Ridiculous to the Sublime

It's a winding, circuitous trail looking into the past background of an already old toy design. Its a little like archaeology - you find a remnant of some lost age and begin to piece back together its history. It can be difficult sometimes as information proves difficult to find, but its always rewarding. A lot of the time its a matter of extrapolation and guesswork, as anyone directly involved with the subject is uncontactable for some reason, or evidence no longer exists and has dissolved into the ephemeral years.

 

Digging about amongst the reams of information still available sometimes reveals other nuggets of info, not necessarily connected to an initial search, but extremely useful nonetheless.

One such example is the Scramble Bug. Previously, ive suggested that one source of inspiration for the radical, balloon tyred vehicle may have come from General Motors Futurama display in New Yorks World Fair back in 64.

  

This streamlined beauty used spherical wheels instead of the now familiar tyres we know from the toy, but the articulated body and three axle layout is certainly akin to the Century 21 craft.

 

Although the GM show at Futurama was intended as a speculative look at the far future, the technologies suggested arose from products already in development. While I was researching another line of enquiry recently, I came across another General Motors concept for a Lunar Rover - this time a working model designed to test out a spherical wheel and articulated chassis on a simulated lunar terrain. Although much simpler in form than the Futurama model, this design from 1961 again mirrors the familiar form of its later cousins.

 The articulated, balloon tyred vehicle was a favourite concept for engineers and aerospace designers looking to find a way to transport men and materials across a largely unknown, potentially treacherous, terrain. Until it was realised that weight at takeoff was a major issue and the ubiquitous lunar dust could be a serious problem, some quite large wheeled vehicle concepts were proposed.

  

Unfortunately, budgetary constraints, engineering hurdles and a general lack of interest in going back to the moon derailed any further development of lunar rovers after the later Apollo missions and the moon crawlers, molabs and moon buggies dreamed of in the early sixties never really rolled off the drawing board.