Mattel SuperStar Sky Show Plane

By rcgrabbag | Nov 22, 2009

Back in 1973, I saved up all my pennies to buy one of these at the now defunct Kiddie City toy store in Hatboro, PA. Today, I spent a more than a few pennies to nab this example off of ebay.

As a kid I loved airplanes. I’d spend hours tossing around a balsa wood glider from Comet that could be purchased at the impulse rack near the cash register at the local department store. After seeing a commercial about the SuperStar, I knew I had to have one. The Superstar was an electric free-flight airplane with some truly unique features. It was powered by on-board rechargeable ni-cad cells that were recharged by connecting a 6v lantern battery. This gave the plane a couple of minutes of flight. But that’s not all, the plane could be flown in a designated pattern by choosing one of a set of four flight “disks” and, could drop a parachutist and release a streamer while in flight as part of its flight program.

The side of the box illustrates some of the mechanical features of the plane. The center illustration is the electric power plant, showing a geared propeller drive and two nicad cells towards the rear. The illustration to the right shows a smiling kid loading the flight disk in the bottom of the airplane. The disk had cams (notches and bumps) around its perimeter. When the plane was switched on and launched, the disk would spin slowly, driven by a geared connection to the motor. A lever would ride in and out of the disk’s cams and this lever would move the plane’s rudder thereby causing it to fly a designated pattern.

Close-up of box side illustrations. That kid sure looks happy!

Box contents. On the left is the fuselage, wing panels and various pieces of hardware. The fuselage was thin vaccu-formed plastic while the wings were foam. Middle photo is of the decals. To the right is the literature included.

Instruction manual. Note the four flight disks in the first photo. In the second photo, the manual provides a diagram of each disk’s flight pattern. You could fly it tethered too, but I couldn’t imagine why you’d want to.

Product catalog is a trip back in time. Mattel made a car version of the Superstar plane. The car used the same type of disks to make the car drive in a pre-defined pattern on the ground. And how about those Sizzlers on the facing page? Hmmm, only one is actually a scale model; a Ferrari 512. The rest are a hot rodder’s nightmare! Remember the ‘Juice Machine’?

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Originally posted 2008-05-20 17:19:19.

12 Comments so far

steve March 15, 2009 2:42 pm

As a kid i owned on of these planes, it flew so good mine flew outta site and was never found again, my mom & dad wrote to the company and told them what had happened and they sent me a new plane and everything!
Blackhorse1 April 7, 2009 11:54 am

I had one of these as a kid, too! My dad and I took it out to the local baseball field to give it a “maiden voyage” flight. We put in one of the free-flight discs and fired it up. Cool to watch it fly up and around…. oh wait! It’s going over the road and past the hill across the road! Oh no! It’s gone!!! My dad was grumbling about this stupid plane, after we spent the money on it and the time to figure out how to put it together, and everything… so we pick up the box and the battery and the other stuff, and start to walk to the car, and I’m crying (well – I WAS six years old…) and suddenly… bzzzzzzzzz – here comes that plane in for a landing not five feet from where we let it go!

Talk about the COOLEST thing EVER!!! I had that plane for years and years – but it got lost in a move. I just bought another one on Ebay (was probably bidding against the guy who posted the photos at the top…) and am looking for a new powerplant for it. It came with the car, too (but it needs tires…). Great memories!!!
Ron Chung May 16, 2009 5:22 am

Saw the commercial on TV, bugged my parents to buy it for me on my 10th or 11th birthday. 1974 or 5. Realise now that they weren’t so rich, but they bought it for me anyway. To be honest from memory I only got to the test stage, where you glide it over long grass. Got only one nice glide, but never got to fly it properly with the programmed disc’s. AAhhh memories. Thanks Dad and Mum.
raymond July 23, 2009 6:32 pm

I had a superstar plane and the foam eagle gliders both after years of service got lost in the trees but I still have my superstar car althought the tires have rotted off but I do have another motor if anyone is looking.
Rob G September 11, 2009 10:39 am

I too owned a Superstar as a kid. I purchased mine at Kidde City in Roslyn, PA. After hours of throughly enjoying flying this aircraft and trying the different cams in Penbryn Park, I started to experiment. I created new cams with bottle caps that I hand filed to create new flight patterns. One time I purposely overcharged the required battery time – turned on the plane, released it and it flew with engine on for more than 15 mins. The plane gained lift and climbed so high, I could just barely see it. It had drifted out over the railroad tracks and I lost track of it as it flew into a residential neighorhood. I took off after it, not knowing where to look. After frantically searching, I finally found it resting on its wheels in someone driveway over 1/2 mile from where I launched it. I never charged it more than the required time again. A few weeks later some kids in the park threw rocks at it while it was in flight and made it crash. The foam wings broke and the engine/prop was damaged.
brian September 27, 2009 4:09 pm

This is the coolest toy plane I remember from my childhood. Does any of the paperwork list Patents numbers? I would like to look up drawings on the mechanics of the flight controls and see if the patents are still current.

Regards,

B
brian September 27, 2009 10:26 pm

http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=3803758.PN.&OS=PN/3803758&RS=PN/3803758
Bryan Davis November 16, 2009 5:00 pm

I remember this toy, I’m the younger brother of two that did not get one in xmas 1974 or 75, but along with a neighbor kid and my brother, I remember taking the SKY SHOW to a undeveloped field and flying them. My brother was always good at isntructions until this project came. I remember him launching his plane-probably without the disc and it kept flying out of our reach and landed on the top of a warehouse building. We tried to recover the unit but the owners were not cooperative with us as kids. On the othere hand my neighbors unit flew perfectly, launching the chute as well.
Yep I was a kid in the 70’s and remember all the boys stuff, even the girls stuff because of 3 sisters. My favorite was the mattell “Whirley Bird”, helicopter that basically flew on a stick; although I was about 7-8 years old, I could not get enough of this toy.
Mike Calhoun November 20, 2009 10:34 am

I bought one of these when I was 11 or 12 – one of the few times I actually saved my allowance to get something! It was outrageously expensive, something like $10 or $12 at the K-mart store in Garland, Texas. I flew at at the park adjacent to my elementary school, usually without the discs, so it would just fly in a circle (the park wasn’t really all that big). It flew great until the day it hit a chain link fence and broke the prop. I don’t know how many different ways I tried to glue that prop back together, but it never worked. Wish I’d thought to write to Mattel ………
Steven P. Williams November 29, 2009 9:40 pm

I too was one of those boys who just had to have a SuperStar plane. My father was a pilot in the early 70’s and that meant that I had to have one of these cool new panes. I can remember seeing the TV ad showing a boy and his father getting ready for a launch. The boy was the actor who played BOBBY on the Brady Bunch show. If HE had one one of these panes then I had to have one as well. My dad gave one to me and my brother on Chirstmas day 1973. We wanted to take the planes to our local school yard SOOOOO badly. The day came for our first flight and sure enough…it took off and did it’s thing and came right back to us just like the commercials showed it would. After a having move and experincing the woeful negligence of 2 liitle boys, the planes were doomed to destruction. Years later BEFORE ebay was invented, I was working on developing an international toy business when some one showed up with a MINT- in- the- box SuparStar… and I just had to have it!. I have been carrying this plane around with me for almost 15 years now and it too has lost it’s sizzle for me.
I am offering it for sale for the mere sum of $250.00! That may seem like a lot but find me another in mint condition…and then the price MAY go down. Contact me any time…Steven P. Williams email at mrwilliamswhirlingwheels@yahoo.com
Renton Washington
Tom December 13, 2009 7:01 am

I also had one when I was 11 or 12. Flew it in the tomato field behind my house. Most memorable flight was one when I gave a “lucky” caterpillar a ride. I put him in the plastic propeller shaft support housing that clipped to the left side of the power plant shown in the picture above. Off went the plane. Flew for a little while then the propeller stopped abruptly. FAA later determined the cause of the subsequent crash was the caterpillar entering the drive gears. Poor little fella. Guess I should have seen that coming though.
Matso Limtiaco February 1, 2010 2:15 am

This was the coolest of its type back in the day. At the time my dad and I were also experimenting with U-control (the Cox P-39, I think), but the Mattel was way easier to handle. I remember flying it on an absolutely still day and chasing it for several hundred yards across a big grassy field near the beach in Guam. The main problem was that a hard landing could destroy the styrofoam wings, and after two or three patches they just wouldn’t hold together any longer. I can’t remember if we ever tried to get spare parts for it…