The Silver Toolbox Mystery

 During the recent Apollo Moon Exploring extravaganza we've been enjoying, a few mysteries were flagged up (excuse the pun there..). Most notable was the 'silver toolbox' item that often appeared in the large boxed collection and sometimes on the carded sets. As this fragile little piece invariably turns up damaged, it wasn't immediately obvious as to what it was. When I got my LP window boxed set back in the day, around 1971, I was immediately familiar with it, from photos of the lunar excursions and from somewhere much nearer home. The Airfix kit of the Lunar module, released in 1970 includes a small piece of equipment (shown here on the lower right of the instruction sheet) with folded out solar panels. It doesn't have the tv aerial though, presumably this was intended to power the small portable TV that came with the LP set !

 Paul Vreede is lucky enough to own a more complete version of the 'silver toolbox' and sent me some shots of it along with a photo of the 'Passive Seismic Experiment Package carried by Apollo 11' (photo courtesy NASA) upon which it is clearly based.

 A second puzzler was the inclusion of a small dome in most sets, mine had a yellow one, but Paul V received three white ones in his boxed set, two of which were larger and as he suggests, may form a kind of wheel for another contraption, yet to be revealed.

The domes also found use on the small red/green bubble car, with some slight re-tooling. By far the most tantalising item to appear in a 'moon exploring' set was the Space Station, which I got in the window boxed set along with the silver LEM, Apollo, Mercury Capsule and usual assortment of rocks. Unfortunately, the remains of this are now somewhere on the continental U.S, but the original photograph which formed the first point of contact between me, Mr Woods and Mr Vreede, from over ten years ago, still exists. The photo shows the remains of my moon exploring collection, supplemented by a few repros and cake decorations, such as the blue LEM and white apollo. The LP moon tractors are ranged at the right hand side. The station itself sits at the rear right of the pic, having lost its flimsy legs and had Spacex Moonbase legs superglued on. The two white disks are the same as the central console disk on the small bubble car, even down to the raised section with the three dials. Clearly designed to reflect the Matt Mason Space Station, i've never seen this piece ever, since then. Still looking though..