Space Crawler II: "UNLIMITED POWER!"

Home at last after our fun five-day Victoria vacation - we've apologized to the cat for being away, he's reluctantly accepted our apology, we've unpacked, made dinner, done some laundry - time to get serious with the Major Matt Mason Space Crawler that I stumbled across at Cherry Bomb Toys.

The rotating leg/wheel mechanism may not be unique, but it should be - as it turns out, Mattel filed a patent for the whole thing in 1970 under US Patent #3529479A.  (Funny that I've never found any reference to this elsewhere.) To be fair, the patent also defines the complicated gearing mechanism that makes the whole thing work, and refers to "wheel substitutes" rather than attempting to define that part of the toy.

The battery contacts are a bit corroded, which, sadly, is the most common cause of death for toys that have been stored with the batteries in place. Over time the cells eventually self-deplete, after which pressure from gas buildup splits the casing and the subsequent leakage destroys the working parts.

However, early days - the upper and lower contacts aren't particularly clean, but it appears to be primarily just surface buildup, let's hope for the best.

The next day, I pick up a set of D batteries* on the way home, and after dinner return to the fight.  I gently open the power compartment (pro tip: always be careful when dealing with any 58 year old toy that uses compressed plastic for hinges) and, after taking a moment to decipher the insertion directions, pop in the batteries.  

The mechanical power switch is the simplest thing in the world, just a plastic plate that rotates in and out of the gap between the battery and the contact.  I close the compartment, move the switch - and nothing. I test the drive/winch control just in case, still nothing.  I'm a bit disappointed, but again, early days.

A search through my toolbox produces a torn sheet of emery paper, and I use a piece of it to carefully scrape away at the upper battery contacts until I see bare metal instead of corrosion. The lower contacts are less accessible, so I decide to do a work-in-progress test before building some kind of tool to get at them.  

Batteries in again, and I move the switch - success!  The motor grinds into action - "grinds" being the appropriate term, it's a bit loud - and the paired legs begin to rotate.  I test the winch control, and it works like a charm, both forward and backward. 

However, when I carefully place the crawler on the floor, only one wheel - leg? - rotates, the other one does nothing.  There's a plastic friction mechanism that acts as a sort of primitive differential release, so that if either wheel is blocked or jammed, the motor can continue to operate.  The mechanism for the right wheel is too loose to engage, and as such there isn't enough friction for the drive unit to move it. 

I test it with some tape, and once the right wheel is secured to the friction tab, both wheels rotate to drive the crawler noisily across the hardwood floor - to Jaq the Cat's initial dismay but eventual indifference.

I'm a bit foolishly pleased by the whole thing - it just adds to the serendipitous nature of this purchase that the crawler actually still works after so many years. It's a bit jerky, but you know, as the saying goes, it's not that the bear dances well, it's that it dances at all. 

- Sid 

* Yes, surprise, D batteries - am I alone in thinking that everything is AA these days?

Space Crawler I: "CRAWLS OVER ANYTHING!"

As part of research and planning for our five-day getaway to Vancouver Island, Karli had discovered that Victoria was home to a haunted indoor miniature golf course. In spite of her noted aversion for ghosts,  we decided to give it a try if there was a suitable gap in our schedule.

Lunch is pierogies at the Sult Pierogi Bar - we'd had a sample of their savoury cuisine as part of a food tour of Victoria, and were eager to indulge in a full meal - and then we decide to risk the perils of haunted golf at the Haunted Manor on Yates Street.  

After a quick 18 holes (literally - we didn't have a reservation, but the receptionist let us go in provided we didn't linger) we're back out on the street. Karli realizes that we were standing in front of some kind of toy store, and generously suggests that we should go in and look around.

As it turns out, we're visiting the new home of Cherry Bomb Toys.  Cherry Bomb has been in business for over 18 years, and specializes in used and collectable toys, as well as operating the National Toy Museum of Canada.  

The store has some interesting offerings that you don't often see - there's a little Robotech shelf, with a tempting Scott Bernard Robotech MOSPEADA action figure, although not tempting enough to spend $95 on it.**

It's the wildest chance that I notice that they have a Major Matt Mason Space Crawler for sale, given that it's in a corner, behind a frame divider, and on a bottom shelf.  There are a couple of other MMM vehicles as well, but the Space Crawler is what catches my eye - I've always wanted one of these unusual looking vehicles from the Major's lunar motor pool.

There's a price tag, but it's upside down and partially concealed. Karli and I eventually agree that it says $40, which is a very acceptable price.  (I've seen empty boxes for this toy that were listed at more than $200 on eBay.) 

We find a friendly staff member who cheerfully opens the case so that I can take a closer look at the Crawler. It's a bit battered after over 50 years of life (aren't we all?), but given that I've seen Crawlers in equivalent condition on eBay for two or three times this price, it's a bit of a steal - and there's no shipping fee.

Not only that, but it's on sale! Cherry Bomb has just moved to this location and is celebrating by taking 20% off all their prices - final cost, $32 plus tax.  I tap my card to pay, gently ease the Space Crawler into a shopping bag, and we cautiously return to our borrowed condo in hopes of getting my new acquisition to a safe resting place without an unfortunate encounter with a careless pedestrian, an aggressive bicycle, or a fast-closing door.

 

Admittedly, the Space Crawler isn't in mint condition: all the decals are gone, and the winch line, hook and rear support roller are missing in action.  However, the truth of collecting this sort of vintage toy is that first, they're toys, and as such have suffered all the abuses that children inflict upon their playthings; and second, they are what they are - these are a limited commodity, no one is making more of them.  As such, this is still a good find at a good price, and who knows, at some point I may find a parts sale that has the missing bits and pieces.***

I'm eager to find out if the Crawler still works. Mattel always said that the Major Matt Mason toys were based on NASA designs (or at least NASA concepts) and I've always wondered if the unique rotating leg system* was something that they had tested in real life. 

- Sid

* Well, mostly unique, the Billy Blastoff toy series has a virtually identical Lunar Moon Crawler vehicle. (If anyone reading this has an extra set of Billy Blastoff toys that need a new home, I am happy to take them off your hands.)

** In the interests of geek street cred, I feel obliged to note that the yellow action figure on the right side is actually from the Voltron animated series - I believe that's Hunk, who pilots the Yellow Lion.

***  I checked on eBay.ca when we got home, and there is in fact a parts kit available for the Crawler that has everything I would need PLUS a new motor - for an additional $75 CAD.  At least there’s a PDF of replacement decals that I can download for free.

Extremely guilty pleasures.

It all started out innocently, honest it did. I was disposing of extra images in the Picasa picture album for the blog, and there they were, the pictures from last year's Major Matt Mason posting. Really, I was just curious to see just how ridiculously expensive the figures were now when I logged onto eBay and did a search.

And trust me, when I put a bid down on one of the figures, I never thought I'd win the damn auction! Good grief, it's for an original 1966 blue stripe version of the Major complete with original helmet and Cat Trac, it's got to be worth more than, oh, let's put a $50 cap on the bid, ha, that should be the top bid for about ten minutes.

Imagine my surprise (and mild embarrassment) when 6 days and $43.02 later, I found myself the proud owner of six ounces of rubber and wire from the 1960's, accessorized with 15 cents worth of molded plastic.

But it seemed that my unexpected opportunity to reclaim childhood memories was doomed - four long weeks went by without a sign of the parcel: no notes from the post office, nothing. The seller reassured me that the items had been shipped within three days, but someone could have walked here with the package in a month for heaven's sake, obviously something had gone amiss.

On Monday night I trotted down to the building laundry room to drop in a load of darks (having missed my usual Saturday morning laundry due to a weekend trip to Toronto) and to my mingled relief, curiousity and anger, there the Major was, dumped on a shelf beside the laundry sorting table. He and his helmet were in a Ziploc™ bag, his Cat Trac was loose but undamaged, and everything was exactly in the condition described in the eBay listing,

What happened, I wonder? Obviously the [expletive deleted] postie just left the package at my door rather than returning it to the post office to wait for my signature, and just as obviously someone nicked the package and opened it. And then...had an attack of conscience? Decided they didn’t really need a 6 inch rubber man? Got caught by their mother? But why leave it in the laundry room instead of returning it to my door?

Regardless, I’m pleased by the positive conclusion to the story, if somewhat baffled by the circumstances that led up to it.

The Major Matt Mason dolls were painted rubber moldings over wire armatures – think Gumby in a spacesuit, if that helps. The down side of this style of construction is that the wire involved has a relatively short life span in the hands of an imaginative and playful child, who will probably subject the joints to the kind of stress and extension normally associated with the Spanish Inquisition.

Once the wire is broken, the rubber expansion joints are left with nothing else for support and can easily tear. As a result, eBay listings for Major Matt Mason figures tend to cite number of broken joints, and in a few cases one-armed or one-legged astronauts are offered for sale.* As you can see in the photos, my Major is a little bit on the grimy side, and his paint has peeled off in a couple of spots. However, all of his limbs are there, his wire joints are good, and he still has his original helmet, which I gather is unusual.

I don’t remember to what extent my original Matt Mason figures had lost their paint – I did see one for sale on eBay with no paint at all on the black rubber, and to be honest I thought that the all-black spacesuit looked somewhat cool, sort of a ninja astronaut look. Not practical, though – NASA's spacesuits are white in order to reflect heat. I think that the multi-coloured space suits of the original line of figures were based around the idea of visibility on the Moon in case of accidents, an idea which shows up semi-regularly in science fiction.

I can see why the various collectors' websites advise soaking the figures in a dilute solution of cleanser for 20 minutes before attempting a gentle cleaning (very gentle - everyone agrees that the paint is a bit fragile). My first attempt at wiping away the stains with a dampened soft cloth was almost pointless: imagine almost 45 years of grimy little juvenile fingers rubbing filth into the rubber and acrylic. (Or don't if you have a weak stomach.)

I find myself wondering as to the exact circumstances that led to the Major ending up in the laundry room. I picture this sort of Toy Story scenario, wherein he finds himself held captive but plans a desperate escape. Choosing his moment, he grimly snaps down his visor and climbs onto his scarlet Cat Trac to make a courageous dash for freedom, but finally succumbs to lack of oxygen and tumbles unconscious from his seat...

You know it's a good toy when it can still inspire your imagination 43 years after it was made.

- Sid

 

* There's a 1949 short story by Ray Bradbury titled Kaleidoscope where an orbiting spaceship blows up and the spacesuited crew survives, but is scattered in all directions by the force of the explosion. Some fall into the atmosphere and burn up, and some are hurled into the depths of space. One unfortunate finds his vector to be opposite that of a meteor cloud, and as jagged hunks of iron amputate his extremities, a rather brutal safety feature in his spacesuit allows him to close an iris that stops the bleeding and seals the joint. First his left hand...SNICK...then his right foot...SNICK... Perhaps this is how damaged Major Matt Mason figures explain their, ah, shortcomings in bar conversations.

"Major Matt Mason: Mattel's Man in Space!"

Carter: "You don't have to worry, Major. I played with dolls when I was a kid."
Kawalsky: "G.I. Joe?"
Carter: "No, Major Matt Mason."
Kawalsky: "Oh. Who?"
Ferretti: "Major Matt Mason. Astronaut doll. Did you have that cool little backpack that made him fly?"

- Children of the Gods, Stargate SG-1

Q: What was your favorite toy as a kid?
A: Major Matt Mason. He was a great astronaut: a full-on, lifelike astronaut, made with rubber and wire, kind of like Gumby. He was bendable and poseable, and I went through a few of them because after a while the wires get all twisted.

- Tom Hanks, Disney Adventures magazine interview

Christmas Day, once again. The lessons of charity and goodwill that are associated with Christmas can very often be lost in a flurry of merchandising and money, but even so it's difficult to be too judgemental about the simple pleasures of children and toys. It's a magical time of year for kids, and as such this posting is dedicated to Christmas Past and wonderful gifts.

As I've mentioned in my introduction to the site, I've been a fan of science fiction and fantasy since before I can remember. I was an advanced reader, and as such started reading selections out of my mother's library of fantasy and SF before I'd gotten to double digits in age. However, man does not live by bread alone, and I had all the usual childhood interests in toys, with an understandable influence from my reading choices.

However, keep in mind that I was born in 1961, and when I turned ten in 1971, there was nothing like the selection of science fiction toys that there is on the market today. We were well before the late 70's science fiction marketing boom from Star Wars*, and even then, the marketplace was quite different. Now there's an "action figure" for everything - if you think I'm kidding, go into a specialty comics shop and look around - but in the early 70's, it was either TV merchandising or GI Joe dolls, and sadly, TV had very little to offer the young science fiction afficionado at that point in time.

Ah, but there were certain unexpected advantages to growing up without much money in a rural environment. There was a store called Economy Fair in the nearest town, which, as its name suggested, dealt in lower-end merchandise. In retrospect, I suspect that a lot of their stock probably came from remainders and liquidations, and as such their toy section was a bit out of date and somewhat idiosyncratic, but certainly more affordable than ordering from the Eatons catalogue** would have been.

Regardless, it was out of this uncertain and weedy garden that my mother plucked the rose of my childhood Christmas gifts: Major Matt Mason, "Mattel's Man in Space".

As Tom Hanks says, these were great astronauts. Originally introduced in 1966, they were about six inches tall, and molded out of rubber over a wire and plastic armature, with accordion joints at knees, hips, shoulders and elbows which worked well with the spacesuit look of the figures. The wire frame combined with the accordion joints made the figures very flexible and posable, although over time the wires inside the rubber eventually broke, as might be expected of any piece of wire that a child bends several thousand times.

The basic figures came with a removable spacesuit helmet with a movable yellow visor, but as with any toy like this, there was a whole catalogue of separate accessories, vehicles and buildings available. I had some of them - there was a sort of yellow exo-skeletal power suit, with extendable arms and legs, and I seem to recall some kind of exploration outfit that had tools that you could operate with a combination of tubes and a little plastic bellows system. I also had a space glider, which was a thin plastic shell with a molded pocket at the front for the pilot. I think the only reason I had that particular toy was because the transparent cockpit cover was missing, and it had been marked down as a result, but an elastic band would hold the astronaut in just fine and the damn thing was a pretty good glider if memory serves.

I loved those things, they were the perfect toy as far as I was concerned. I remember that I owned the Major himself, and his alien companion Callisto from Jupiter. I may have had one other figure, maybe Sergeant Storm or possibly another Major, but the accordion joint for his right arm had given up the struggle and torn through, and my childhood imagination couldn't come to terms with a one-armed astronaut. (Although I did recycle one of his feet for Callisto, in spite of the fact that they didn't match at all.)

I made my own accessories, guns and swords (the Major Matt Mason line was surprisingly free of that sort of militaristic baggage) and even produced my own alien race, using tennis balls as bodies and salvaged lengths of wire for arms and legs, with two-prong plugs from dead appliances as heads. Frankly, mine lasted a hell of a lot longer than the Mattel toys, I was certainly using a better grade of wire.

Of course, as children do, I moved on. Eventually the figures fell apart completely, or were consigned to a box somewhere, and I abandoned that part of my childhood. I was saddened to discover that a figure in good shape from the Major Matt Mason line costs hundreds of dollars now, as you might expect from a collectable 40-year old line of science fiction toys. How unfortunate - it's too much money to spend on something like that, even if it would be great to have the Major up on the shelf over my computer, beside my Starcraft Terran Marine, my Japanese VOTOMS battle armour, and the Dalek toy that my friend Alan gave me...okay, maybe I haven't moved on all that far.

- Sid

* Although, coincidentally this is the year that George Lucas' THX 1138 was released.

** The Eatons catalogue was an enormous source of angst in my childhood, the equivalent of supplying someone on a bread and water diet with well-illustrated menus from four star restaurants. The Winter edition with the Christmas offerings used to arrive in September, a few weeks before my birthday, and I would slowly go through the toy section and covet the unattainable therein.