It is hard to keep a good idea down, sometimes and in the sixties, during the space race ideas abounded as research and conceptualisation were the order of the day, as scientists came up with deigns for craft to explore the moon and space. Many of the fabulous ideas never made it beyond the drawing board and others found favour in different guises, as a an expectant public eagerly snapped up any information about the upcoming missions. Tabloids and periodicals such as Colliers and Life magazine carried articles about the development of the materiel which would be used to conquer space and popular Mechanics and Air Progress magazines covered all kinds of weird and wonderful designs for lunar exploration vehicles and spacecraft. Science Fiction was a burgeoning industry too and the monthly pulps and magazines took advantage of the wealth of information coming from the engineering companies, US Air Force and NASA news agencies, using imagery from the publicity materials to bolster sales.
Analog was a monthly magazine that carried science fiction stories, balanced with a mix of science fact articles. One of the artists who contributed to the magazine, was John Schoenherr who became famous for his illustrations for Frank Herbert's 'Dune' sequence. Schoenherr was a talented artist, who produced some stunning painted artwork for Analog over the next few years, including a simple painting of a 'Moon Crawler' vehicle on the surface of the moon. This in itself is not unusual, but the simple image became the basis of a number of toys which would be produced over the next decade.
Curious about the origins of the painting itself, Paul Woods of Moonbase Central attempted to contact the artist, who had unfortunately passed away just a little time before. However, his son Ian was in charge of his fathers estate and in the process of organising the work, uncovered two remarkable pre-production sketches of the image. The full story can be read here:
Ian remarked that his dad kept a lot of reference material on file for his commissions and one image from LIFE magazine was especially pertinent to the Moon Crawler design. Its very plain to see where the big balloon tyre idea came from and very possibly, the colour scheme for the crawler too!
Before the JAK PAK jigsaw was recognised by the Moonbase Central community, the crawler image was found in another book, 'Men on the Moon' in 1963. This volume struck a chord with toy collectors, as it showed the moon crawler image and a second vehicle, which would had found its way into toy fandom as part of the Tri-ang Spacex series as the Surveyor and Molab respectively. Detailed information on both these toys and the rest of the line can be discovered here:
https://www.triangspacextoys.info/SpGAorig/SrvyrOrF/Srvr_OrP.html
Schoenherr's original Moon Crawler directly influenced the design of the Project SWORD Moon Crawler,as well as the Spacex Surveyor. Project Sword was a Gerry Anderson series of toys and stories, which did not benefit from the usual TV series to carry it and despite reasonable success, did not find as much fame as Thunderbirds or Captain Scarlet.
The other vehicle in the book is what has become known as the 'Molab' (or Mobile Laboratory) which was quite slavishly copied for the Spacex line.
Called the 'Moon Exploration Space Car', the miniature kit even matched the circular wireframed window from the Man on the Moon book, as well as the aerial. The kit also includes two spare wheels, stowed under the rear, which are not featured on its larger Spacex cousin.
The Kelloggs models also included a small Lunar Module, which includes the label 'Surveyor Type', which is something of a misnomer, as the Surveyor probes were smaller unmanned vehicles with a tripedal landing gear.
Scattered around the book are a number of other early LEM concepts, proposed around 1962, which show a streamlined, upright vehicle.
Some of the images clearly show conceptual models, probably made of wood and plastic, which were often shown at press conferences to illustrate how dockings and landing might take place. It was models like these that I saw as a child in books and on tv coverage, which I was led to believe would be landing on the moon in a few short years. I recall being really disappointed with the eventual skeletal and ugly LEM that was unveiled as the final design!
