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.
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 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.
