I had forgotten all about these toys until a friend of mine recently purchased one off of e-Bay. (I won't say how much he spent, I am embarrassed for him.)
Marx sold three different Carry-All Action Sets; Fort
Apache, Cape Kennedy and Fighting Knights. These were
popular in my neighborhood for a short time in the very early seventies. Surprisingly, I don't remember if I owned any of these. I remember playing with them but the set could have been owned by one of the kids on my street.
Cape Kennedy was by far the best set as it was loaded with trucks, helicopters, planes, and best of all, rockets. (Or were they warheads and missiles? I guess it depended on how violent your imagination was.) Fort Apache was also great as killing technologically over matched Native Americans (we still called them Indians or "Injuns" back then) was still considered an acceptable game for children to play. I don't remember ever playing Fighting Knights. Perhaps, it was acceptable to my five year old brain to shoot off bombs and missiles and kill "Injuns", I guess I drew a line at the crusades.
One of the best features of each set was the "carry-all" aspect. Each set folded neatly into a suitcase, complete with handle, so you could carry the violence down to your friends house and share the fun.
Check out the commercial below. The kid in the rust colored shirt is Christopher Knight, aka. Peter Brady
-Casey Redmond
August 25th, 2016
Shangri-La, Ohio
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