Eight Wheels on my Wagons

Ive always had a love of ground based space vehicles, especially anything with wheels or tracks and recently I managed to grab a new addition to my collection. The Tomy Space Climbing Mobile, besides being a great toy, also brought with it a host of questions that blog readers will be familiar with - the old chicken and egg scenario. Cosmetically, the toy is almost the same as the Sears Moon Mobile I blogged a while ago, but also has similarities to Tomy's other line of Space Eight toys. The larger Tomy vehicle shares the same basic chassis as the Sears toy, but the upper Hull is radically different. This begs the question as to which was made first ? The Sears toy has a jointed pilot that looks very like a Matt Mason toy, but the Tomy one has the same styling as the later Space Eight toys. The S8 vehicles are much smaller and all plastic. They were also marketed as Space Construction Vehicles and came with a variety of other styles including a tipper and a large grab. However, the Tomy Space Climbing Mobile is a large, powerful toy and came almost complete, it was just missing the radar screen that it shares with the Sears truck.