Unk Mfr - Moon Crawler / Excavator

Now here's a toy one would not expect to fit in with our miniature 25mm/28mm space figures as we associate them with far smaller toys, but after looking closely at this thing, it is most definitely a part of our tiny world. I hesitate to call this mammoth machine a Moon 'buggy' cuz 'buggy' it ain't :-) A large earth moving machine like this could be used in tandem with the Lincoln International Moon Explorer vehicle posted a couple of days ago. Add some of the Marx Moon vehicles out there and one would be able to piece together quite a Lunar Construction Company (a play on words, referencing Marx's 'Lumar Construction Company' playset).

The toy: 

First of all it is big: 17 1/2" (43.18cm) L x 5 1/2" (13.97cm) W x 3 1/8" (7.93cm) H to top of hull. The grabber boom extends to 9" (22.86cm) H. 

Secondly, it's a complicated, 'busy' kind of toy. 

    -There are eight sets of wheels all connected by a drive train - 7 small and 1 large set in the rear.

    -In addition there are two free-rolling bogies on the upper front of the hull. 

    -There are six separate hinge points for the wheels allowing the crawler to undulate up and down over Lunar terrain. 

    -There is a boom with scoop (having a spring-loaded grabbing mechanism) which rotates 360 and has two hinge points for accessing ground level material. 

    -The scoop can empty its load into a hinged bin which also has a closing lid

    -And of course it is battery operated, using 4 AA batteries. My sample is missing the battery compartment cover but the batteries stay in quite nice and as a bonus - IT WORKS!

The manufacturer: No clue whatsoever. There are no manufacturer marks on the toy - not even a "Made in Hong Kong (or Japan, or China, or...) and they may have been on the missing battery cover.

Enjoy! Opa Fritz

At the lower left you'll notice one of the small LP spacemen I keep to the side for comparison shots. It's dwarfed by this behemoth earth mover. I can imagine this thing being transported in many loads by a series of cargo ships to a space port on the Moon

Here's another good indication of size. Comparing the figure inside the cockpit with the LP figure, they're both pretty much the same size - perhaps the LP guy is a tad bigger but close enough for our purposes 

The scoop neatly folds into the belly of the beast

The scoop's boom will extend to 9" straight up

You really need two hands to operate the spring-loaded grabber - hard for me to do while holding the camera.

There's enough play in the boom's movement to allow it to reach ground level