fair, which wasn't a World's Fair. It has to come up every single episode. He hires Bill Souter to fly at the World's Fair several times. Wow, so he does that. He flies the California State Fair. Then around that time they hire Bell to fly the Rocket Pack at Disneyland. So Disneyland there's actually kind of two series of it. One is right before the closing of the old Tomorrowland and one is right after the opening of the new one. Okay, so most of these are flown if not all of them are flown by Gordon Yeager and a guy named Doug Michaeljohn. Okay, they do most of these. But I wanted to stop here for a second just to kind of talk about what Tomorrowland was at this point. So prior to it reopening with cool things like adventures through inner space and stuff like that, it was Disneyland's afterthought. It was.

Speaker 3: 40:40

It really was, it was Disneyland's junk drawer, kind of.

Speaker 1: 40:42

Yeah, it really was, it was Disneyland's junk drawer kind of yeah, we got what, was it six weeks or something like that to get the whole thing together. Something ridiculously short.

Speaker 3: 40:48

Right, because Walt originally wasn't going to open Tomorrowland with the rest of the park and then at the last minute I was like meh go ahead. And you know, calling back to Werner Von Braun, he called him in to try and make some displays. I'm sure that made Reagan happy.

Speaker 1: 41:09

Yeah, who let that Nazi in here? Von Braun is troubling, yeah, yes, well, I'm wearing my cowboy hat that was given to me by LBJ, which I got to handle, by the way, did you really? Yeah, I worked on a museum exhibit on NASA over in Stockholm called NASA Human Adventure and one of the artifacts we have was a good old 10-gallon Texas hat in a cream white, given to Wernher von Braun by LBJ President Lyndon Baines Johnson, by LBJ President Lyndon Baines Johnson. Yeah, and you know, it's like I imagine this. You know, operation Paperclip scientist going. Oh, they're not going to execute me. Yeah, whatever funny hat you put on me, mr President, yeah, it's fine, it's fine, it's fine. During that exhibit actually, a little quick little note, in front of Ron Braun, I got to meet Charlie Duke Mm-hmm and I asked him what are some things about space? What do you think about all the people that think that the moon landing was fake?

Speaker 1: 42:09

Are you like Buzz Aldrin, where you just want to punch their lights out.

Speaker 1: 42:12

He goes no, I just laugh at their face. I go why he goes. Well, first off, we had spies in Russia. They had spies in the United States. Everybody was paying attention. No one was going to get away with faking it. Yeah, yeah, that theory like totally ignores the fact that we had spies everywhere. Yeah, it was the Cold War. Give me a break. Yeah, we knew what breakfast cereal you know Khrushchev was eating. Yeah, you know, for goodness sakes.

Speaker 1: 42:36

Yeah, he says the other part of it is watch the wonderful World of Disney specials about going to space, in which Wernher von Braun is talking about his rockets. Yeah, they look like something straight out of Amazing Stories. Or Buck Rogers, they've got fins. Yeah, they're painted, you know, candy apple red with silver stripes and big number seven on the side and Wernher's like very proudly, you know, obviously Ward Kimball has made these models for him, or Harper Goff has carved them for him, but they look like straight out of like Amazing Fantasy or something he says. Do you think that if we were faking it I mean, this is the American public we were so much in space fever Our cars started to look like those rocket ships.

Speaker 3: 43:18

That's right. They put like rocket fins on them and stuff. Yeah, do you think?

Speaker 1: 43:23

if we were faking it, we would have made the spaceships that we actually had look as dumb as they did. The Moon Lander is made of cardboard, for goodness sake, I mean, it's so like the walls if you touch it it's going to break.

Speaker 1: 43:36

That's a good point, stupid. But they were all practical. They worked because that's what they were built for practicality, not looks, whereas if we were faking it we would have made it look a lot sexier, right? So you know, because Disney sold it, those specials really got people on board. The average mom and pop of America were like oh, you don't have to send nobody into space. That's crazy talk.

Speaker 3: 43:59

Yeah, and it's interesting too, the man in Space special, the one that Ward Kimball directed for that show. It got a lot right. It really did, yeah, it really kind of did predict how we were going to do that pretty well, oh yeah absolutely.

Speaker 1: 44:14

It was very instrumental in the space race. A lot of people at NASA talk about that special, of getting the American—if nothing else, the American people just needed convincing. You know you had Kennedy going. We choose to go to the moon. Yeah, you know you got that going on, but you have Disney. Well, we've got our friend over here, ward Kimball, who's going to show us all about what it's going to be like going up into space. Thank you, walt. Yeah, we have our friend Wernher von Braun talking about rockets. Yes, I will show you how we're going to put the rockets up into space. They're like don't, don't put any. Ludwig von Drake in this episode.

Speaker 3: 44:54

Tone it down.

Speaker 1: 44:55

Tone it down. Paul, just go take a break. Will you Go help X with pirates or something? Would you please? We'll make a Doughboy commercial.

Speaker 3: 45:06

And it's interesting because you do have some of that stuff in the Flight to the Moon attraction at Disneyland at that point Tomorrowland, and you know I'm certainly not old enough to have seen that, but I saw the Mission to Mars one that took over from it and was pretty close to the same attraction, though it had that super cool pre-show. Yeah, you know a lot of that. I think some of that footage might have actually been from the man in Space special.

Speaker 1: 45:32

Oh yeah, very easily. Yeah, let's save money.

Speaker 3: 45:36

But past that Tomorrowland was pretty lost. It had, you know, we talked about a number of episodes back the World Beneath Us, the Richfield Oil thing, oh yes, and you know Richfield Oil also producing the Autopia. So it had that stuff. It had, you know, space Station X-1 for a while, which sounded actually pretty neat, but I don't think it was there for very long. They had 20,000 leagues where they just kind of put up the sets for a while.

Speaker 1: 46:09

It worked. It was fine. Sure, it looks neat. It was a hit.

Speaker 3: 46:12

And then a huge chunk of real estate was taken up by. Depending on how you look at it, it's two things or one thing the area called Hobbyland and the Flight Circle yes, and really they're kind of part and parcel of the same thing. Hobbyland was just what it sounded like. It was a bunch of vendors with model kits and erector sets and stuff like that, where people could just go in and try them out.

Speaker 1: 46:38

Brought to you by DuPont? Yes, absolutely, because it's like DuPont presents Hobbyland, because they're selling model cement, right? Hey kids, you really want to be able to see the moon Take off the cap of the—don't actually do this, kids, yeah.

Speaker 3: 46:54

Stop. So they, you know, and it was useful to the—it was useful, in a way, to the American public who, at this point, so you know, we're talking about the late 50s, early 60s, yeah, where post-World War II they had some expendable cash. We were the only major economy that hadn't had the crap blown out of it and we had a wartime economy that we were turning around really fast and Americans suddenly found themselves with some money and some leisure time. Yep, and hobbies became a big thing, yep. So Hobbyland made a certain amount of sense, and attached to Hobbyland was the thing called the Flight Circle, which, if you look at it so it's right where what used to be the people mover boarding circle is and the rocket jets on top and now the— Rocket rod.

Speaker 3: 47:50

Well, it is where that was too, but now the observatron, that thing that doesn't spin anymore up there, is up there, but it pretty much took up that whole sort of central chunk of real estate, yeah, and it was a big circle with like a nautical star kind of carved into it, and attached off to the side was a little moat like a little mini lake and it was mostly all chain-linked fenced up. And it was mostly all chain-linked fenced up. And what they would do is they would go into the circle and fly these model airplanes. They're not really remote control airplanes, but they're the kinds of airplanes that would attach to a tether and you'd hold them in your hand and you'd spin and kind of make them go up and down and they would. You know the guys that did this would get really good at it, and so you know there was guys that could do like three planes at a time and kind of make them swoop in together, and you know obviously a lot of it was just this commercial attempt to sell these, you know planes, yeah, these little toy planes, but that's what the flight circle was for a long time, and the moat was for toy boats that you could remote control, yep, and there was a little kind of track around where the planes were, where they could do little remote control cars, and that's all it was.

Speaker 3: 49:11

But it was a huge chunk of Tomorrowland real estate, mostly because they just didn't have anything else. Right, yeah, yeah, yeah. So when you see Gordon Yeager take off in that special, where he's taking off from is the flight circle. Oh, okay, so they've cleared the model guys out. They seem to have taken down the fence too, which is probably a good idea. Yeah, and that's where he's launching from and he's kind of going up. They use some camera tricks in the special that makes him look like he might be going around the castle. He can't get that far.

Speaker 3: 49:46

Dude's got 21 seconds, he's probably tied a string to him and hung him off of the sky sky rafts or something he just kind of circles around, he gets, he gets near the matterhorn and you know they did it a couple of times in like 65. Oh wow, and that was when they still had mountain climbers climbing the Matterhorn and I guess at one point they didn't tell them. So the mountain climbers just kind of went flat against the mountain because they're like, oh my god, there's a jet coming at us.

Speaker 1: 50:23

Oh, my God.

Speaker 3: 50:25

I saw a great letter that they wrote in 1966. So you know, everyone should go back and listen to our Golden Horseshoe episode. Yes, please, we keep telling you and you keep ignoring us.

Speaker 1: 50:37

It's a really good episode. Trust us, I do balloon animals. Yeah, he does On audio. It's a really good episode. Trust us, I do balloon animals.

Speaker 3: 50:46

Yeah, he does On audio. It's amazing but Wally Bogue was the editor of the Backstage Disneyland magazine at the time. Oh, wow. And I saw this great letter from Bell Air Systems and it's just to Wally Bogue and it says we received a copy of Backstage Disneyland magazine from Bill Beeler. The team was very happy to see and read about the people we met and worked with at Disneyland During our stay there. Everyone was very kind and cooperative, from the shipping department personnel to the top office. The team will always remember our stay there. It was one of the most pleasant places to fly. We are proud to be ex-employees of Disneyland.

Speaker 1: 51:26

As opposed to the letter that was then sent posthumously by one of the widows of one of those mountain climbers on the manor. Wait what I'm joking, I'm totally making a joke here. Oh my God, that rocket pad came right towards me and all of a sudden Well played Really hard for that gag.

Speaker 3: 51:56

So yeah, they do some flights there After Tomorrowland reopens. They do a couple of flights too for the new Tomorrowland. I'm not sure where they launch from and there's no film of it that I could find. Maybe it was from the flying saucers pad. Oh yeah, maybe.

Speaker 1: 52:15

That might make sense. That seems like the most plausible amount of real estate that would be safe enough to do a launch from. Yeah, yeah, because the saucers were unfortunately, unfortunately, very, very short-lived. Yeah, yeah, they're amazing, but Bob Gurr has nothing good to say about them. No.

Speaker 3: 52:31

But it is fascinating to read his— oh yeah —him talking about it. Oh yeah, I wrote an article a year or so ago about technical debt and Disneyland and it goes into a lot of detail about what happened with the flying saucers and why they couldn't fix it. And it just looked great on paper.

Speaker 1: 52:56

So you know, did the rocket person ever fly over the house of tomorrow?

Speaker 3: 53:01

You know it is possible that the guy that Jaeger Mikkel John, actually got that far. That is possible. They could have made it that far. It's difficult to tell from the film.

Speaker 1: 53:15

Okay. Well, the reason I ask is I want to take a quick little pause in our narrative here and I want to do a quick little plug. Yes, I want to take a quick little pause in our narrative here and I want to do a quick little plug. Yes, kelly and I have been invited to join several podcasters down at the Magic Kingdom, down at Disneyland, for May the 4th for an extravaganza that is being hosted by Our friend, paul Barry at Window to the Magic. Yeah, so we're going to be doing a special show with a special topic that we're going to surprise you all with, but we're going to be broadcasting from Howard Johnson's suite that is based entirely on the House of Tomorrow.

Speaker 3: 53:52

Yes, the Howard Johnson's suite of the retro future. Yep, and I've been able to be in that suite once for a small event and it's wonderful, it's really great.

Speaker 1: 54:06

Yeah, I'll be bringing lots of bottled Coke and we'll be having lots and lots of TV dinners being served, thanks to Paul. Yeah, supposedly a catered TV dinner. Yeah, so we're going to have a lot of great guests that are going to be stopping in. It'll be a very fun show. So, if you—please, set your calendars to keep your eye open for that episode, if not, we'll probably be down in that region and say hi to us if you see us walking by.

Speaker 3: 54:29

Yeah, absolutely. We're the two tall guys who look like they don't know what they're doing, boy, ain't that the truth?

Speaker 1: 54:38

Or just keep your eyes open for the prospector. Trust me, you can't avoid it. He really he does do it all the time. Yeah, kelly, I actually managed to get really close to embarrassing Kelly a couple of times, so that says something. Oh, you know, I love it.

Speaker 3: 54:51

We're getting to sort of the end of the story of the Bell rocket belt. So Wendell Moore builds supposedly another iteration of it, and at this point the army is backed out. The army is like we just don't see a practical use. Wendell Moore builds supposedly another iteration of it, and at this point the army is backed out. The army is like we just don't see a practical use for this. So that's. We all saw Thunderball. Yeah, that movie is real slow, you know.

Speaker 3: 55:14

That Turns out that just because you can shoot underwater fights doesn't mean you should. Yes, exactly. So that is partially why Bell has started to kind of build out a team of rocket belt pilots is because this is what they're doing, to now make money off of it because the Army's not funding it anymore. Right, and at a certain point Moore makes a second iteration of it, supposedly, gets fairly far, but he dies suddenly. He has a heart attack, oh, and passes away very quickly. And his new iteration, which I gather he either didn't finish or they just didn't do anything with, is never used. And at this point Bill Souter has flown a number of these. He flies the first Super Bowl in 1967.

Speaker 1: 56:08

And he's opened a fabulous lawn mowing business.

Speaker 3: 56:10

Yes, Getting back to his roots. But he retires. He says I'm done. At least he says he's done On the day he leaves Bell, 1970, he leaves Bell. Someone hands him a photo. This photo shows a young man named Nelson Tyler who has built a rocket belt. Oh my, from henceforth we will refer to this one as the Tyler rocket belt. Okay, souter can't help his curiosity. He gets in touch with Tyler. He's like I want to know more about this. Tyler invites him out to see. It Turns out that Tyler met Suter at Disneyland. Oh wow, it doesn't seem like Suter actually flew any of the pre-closing Tomorrowland, but he might have flown a couple of the post-New Tomorrowland flights. Souter remembers him. He remembers him as this guy who was standing near him all the time, like taking pictures of the rocket belt.

Speaker 3: 57:15

Oh geez, oh no. It turns out that Tyler was also holding this small measuring device in his hand the entire time and was surreptitiously measuring the dimensions of the Bell rocket belt, and then he went off and built his own Okay, and seemed to pull it off. Suter sees this, he contacts Tyler and Suter is the first person to fly the Tyler Rocket Belt, which he flies at the Pro Bowl, along the way. This guy, kenny Gibson, who is a stuntman, yeah, I've heard of Kenny.

Speaker 3: 57:54

Yeah, he's done a lot of stunts. He continued to do a lot of stunts, yeah, okay, and he becomes the second pilot of the Tyler rocket boat. Okay, so there's Suter and Kenny Gibson. At a certain point this guy, brad Barker. Now we want to remember this name, brad Barker, brad Barker. Okay, brad Barker is a former insurance salesman from Illinois and he is an old friend of Kenny Gibson's. We just want to kind of file that away for a second.

Speaker 3: 58:25

Okay, kenny Gibson and Bill Souter are kind of flying the Tyler rocket belt here and there. They fly it over the Pro Bowl in 1971. They fly it to a couple of different things and they're just kind of keeping up a small little business as rocket belt pilots. It's mostly Kenny Gibson. At this point Souter's getting a little tired of it. So in 1981, kenny Gibson invites Brad Barker out to Mexico City to watch the Rocket Belt demo. Barker becomes kind of obsessed with the Rocket Belt. He sort of becomes part of Kenny Gibson's team. Within the year Suter quits, he retires again and he's like I've had it, this is getting out of control.

Speaker 3: 59:10

So Kenny Gibson is the only Tyler Rocket Belt pilot. In 1984, tommy Walker hires the Tyler Rocket Belt. Tommy Walker remember the first ever entertainment director at Disneyland? The guy that hired the Bell Rocket Belt to fly over Tomorrowland seemed to have hired the Bell Rocket Belt to fly at the 1964 World's Fair. 1984, he hires the Tyler Rocket Belt to fly over the 1984 opening ceremony of the Olympics.

Speaker 1: 59:43

Oh, wow, wow, I remember that.

Speaker 3: 59:47

Yeah, tyler decides that Gibson is maybe not experienced enough and Souter's pulled out of retirement again. So Souter takes over. He flies the rocket belt in the 1984 Olympics. He considers it like the pinnacle of his career. People go crazy. I mean, you remember it? Oh yeah, I remember it, I remember the alien going over the?

Speaker 1: 1:00:14

you know, the alien ship flying over the closing ceremony. Yes, yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 3: 1:00:19

So you know at that point Gibson's continuing to fly ceremony? Yes, yeah, absolutely so you know at that point Gibson's continuing to fly, but what he's discovering is that he's having trouble maintaining a consistent supply of high quality, high octane hydrogen peroxide. It's becoming harder and harder to get.

Speaker 1: 1:00:38

Well, like I said, during the 80s there was this big crush for zit creams. Those oxy stridex pads were like using up all of the pure hydrogen peroxide. So all you pasty faced teenagers of the 80s, you ruined the rocket pack, yeah so.

Speaker 3: 1:01:00

Tyler reaches out to a couple of friends of his Brad Barker, who we talked about before, and a guy named Larry Stanley. Larry Stanley is an old aeronautics buff. He's from Sugar Land, texas big oil family, so they've got a little bit of money. He had been friends with Barker and Gibson for a little while. Gibson hires them to start making basically a hydrogen peroxide refinery. What could possibly go wrong? What could possibly go wrong? So they start working together.

Speaker 3: 1:01:37

At this point they're working to make a distillation lab for Kenny Gibson to distill high-quality H2O2. Okay, and you know, the problem is that Gibson's been trying to buy it from all over the place to fly the Tyler Rocket Belt but inconsistent hydrogen peroxide causes it not to fly so good and so it occasionally will just sort of drop out. There's problems. So they're trying to fix that. Barker has a Cessna airplane that he bought a while back when he was doing real well selling insurance in Houston and he loans it to Larry Stanley. From time to time Stanley disappears with the Cessna, just disappears, drops off the face of the earth with an airplane. Okay, barker, finally, is like this guy's not coming back. I don't know what's going on. He calls the FBI. The FBI show up and say we suspect that your plane's at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, gulf of America.

Speaker 1: 1:02:46

No, I'm joking, no.

Speaker 3: 1:02:47

Gulf of Mexico. It's like we know that Larry Stanley has been using it to smuggle drugs.

Speaker 1: 1:02:56

Go ahead and sit down back in the plane. Oh, ignore that white powder over there. I was eating donuts earlier.

Speaker 3: 1:03:02

Don't get any in the plane.

Speaker 1: 1:03:02

Oh, ignore that white powder. Over there I was eating donuts earlier.

Speaker 3: 1:03:04

Don't get any in your lungs. Whether or not this was actually true, they did find the Cessna. It wasn't at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico. Whether or not Stanley was actually smuggling drugs, the FBI believed that he was. Wow, and at this point they're not talking anymore. Then Stanley, who's still talking to Kenny Gibson they have a big falling out too. Stanley at a certain point— Did Kenny Gibson look at him and say I'm not going to be your fall guy, your shenanigans and goings-on over here.

Speaker 1: 1:03:35

Sorry, it's all right. A little stuntman humor there.

Speaker 3: 1:03:38

So at a certain point Stanley reappears and he breaks into a storage unit. Kenny Gibson's off doing some actual stunt work. He's not doing Rocket Belt stuff. Stanley reappears and steals a bunch of the equipment related to the Rocket Belt. Wow. So Barker, who's been friends with Kenny Gibson longer than Stanley and does believe that Stanley stole his airplane and smuggled drugs with it, right, and folks, if you're a little shy about violence, this is not going to be graphic. I'm going to keep it clean, but there's some violence coming.

Speaker 1: 1:04:24

On one side of the screen we'll have a hideous Gila monster and on the right a sweet little school girl.

Speaker 3: 1:04:33

So Barker, maybe he had a little lamb. Sorry, go ahead. Barker gets a baseball bat, uh-huh, and his friend who's a black belt, karate instructor, and two of Kenny Gibson's brothers and goes to Stanley's family oil field. This is Delta Force. Yes, oh, it gets crazier what they get in an argument with someone that's there. Eventually, stanley shows up, I guess the black belt takes down one of the people on the field and Stanley goes. Okay, I'll give you your stuff back.

Speaker 1: 1:05:09

Oh my God, what Fun fact. I was making a joke. Kenny Gibson actually was a stunt coordinator on Delta Force II, the Columbian Connection how about?

Speaker 3: 1:05:19

that no joke Also.

Speaker 1: 1:05:21

Police Academy 4, citizens on Patrol, but that's a different story.

Speaker 3: 1:05:26

Along the way. Gibson's still flying the Tyler rocket belt. He flies it 20 different times at Walt Disney World. Wow yeah. At a certain point he's about to fly at Walt Disney World and there's a throttle valve it's the valve that actually controls the fuel mixture. Mm-hmm Gets screwed up, something happens to it. And he's still friends with Barker Mm-hmm, and he says I have to have this. This is, quote unquote, the key to the rocket belt. Mm-hmm. Can you get this fixed?

Speaker 3: 1:06:03

So Barker takes the little throttle piece, drives from Florida to Houston where there's a machine shop that actually machines him a new one, brings it back. Everything's fine with the flight. But Barker believes at this point that he knows the secret to making a rocket belt. Oh no, because he's been given this piece. Oh no, barker at that point decides he's going to make his own rocket belt, in spite of having threatened Larry Stanley with a baseball bat not that long ago, oh my God. He talks Stanley into going into business with him on the Rocket Belt. And this brings us up to 1991, in which a certain film comes out the Rocketeer. Yes, you want to talk to us a little out? The Rocketeer, yes.

Speaker 1: 1:07:05

You want to talk to us a little bit about the Rocketeer? Yes, I mean, besides the fact that the tale so far sounds like a Scorsese movie, it's like I'm imagining Just wait, I'm imagining De Niro.

Speaker 3: 1:07:20

Hey Lowdowners, hope you enjoyed episode one of the rocket belt saga. We'll be back in two weeks with part two and, believe me, it only gets weirder from here we hope you've enjoyed this episode of the lowdown on the plus up.

Speaker 3: 1:07:37

if you have, please tell your friends where you found us and if, if you haven't, we can pretend this never happened and need not speak of it again. For a lot more thoughts on theme parks and related stuff, check out my writing for BoardWalkTimes at BoardWalkTimesnet. Feel free to reach out to Pete and I on our Lowdown on the Plus Up Facebook group or send us a message directly at comments at lowdown-plus-upcom. Comments at lowdown-plus-upcom. We really want to hear about how you'd plus these attractions up and read some of your ideas on the show. Our theme music is Goblin Tinker Soldier Spy by Kevin MacLeod at incompetechcom. We'll have a new episode out real soon. Why? Because we like you.

Speaker 2: 1:08:22

I'm going to take you to. I'm going to take you to. I'm going to take you to to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to to to.