One of my most ambitious toy designs so far is the Lunar Hopper, based on NASA concepts that were never fully developed.

As often happens, this came from a years-long discussion between myself and Greg Brown of Cotswold Collectibles.

He wanted to make a boxed set around this lander, complete with a foil-cloth astronaut suit and helmet.

Concepts

Based on concepts such as these:

(See more concepts at the bottom of this post.)

Design Challenges

The first thing I wanted to achieve was a basic core shape that would invoke the actual Eagle Lunar Lander used to land on the moon. So I used some sharp angles in the main platform body similar to the Eagle.

Note also that I used a main central thrust engine cone, and on each leg, attitude thrusters for steering. These small thrusters are on blocks that act as connectors for the spindly legs.

Speaking of legs, this was a big challenge as I could not really print thin cylinders (dowels) that would be both strong and look good. So I had to do some searching for materials.

I found plastic cake dowels. It was far too easy to find compressed rolled paper cake dowels, but as they were paper, they would be useless. It was much harder to find plastic dowels, but I did.

The Seat

The next challenge would be how to fit a 12″ GI Joe onto the lander and not look dumb. Clearly he needed a seat, and I used a seat design that was not far from the idea of the Adventure Team Escape Car, but also might actually work on a one-man real lunar hopper, which meant a lot of empty space, not a solid block of material, for weight, but also for strength. (Theoretical weight on an actual space vehicle – I was not worried about toy weight.)

So I modeled a seat that had a back that slots into the base.

I first printed it in white, but Greg and I decided to go with a theme of red/white/black to suit the astronaut suits he was having made for this set.

I wanted the seat to slide, but not freely. I needed it to lock in place, so the bottom of the seat has notches, and I created a sliding seat lock on the main base, to slip into these notches and hold the seat at various positions without slipping.

Flight Controls

It also needed reasonable controls. So I thought of a helicopter control, as well as looked into real Lunar Lander controls. To me, a human on a chair can use two controls, and it made sense that one be for main thrust (up/down) and the other a joystick for attitude control.

So I created a ball-jointed joystick with my 3D printers that I was actually surprised worked really rather well.

The joystick sat in a bottom cup, with rounded interior, and that fitted up into an exterior housing which completed the spherical space. When assembled, the joystick rotates very nicely.

I used my standard control handle for both controls, each slightly modified for the purpose.

The altitude control was a single lever with a horizontal control. The inner cylinder needed a cap so I added my Huxter Labs logo to it.

For toy flexibility, I wanted the seat to slide back and forth on the base platform. There was a reason for this other than just adjustability.

Cargo

We wanted to carry cargo. And to do that, I needed a way to attach a tray that could carry a specific small third-party storage container that Greg had purchased for this set.

Here is the tray attached to the hook at the back of the seat bottom, that holds the cargo tray in place. The cargo tray slips along the same grooves as the seat, so both the seat and cargo can slide backwards and forwards.

Lunar Seismic Experiment Module

But also, I had already created a set that another person asked me to create for a convention set that never panned out. But I had done a lot of work on it, and I thought it perfect to include it in this set, and Greg agreed.

In investigating what equipment the Apollo astronauts brought to the moon, one stood out, not only because there were good pics of it, but a toy set I had of the Apollo Landing included a small version of it, and I thought it was cool. It was the Lunar Seismic Experiment package, meant to detect lunar tremors.

The clever thing about this is that it all folded up into a small package for space, and ease of use for astronauts to deploy. So I created mine to have the solar panels angle outward on rails, but also collapse back in on the carry-case-sized payload. Hence:

For the solar panels I bought shiny blue card stock and printed blocks of varying gray scales over it. The black handle is identical to the handle on the cargo tray. I added a control panel and the cylinder actually stores the antenna in two separate pieces, and the lid screws back on. To add verisimilitude, I wanted the cylinder to be covered in the same kind of reflective foil used on a lot of space gear. The foil is chocolate Rolo foil:

Which meant buying a bunch of these, just to get the foil. But did I mind?

I did not. (yum)

The Seismic Experiment package fits into the hook at the back of the chair, and is designed to touch the rear of the platform with the seat pushed back a bit.

Of course this opens up possibilities for future cargo modules as well.

Fuel Cells

Next thing to tackle was fuel cells. I originally used ping-pong balls, but we both considered them to be a bit silly looking. Too small.

So I began a search for spherical things that I could use. Yes, of course, I could print some, but printing rounded spheres is not a strength of 3D FDM printers. As you approach the top of the sphere, the layers get very visible.

And an ingenious thought hit me: Ball Pit Balls. I knew they existed in a myriad of colors, as anyone who’s ever been to a McDonald’s knows… but I wanted them in White. Amazon to the rescue.

Then I made rings to attach to the side of the main platform, and originally those were white too, but in an homage to the Adventure Team Escape Car, I was trying to put as much red on as possible without getting obnoxious about it. So I made them in red. (I still have a lot of white ones printed, which sit in a box… oh well… Red is better for this version.)

Here, you see my mostly white version with copper feet, and my “Escape Car” version with blue feet.

Feet

I modeled the feet to loosely resemble the Eagle’s landing feet. These could be printed in any color I had, but for this model, we chose copper. My first prototype, in homage to the Adventure Team Escape Car, were blue, as the Escape Car’s wheels were blue.

Our Astronaut Needs To Breathe

We were going to use these beautiful red helmets for the Astronaut figure, but we needed a breathing apparatus. Given that we were seating the astronaut on a chair with a back, it made less sense to put a big oxygen pack on his back. Rather, we opted for a chest piece that was reminiscent of Space: 1999 Alpha Astronaut suits.

But rather than mimic that design, I looked through other Adventure Team sets for inspiration, and it hit me:

This is the chest piece of the Adventure Team Sonic Rock Blaster.

And here is my Lunar Hopper Chest Ox Pack:

But the problem solving didn’t end there either. We needed a coupling mechanism for the helmets. Greg said he didn’t mind gluing a piece to the red helmets, so I designed an add-on for the helmet, but since I had already printed all of the chest ox packs, I had to make an add-on for that too, where normally I would just add it to the model and print it as one thing.

So I made a coupler for the chest pack and the helmet, and needed a hose to connect them.

Luckily I had this amazingly flexible clear plastic filament.

So I connected the chest oxygen pack to the helmet using this clear hose, seen here in the overall shot of the completed astronaut:

I think it worked rather well.

Wrist Communicator/Controller

Wait, what’s that on his wrist?

My communication cuffs have been very popular at Cotswold. Cheap, available in a variety of colors, it’s the one thing I see most when people post images of their figures on forums. But for this, we needed something a little different.

I extended the screen section over the hand itself.

Construction and Assembly

So man, this was a lot of printing. But whoever thinks the printing part of a 3D printed project is hard, they are wrong. The printing is done by machines while I sleep (usually).

No, the hard part is cleaning up the parts, removing raft, supports, using a heat gun to clean up the discolored plastic fatigue where supports are ripped from viable part. And then a lot of gluing and clamping.

And let me tell you that printing, cleaning up, assembling a single prototype is easy.

Printing, cleaning up and assembling 24 of anything is hard, hard work. Tedious hard work. And I don’t have any assistants or assistance.

Here are only a small number of parts in partial assembly:

^ I had to make 96 of these!!!

Instructions

Understandably, this had to ship as a kind of kit. So I created instructions.

And a parts sheet:

And I even put together a YouTube video to explain to anyone who needed help constructing their Lunar Hopper:

Blueprint

And of course what Huxter Labs major project would be complete without a blueprint:

More Concepts That Inspired Me

More concept images that I looked at when trying to create a workable version of my own.

For 2022, my biggest project so far was a flying vehicle Greg Brown (of Cotswold Collectibles) and I have been discussing for years. He has been wanting a vehicle based on the Hiller Flying Platform, a prototype that actually got off the ground and flew rather well.

I had no particular plan for how to make this on my smaller printers. And I wasn’t sure fitting together a lot of pieces would look good enough. But undaunted, I finally decided to pursue the project.

It just so happened that around fall of 2022, I was thinking of Major Matt Mason, since we had done the One Man Lunar Hopper in the previous year. I had the idea to extend my space designs into an homage to Major Matt Mason toys, which were another mainstay of my childhood.

I was going to start by making a 1:6 scale version of Mason’s Space Sled, accurate as I could, in white with black accents, just like the original.

I knew I couldn’t do the base in one piece, given the dimensions of my 3D printers, so I knew I would have to come up with ways to make it out of multiple pieces, but fit together as seamlessly as I could. Not an easy feat. There would be seams. Just where best to put them?

And then I realized I could do my original hover platform, based on the general idea of the Hiller Flyer, and I could do it by cutting the bell up into 8 pieces and fitting them together. Seams would be inevitable, but I could make it work.

In November and December of 2022 I sat down to design a version of this that would evoke my own design aesthetic, as well as a call-back to the Adventure Team line. I knew I wanted it to be mainly yellow, with red, black or blue highlights, to evoke the AT theme. I knew that I was not going to go with the double-rotor blade of the original Hiller design, not since most of my flying vehicles rely on a system similar to a Dyson fan. That is, air forced into a hollow bell shape, with an opening at top to force air down in a stable column. My Helijet Pack uses this, as do my Drone models. So I literally took the 3D model of my Helijet Pack and cut it into a cross-section, and re-lathed it around a larger center, and that would be my lift body.

Here you can see that the circular engine bell housings translated into a larger one for the Aerial Recon Platform:

To better hide the seams, I put rivets along them, to make it look like a natural join, as you would clearly see on a real aircraft where plates join.

I had to add landing feet, so I extended out egg-shaped housings for rather utilitarian-looking landing feet. I used rivets to make those look like they were naturally attached too.

Now I had to design a steering column like the one from Major Matt Mason’s Space Sled. But I knew that taking that idea too closely from the original would not fit my own design aesthetic, so I showed Greg two options: A round, curvy pillar, and a hard straight pillar. He thought he saw a resemblance to the original GI Joe Adventure Team Aerial Recon Platform:

This is a bit of a silly design, but hey, it was for kids. Adult collectors today affectionately call it the “lawn mower”. You can see why.

Notice the control pillar, though. It is a hard-edged straight red pillar, with a sharp angle in the middle, topped by a control box with handles and a camera. Greg and I agreed that this would be the best way to go for this vehicle. And I wanted to retain the camera from this one, but to give some homage to Major Matt Mason’s Space Sled by using two cameras, each could serve its own unique purpose.

So I modeled the pillar, the control box, the handles are printed horizontally for strength.

The center standing section would fictionally house the powerful jet turbine that sucks air up from below, into four tubes that push the air into the hollow engine housings, forcing the air out an open ridge at top, forcing it down into a stable column of air, strong enough to cause lift.

Which meant I needed a way for a figure to stand without falling off, and a grill to show the turbine’s intake.

Foot cups are used by many toys to keep a figure standing on a surface, and this would be a perfect way for a figure to be held in place. Note that I used a diamond plate for the surface, because a flat surface was just – boring:

And the grill is a hex pattern, a favorite of mine. I use it wherever I can:

While I was at it, I saw the perfect opportunity to add the Huxter Labs logo to the grill.

I also put hex-pads on the bottoms of the feet.

Then it was prototype time.

To start, I usually print a model in colors I have but don’t use much. Prototyping in black, red or silver is harmful, since I use so much of those colors in production work. But I have several colors I use only rarely, but I need from time to time, and as I have full spools of those colors, I use them to prototype.

I call this my “Sherbet Model”, because of the colors:

Construction went well:

Once a prototype was assembled, I could begin testing the flaws in fit, in design, in anything like how the feet fit into the cups using standard GI Joe boots, etc.

I soon found the pillar needed a way to stay in place that was not friction, and I did not want it to be glued into place. So I came up with a clip that snaps the pillar down to the base.

Construction proved to be a challenge. How to get 8 pieces on a round to glue together with a strong fit was not easy. I bought a band clamp, which is just a strip of strapping connected to a clamp. I could wrap the 8 rounded pieces in this, and twist the clamp, pulling the band tighter and tighter. But even then I had issues. First, I had to glue the four arms to the base, then the arms to four of the eight sections that had slots for them.

Much harder than it looks… trust me.

Once two opposite ones were glued, I was able to then glue one half of the rest of the circle, and clamp it together with the other half not glued, but held in place. Then when that dried, glue the other half.

And as the foot cups made it impossible to put the rounded bell down on a flat surface, I had to make a platform on which to assemble these. It had a hole drilled in it so I could overturn the assembly, and put it together, pushing to fit tightly and accurately. Between each two parts was a rectangular peg holding each piece into a correct position.

During construction phase, I had printed other colors as tests, and I put together a video on the entire process from start to finish:

Whew.

Here you see the platforms well into production:

Now on to details.

For the control box, I created a sticker for the control screen, and two “lens” stickers for the two individual cameras. To get these to stick to ABS plastic, I first had to spray paint them with a satin clear-coat spray paint. Then I could cut and apply them.

(Feel free to download these images and print them yourself if your sticker ever gets worn)

Note to self: Avoid round stickers in future!

But what about other colors?

Well for the first version, we were going with the homage to the original Adventure Team Aerial Recon Platform, and even called this one the Aerial Reconnaissance Platyform Mk II.

But I was also printing other versions already. A military version, several space-themed versions, and even brought a few to Toylanta in March of 2023 to auction off for charity.

I printed a white/gray/orange version to go with a common space color scheme, but also this World Peacekeepers Astronaut that I got a couple of years ago. But also my idea of making one for a Major Matt Mason themed 1:6 scale figure was on my mind. So I made several variants:

Here, I took a failed print, and made the best of it. The Huxter Labs logo stopped printing part-way up because of a printer issue, so I created a yellow capper for it to fit over the almost-printed logo part.

This marks the largest vehicle I’ve created to date, for GI Joes.

And I still intend to do the 1:6 scale Major Matt Mason Space Sled.

The third box-set I contributed to for Cotswold Collectibles was Fright In Flight.

Greg Brown wanted me to reproduce a version of the GI Joe Adventure Team Jetpack, used in several sets during the Adventure Team’s original run in the 1970s.

We call it the XP-1 Personal Rocket Pack

Based on a marketing photo which showed the jetpack with moving joysticks and cables from the underside to the jets, in white and black, I reproduced this as accurately as I could.

Hasbro did produce this jetpack as the Rocket Pack, but with much fewer parts, and less color. The engines, for example, were a single color (white or silver), and the platform was a single color (black or red), and the joysticks did not move. The cables were never added.

I added cylinders under the white deck, secured by black panels, which held nails to strengthen the joysticks. Thin 3D printed cylinders tend to snap like twigs. Without the reinforcement, this never would have been possible.

I also used white cording to act as power cables, leading from just below the joysticks to a place on the deck that was just next to the rockets. The rocket pieces were made of 3 separate parts in black and white, and slotted into the flight platform. The unit secures to the pilot with a waist strap and straps to secure the engines to the legs.

Cotswold added a figure, Pterasaur, a red jumpsuit, white helmet with red visor and boots. It comes packed in a box with original art.

I also produced a set of blueprints as I do with a lot of my toys. They act as instructions, collectible, and just a nice piece of verisimilitude.