ROLL OVER BEETHOVEN...

Ahh - the Non-Stop Roll-Over Tricky-Action Moon Climber! These simple toys were a staple of my childhood, when the stores were full of expensive Thunderbirds and Sword toys, my beleagured parents would often opt for buying one of these little beauties to shut me up.
In response to Ferrymans query, I have the orange T25 version myself and from the models pictured here, I have a boxed version of the small red one too. I found that they came from a variety of manufacturers, mostly the enigmatic Hong Kong variety. The boxed one I have has no makers mark on the body or packaging. I have seen many different versions of the basic model, including the unusual Tank version from 'TK'. The model featured at the top of this article and on Ferrymans pic does have a very distinctive feature - the odd 'switch' from the back of the Sword Space Glider seems to have made an appearance on the back as a decoration. Similarly, another version sports what appears to be an Apollo Moon Exploring LEM on the back!


The smaller red one with NASA sticker came in two versions, and is about 14cm long. The distinctive scanner on the back of this one proved to be the ideal size to use in a conversion of a Spacex Cricket into a (then unseen) Apollo Tracker. The wheels of the climbers also bear a strong resemblance to the ApEx Moon Prospector, but I suspect this may just be an example of a common 'spacey' theme being applied to toys at the time, just as almost all rockets from the sixties had the ubiquitous chequered band on a sticker around the fuselage.