CEREAL KILLER

 Christmas 1969 brought me the Daily Mirror Book of Space, a large annual style book chock full of information about space travel, moon landings and all manner of spacecraft. For many years it was one of my favourite reads and a definite go-to for information. Besides the usual Apollo-centric articles and historical information, I found quite a lot of conceptual artwork for proposed spacecraft and vehicles and it was in this volume that I first encountered the concept of a 'space lifeboat', 'photonic propulsion', 'rogallo wing' and a 'molab'.

Although I had come across several different ideas for a lunar rover, this was the first time I had heard it referred to as a 'Molab'. The name is a contraction of 'mobile laboratory' and the idea involved a roving vehicle with a pressurised hull, in which astronauts could work and live on longer duration journeys. The small image in the Daily Mirror book is referred to as a 'Grumman Molab', but may actually be a design by the Bendix company. The real Grumman Molab  actually made it to the full sized prototype version and a model of it is now held in the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum.

The Grumman Molab appeared in the Gerry Anderson Project SWORD annual, as a background vehicle called 'The Ant'. No toy version of it appeared, although the SWORD toyline did include an Apollo Saturn V on the Mobile Launch Pad.

Fast forward some months and breakfast cereal producer Kellogg's had an established tradition of including a small toy or novelty in boxes of cornflakes, as an incentive to buy the cereal. Australian novelty manufacturer Rosenhain & Lipmann Ltd had been supplying small plastic model kits to Kellogg's for a number of years previously, including Gerry Anderson shows Thunderbirds and Captain Scarlet as well as Wacky Races and many others. With the new series 'Joe 90' adorning the boxes of 'Sugar Smacks' cereal, Kelloggs added a series of space vehicles to the line of models. 

R & L as they were referred to, made 8 simple snap together models featuring a space theme, with a mix of real and conceptual vehicles. Among them was a vehicle described variously as a 'Moon Exploration Rocket Car', 'Moon Vehicle' and 'Shuttle'. The little bubble shaped car had fins and intakes, more reminiscent of a streamlined submarine and a large circular cockpit window with a smaller turret on top. This was the perfect kind of incentive I needed to get my mum to buy more cereal, but as I wasn't fond of the sugary confection, she was very resistant to spending money on something that would invariably get wasted. After much cajolling, whining and badgering, I was eventually allowed to get a box of Sugar Smacks and amazingly, inside was the little buggy I had been desperate to find.

The little kit was sealed inside a cellophane wrapper and moulded in two colours of plastic. The modelling was excellent, with fine detail and smooth castings with no spare flashing. I hastily made it up and added it to my fleet of small space toys. It still survives to this day, battered, repaired, painted, glued and with almost all of the six wheels replaced.

Somehow I also managed to procure the Atlas Rocket on Gantry and my second favourite, the Rocket Transporter. Neither of these have survived the intervening years, but I have since been able to find replacements.

Another later acquisition is the rather cool space station, the design of which is copied directly from a piece of concept art by the Northop Corporation in the mid-sixties.

The same premiums were issued by Kellogg's Japan, but with different packaging art.

The R&L model story did not end there however and it transpired that as the practice of putting small items in children's cereal was phased out due to safety concerns, the company found another way to re-use the kits and the tooling necessary to produce them. The late Andy Yanchus, a model maker and employee of the Aurora Model Kit company, was approached by R & L with a view towards marketing the small kits in a toy line called 'Snap A Roos'. See Andy's fabulous Flickr feed here: Kellogg's Sugar Smacks - Joe 90 Space Vehicle premiums | Flickr

The same models then appeared in a large set by Spanish company Diko  with a cardboard moonscape and 12 mixed models from the range.

In the early 1970's British toy company Tri-ang, which had found great success with a series of inexpensive space toys called Spacex Interspace Miniatures, was preparing the release of a second series of toys, as the company ran into financial difficulties. Most of the second wave of toys made it onto store shelves, including a very distinctive design of moon buggy, which Tri-ang called a 'Molab'.

The Molab shared its design with the little Kellogg's vehicle, with bubble shaped body, jet streamed fins and four large wheels and it was apparent that both Tri-ang and R&L had used the same concept for their model.

Previously, in 1953,  Alex Schomburg had provided a painting for the cover of a short lived pulp magazine called 'Rocket Stories'. It only lasted 3 issues, but the July 1953 issue featured a streamlined red moon buggy, which was indisputably the inspiration for both models. The illustration was also reprinted in a text book in 1964 by Collins: 'Men on the Moon: Based on America's Project Apollo'.

Although the book clearly does not reflect the 'Project Apollo' at all, it is an interesting read, with lots of clear painted illustrations, which have probably been culled from other publications. However, the publication date (and the american version a year earlier) clearly point to a definite source of reference for the two models, although it is clear that both designs evolved independently of each other, as the R&L model has two spare wheels at the rear of the hull.

Despite the fragility and disposable nature of the premiums, a lot still survive, almost half a century later, both as unmade, sealed packs or as pre-built models. Since buying my first box of Sugar Smacks and securing the light green model, I have managed to find three more. Some, such as the latest grey version, were missing wheels, but they are easy to replace, along with a small aerial made from extruded plastic sprue.

I was lucky enough to find a pale blue Rocket Transporter from the same seller, too - the version I originally had back in 1970!

LET'S GO!

Its 18:00 on April 1, 2026 and the Artemis II mission is beginning countdown for a launch of the SLS rocket to send four astronauts around the moon, for the first time in half a century.

 Its been a long road to get here, with two false starts at the testing phase, but hopefully, in the next few hours, the rocket will be bound for the Moon. Watch this space!

UPDATE

Artemis 2 lifted off successfully in the late evening, UK time and is now orbiting the Earth, performing final preparations for a trans-lunar injection.

The lift off was an exhilarating sight, even though commercial flights are taking off to low orbit on a regular basis and the crew transfers for the ISS have become almost pedestrian by comparison, the import of a manned mission to the moon certainly coloured the event. Even though it is not a true 'moon shot' with no actual landing taking place, watching a manned mission head for the bright full moon hanging overhead was a very moving and exciting sight. For a few seconds as the countdown ticked away, I was transported back to 1969 and was watching Apollo 11 make history. The major difference in the presentation this time, was the quality of the imagery broadcast - even though some of the live cabin feeds were still subject to glitching and breakup - the actual footage of the separation of the core stage and the main capsule was amazingly clear.

I look forward to being able to watch the progress over the next 10 days - not on a blurry monochrome screen, but both on my phone and on a high definition colour feed. I feel privileged to be able to witness two moonshots in one lifetime and hope I get to see another moon landing and to watch man reach Mars sometime in the near future!

EXTRA VEHICULAR ACTIVITY

At the height of the space race era, in the period following the first moon landing, space books were available in abundance for children eager to learn the latest developments in this exciting field. Besides annuals, encyclopaedias, text books and comics, there were always other items to keep a young mind busy. Activity books of various kinds were often small, fairly cheap items intended to while away an afternoon or an evening with colouring, drawing or; thanks to the Letraset Company - applying transfers.

 Letraset were one of the premier names in dry transfer lettering and decals, primarily used in the design industry, but they also produced a huge range of transfers for the children's market in a large series of different products. The massively comprehensive site 'Action Transfers' details the history and scope of these products and shows examples of almost all the products produced.

I was a huge fan of Action Transfers and given their relative low price, would regularly collect the many space themed products that appeared. Some of the sets were a simple card background and a sheet of transfers, whilst others, such as the Patterson Blick Outer Space book, were small booklets, with a base for the transfers and a few pages of additional information about each theme.

Always well illustrated and very informative, the small booklets covered recent space activities, a brief history of space travel and my favourite part - a look towards future exploration.

The transfers for each set were usually a collection of rockets, satellites and astronauts in various poses and configurations, that could be applied in whatever location the owner desired. Some of the illustrations were based on historical photographs or drawings and others were copied from existing imagery that had appeared elsewhere.

A cheaper alternative to the transfer range were self adhesive sticker books, which included a sheet or two of peel off stickers and a background on which to apply them. This booklet has large areas of the background already designated for the user to apply the stickers.

This example was found on ebay with the stickers already in place, some of which have been applied in haste and are a little out of place, revealing the green spaces beneath the stickers, which match the shape of the adhesive section.

The Action Stickers book is probably one of the best example of plagiarism or recycling of existing imagery, as it clearly includes several almost direct lifts from well known artwork by Robert McCall and Ed Valigursky, including the Nuclear Ferry and a pair of large delta winged space vehicles.

One of the lesser illustrations shows part of a Mars mission proposal and the small rocketship used in the project.

The Dennis Knight booklet is clearly inspired by the imagery on the contemporary issue Brooke Bond Tea card set, 'Race Into Space' - with the spaceship being assembled in orbit from the back, appearing inside the booklet and the cover image bearing a more than passing resemblance.

The recycling and re-use of existing imagery and designs extended beyond the production of books and was especially noticeable in the Hong Kong toy industry, where regulation was less rigorously enforced and many conceptual designs for spaceships appeared in toy form. A very prominent example being Robert McCall's illustration of the Nuclear Ferry concept vehicle, which found its way into the Tri-ang Spacex and Project SWORD toy lines,

McCall's art was further used as the basis of the box art for the SWORD toy and many decades later, when the artist was shown the item and the box artwork, he was both surprised and delighted that his work had been made into a toy. 

Personally, I have always found it very satisfying and rewarding to discover both a physical manifestation of an illustration in one of my favourite books, or the origin of a particular model or toy in a vintage publication.