I have a thing about Project SWORD wheels at the moment. Ever since finding Scramble Bug wheels on a 1930's magazine cover and the Alps Lunar Explorer I've been hooked!
The next wheels I've 'taken off' are those of the toy Moon Prospector by Century 21 Toys from 1967 pictured here second one down. In fact all the toy prospectors that have been released have the same balloon wheels.
The exceptions are the miniature hat wheels of the two scaled-down SpaceX knockoffs at the front of the group above, but I'll not get into those as Bill and Paul V know far more than me.
I'm interested in whether the balloon tyres of the bigger toys were based on real ones and if there existed an earlier or later toy with the same tyres.
The first question we've answered on Moonbase many times: the Moon Prospector was a real NASA concept and appeared on magazine covers and in space books throughout the early 1960's as shown here in these two examples from 1961: the design of the balloon tyres was pretty much set from this point.
So were there any other toys with similar wheels? The Prospector's are wide and light, almost like blow-moulded plastic. This puzzle is harder to answer. Possibly the earliest toy moon tyres were the four seen on the massive Operation Moon Base by Marx released in 1961 as shown below.
In 1968 Marx re-used the design for their Johnny Apollo Moon Rover.
But despite this searching, I cannot find any other toy with wheels identical to the Project SWORD Moon Prospector, unless of course you can readers.
There are though modern equivalents. For instance Lego have released wide wheels for their moon buggy assemblages. These would make ideal Prospector wheels maybe?
Nice one woodsy, I hadn't noticed the similarity between the moon tanker wheels - an innovative solution to carrying fuel - and the Johnny Apollo buggy, they are very similar. The Lego wheels are a lot narrower and more fluted, so they dont really fit the bill. Im sure there must me other balloon tyred vehicles, the most obvious toy that comes close is the 1970 Tonka Crater Crawler, but even that is a touch narrow in the beam
ReplyDeleteReally! Did they theoretically store fuel in those big wheels on the Marx play set? That's got to be a dodgy idea - unless it wasn't the normal flammable stuff!
DeleteI think we'll find the prospector wheels on a child's pull along dog or something one day!
Your question about the Roxy wheels I've answered in my piece on infringement, Woodsy. The foursome at the bottom of your (nice!) compilation pic are a Spacex Prospector in the back, Roxy first-version copy at left, Roxy later-version copy at right and LP copy in front. Roxy will have been sued for infringement by Miner if not Triang, and will have had to change the details of some toys to be allowed producing them again. This clearly includes the wheels on the Prospector, compare them here: http://projectswordtoys.blogspot.be/2015/09/birthday-readers-special-copycats-in.html
ReplyDeleteWhy the LP version has different wheels I don't know, maybe easier to make, but it will have saved them some legal hassles over that particular toy. :)
Best -- Paul
Thanks Paul. I knew you'd have the real gen on those mono Prospectors. I thought it was on the blog already! doh! The group shot of the four small toys is Bill's. I've never seen a proper real life version of the Prospector. I assume NASA never made one?
DeleteNASA indeed never made one, Woodsy.
DeleteThe Prospector was part of an un-manned NASA programme (also including the Surveyor landers f ex) that got superseded by the manned programme after Kennedy's pledge to"put a man on the Moon before the decade is out." There'd also been studies of delivering Prospector-type vehicles to the lunar surface slung underneath a Surveyor, but those also got cancelled in the end.
Best -- Paul
Shame they never made a working model at least eh Paul. There is an excellent chapter on Prospectors in Rob Godwin's book Lunar Exploration Scrapbook.
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