WHILE Sojourner prowled the surface of Mars this summer, Earthlings back home
were doing something similar. Many of them were scouring toy shops looking for
models of the plucky little rover and its mother ship, the Pathfinder
lander.
Most would have had more success looking for little green men. The Mars
Action Pack that contained the tiny models was an unqualified success for its
maker, the toy manufacturer Mattel. The company sold out and is now racing to
restock shelves. And still the demand continues.
This unexpected success has caught the attention of other toy manufacturers
and now the race is on to find the spacecraft that will be next year鈥檚
bestseller. NASA is keen to help. Earlier this year, its Jet Propulsion
Laboratory in Pasadena, California, organised a conference where toy
manufacturers could find out about the missions that will catch the public鈥檚
imagination in years to come. The candidates include the international space
station, a mission to scoop stardust from a comet鈥檚 tail and a deep-sea diving
spacecraft heading for Jupiter鈥檚 moon Europa.
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But there is a problem. Space toys must compete in a universe unlike anything
NASA has ever come across. It is a universe inhabited by bug-eyed,
plasma-spitting, human-crunching aliens who race around in spaceships equipped
with warp speed power and five realistic battle sounds. Whether Sojourner鈥檚
successors can survive is far from clear.
Building toys based on space missions is a kind of final frontier for the toy
industry. In the past, space toys based on real missions have been as rare as
solar neutrinos. Most have passed by undetected, sucked unseen into the black
hole of failed fun. 鈥淚t鈥檚 true, you don鈥檛 see too many of them,鈥� says Barry
Goodman, an international toy dealer and auctioneer based in New York. 鈥淭here
was a time during the fifties and Sixties when kids could buy models of rockets
and space capsules and lunar landers, but it didn鈥檛 last.鈥�
The problem is that the features that make a spacecraft useful are not always
the same ones that make a toy fun. Goodman points out that fun usually involves
giant monsters attacking Moon bases and sucking the occupants dry. 鈥淩eal science
has sort of lagged in that department,鈥� he explains.
Even so, researchers at JPL believe that children will find the missions now
being planned as exciting as they found Sojourner. These space toys might even
teach them a bit about their place in the Universe and generate public support
for space programmes. Not to mention some cash. JPL receives a small royalty for
each Mars Action Pack sold. But neither Mattel nor JPL will reveal the exact
figure.
鈥淪ome people have said this sort of thing is undignified, that we ought to
stick to pure science and not make toys out of our spacecraft,鈥� said Joan
Horvath, a JPL official with the Office of Commercial Technology whose job
includes finding ways to license research developed at JPL and the California
Institute of Technology, which oversees the laboratory.
Horvath鈥檚 enthusiasm
has no doubt been buoyed up by the success of Mattel鈥檚 Sojourner toy, which has
a history almost as tortuous as that of some real space projects. For years,
Donna Shirley, director of JPL鈥檚 Mars Exploration Program, lobbied for companies
to consider Sojourner as toy material. In time, her pleas reached Horvath who
organised workshops where toymakers could learn what JPL was doing. People came,
got excited and then left, never to be heard from again.
Then, in mid-1995, John Handy, a senior vice-president for product
development at Mattel, heard about 鈥渟ome sort of robot going to Mars鈥�. 鈥淚 got a
message from a woman in another department, who said she鈥檇 read something in the
local newspaper,鈥� Handy recalls. 鈥淚 phoned JPL where somebody described
Sojourner.鈥� The more Handy learned, the more he liked the idea. 鈥淭hat鈥檚 when it
hit me: Hey, this was like driving a car on Mars.鈥�
Mattel鈥檚 challenge was to produce a toy rover that was both accurate and
cheap. The Mars Action Packs had to cost no more than $5. Handy
immediately realised the difficulties: 鈥淥ur mission wasn鈥檛 much different from
NASA鈥檚,鈥� he explains. 鈥淲e needed to launch our toy inexpensively, on a small
budget, in a tight time frame. And we would have no idea beforehand whether it
would work.鈥�
White bunny suits
Or more precisely, whether it would roll. One of Sojourner鈥檚 eye-catching
features is its novel set of rocker-bogie wheels, which allow the rover to
clamber over and through obstacles that vehicles of more ordinary suspension
would find impassable. Copying Sojourner was going to be difficult. 鈥淚t鈥檚 one of
my greatest accomplishments,鈥� says Keith Hippely, a 17-year veteran at Mattel
who headed the Sojourner design team. JPL organised a tour for the toy
designers. 鈥淲e even got to go in the clean room where it was being assembled.
I鈥檝e got a photo of me wearing one of those white bunny suits.鈥�
Mattel paid JPL engineers to spend time with company designers explaining the
rover鈥檚 design, going over blueprints, dimensions and capabilities. 鈥淚 think the
JPL guys were fascinated watching Mattel try to simplify and shrink their
rover,鈥� says Horvath.
It helped too that the real rover, named after African-American civil rights
champion Sojourner Truth, was adorable. Well, at least as adorable as a
toaster-sized box on wheels wrapped in foil can be. It had charm and
personality. It was R2D2 for a new generation, even if it couldn鈥檛 beep.
Mattel took a cautious approach, manufacturing only a few thousand action
packs. 鈥淥bviously if the rover had plunked down on Mars and done nothing, our
toy would probably have flopped too,鈥� says Hippely. 鈥淲e didn鈥檛 want to be stuck
with a million little rovers.鈥� Handy says Mattel has since doubled its
production of the action packs to meet demand. 鈥淭hey鈥檙e still being snapped up,鈥�
he adds.
Meanwhile, JPL is forging ahead with new ideas. In October, the laboratory
held its third conference for toy companies, with JPL engineers describing
various missions in the hope some might capture a toymaker鈥檚 imagination and
interest.
JPL and other NASA research institutions are planning some notably nifty
projects. The Stardust mission, scheduled to launch in 1999, will deliver a
probe within 150 kilometres of the nucleus of Comet Wild-2 in early 2004 (see
鈥淭o catch a comet by the tail鈥� New 杏吧原创, 20 January 1996, p 38).
The probe will collect cometary dust and deliver it back to Earth in January
2006.
Elsewhere, other JPL scientists are devising a series of projects called Ice
and Fire. One of them calls for a spacecraft to visit Europa, a moon of Jupiter
that appears to be both volcanically active and covered with ice. 鈥淭hat means
there鈥檚 a possibility that between the ice and the solid moon exists a liquid
ocean,鈥� said Richard Terrile, a programme scientist at JPL who also modestly
describes himself as 鈥淓mperor of the Inner Solar System鈥�.
Part of Terrile鈥檚 work involves developing remote-controlled 鈥渉ydrobots鈥� that
would descend to Europa鈥檚 surface, melt through the ice and explore the ocean
underneath. 鈥淲e think Europa has all of the materials needed for life.鈥� Think of
it as ET meets The Little Mermaid.
Obviously, much work still needs to be done translating these space missions
into toys. While JPL鈥檚 last workshop was declared a success, toymakers are a
cautious and secretive lot. None are willing to talk about their thoughts or
plans. 鈥淲hat can I say,鈥� shrugged Diane Cardinale, a spokesperson for the New
York City-based Toy Manufacturers Association. 鈥淚t鈥檚 a competitive business.
Nobody talks.鈥�
But it doesn鈥檛 take a workshop to find inspiration for toys. All researchers
and manufacturers have to do is gaze skyward. Take the tiny, pale dot roughly 5
750 million kilometres away (it helps to have a really big telescope). That鈥檚
Pluto, and NASA scientists plan to explore it early in the next century. Has
anybody called Disney?
* * *
All I want for Xmas is鈥�
Whether Mars, a comet鈥檚 tail or Europa will become the focus of the toy
industry鈥檚 attention is difficult to say. But the prospect of NASA working with
the toy industry raises some frightful images. Here are a few that may or may
not reach the shelves:
The Amazing, Self-Destructing Mir Space Station: A toy any parent will
love. Buy it once and it lasts for years. Solid construction, with various
snap-together research modules. Accessories include leaky air cylinders and
flickering LED lights. A Progress Supply Vessel, with reinforced nose cone for
super-duper ramming power, is sold separately.
The Humungous Morphing International Space Station: The space station
captures the fun and thrill of the cooperative ideal. Different toy companies
make different parts. Assembly instructions come in at least 10 different
languages and just when you think you鈥檝e got it all together, there鈥檚 a whole
new redesign.
The NASA Read-Along Budget with cassette and character figurines: A bedtime
thriller for wannabe space cadets, fraught with technotalk, mind-boggling
numbers and absolute fantasy. Action figures include heroic NASA head Daniel
Goldin and cost-cutting Congressional Luddites.
Read-Along cassette narrated by James Earl Jones.
Suggested retail price: $13.5 billion for fiscal year 1998.
Michael Foale and Shannon Lucid dolls, with movable parts: Forget Ken and
Barbie. Michael and Shannon are the thinking person鈥檚 doll for a new millennium.
Dress them up in their crisp, white launch suits. Dress them down in those
frumpy NASA-blue jumpers. Accessories include pull-string voice recordings like
鈥淲hat鈥檚 this hissing sound?鈥�
Suggested retail price: $40 000 鈥� $78 000, not including
overtime and hazard pay.