Land of the Lost Illustrated Timeline at We Are The Mutants

As a life-long Land of the Lost fan, I'd been toying with the idea of putting together a timeline chronicling the arrival and exit of all the characters, and tracing the various temporal manipulations and paradoxes created by the matrix tables and pylons. Well, I finally found an "excuse" to stop toying and start timelining when the creative mind behind one of my favorite blogs 2 Warps To Neptune invited me to contribute content to his newest venture, We Are The Mutants.

I actually rewatched the series in its entirety in order to put this timeline together, and it's BIG. Too big to print. But hopefully you'll find it fun to examine and explore through the viewscreen of whatever inter-dimensional machine you use to view The Internet. I also wrote a rather longish piece on the series itself that delves into some of the shows headier concepts and plotlines (masochists can read it here).

You'd do well to bookmark We Are The Mutants, too, especially if you are a fan of Gen-X era sci-fi, fantasy, toys and tech.

Trick or Treat (1978, CHiPs)

CHiPs (an acronym of California Highway Patrol) was the cop show for kids that didn't like cop shows. Officers Ponch (Erik Estrada) and John (Larry Wilcox) rarely drew their weapons, and let legions of criminals walk free with a stern warning.

In the world of CHiPs, police work wasn't about using either brute force or ingenious detective work to bring hard-boiled criminals off the gritty Streets of Mean. Instead, a typical beat might entail rescuing a runaway boat on jet-skis, luring an escaped circus tiger back to his cage, or delivering a newborn on the floor of the disco (after winning the disco contest, of course!)

The Season 2 Halloween episode, Trick or Treat (1978), stayed true to the formula.

Nothing scary to see here, folks, as Ponch and John tackle decidedly lightweight incidents like a hold-up woman dressed as a ghost, candy-bag theft by an older woman convinced she's lost her wedding ring in a batch of candy, and a pair of naughty ladies stealing city property for a scavenger hunt.

Sarge demonstrates how to thoroughly search a suspect for hidden contraband.

The biggest treat of this episode is getting a look at vintage plastic Halloween adornments... close encounters of the Ben Cooper kind.

Below we have Bigfoot (mask only, missing the smock, from the 1977 Sid & Marty Krofft show Bigfoot & Wildboy), a Batman (1974, this rendering based on the comic strip), and a Raggedy Ann (1973). Oh yea, there's also a non-plastic vampire and witch, too.

Later that evening we'll encounter this group. Bigfoot again, this time complete with smock, Skeleton (looks like a slight variation of a 1974 version that I remember as being the first costume I ever wore), The Incredible Hulk (looks like an earlier version than the 1980s model posted below), and Darth Vader (sin smock, con cape).

Here's a closer look at Skeleton.


Costume images came from the awesome and topical book Halloween: Costumes and Other Treats. See many more images in a previous post here.