Climb Every Mountain

Non Fall Climbing Vehicles were a big staple of my toy collection as a kid, I had loads of different ones and as they were meant to be able to climb over anything, I just as frequently broke them. The wheels invariably came off, or the motors stopped working, so they would end up in the bin, or in the bottom of the toybox gathering dust. There are lots of different variations by as many different makers, but these two caught my eye as they were a little different. First of all, they are a lot small than the standard climbers, at around 4". Secondly,  there were only two in the series, making it quite practical to find both.

 I bought the red one initially for the antenna, as it was small enough to use for an Apollo Tracker customisation, so this one has the replacement dishes, made out of Lego. The unboxed blue version turned up some months later, missing two small claws on the front.

 I replaced the claws with some plastic Meccano chain links, painted silver. The blue ones gearing wasn't working, so I opened it up to find a small piece had broken inside. Unusually, the wheels are driven by a toothed belt, running from the main drive gear across both sets of axles, giving 4 wheel drive.

 The box is a nice example of good packaging, bold and colourful, with photos of both models and a neat diorama as well.

 The diorama seems to have a kit version of a Lunar Module (assembled backwards) and some odd astronauts.

 The maker is AA, which recently featured on the blog too, suggesting it may be a greek maker, but the toy is clearly labeled Made in Hong Kong.

 The blue version is the Moon Rover and the red one the Moon Patrol. Although described as 'non-stop' action, they do struggle a little bit on rough ground due to the very low clearance of the body, but do flip over neatly when encountering a wall.