This set is exceptional despite its small size and small amount of pieces. It's a solid, sleek vehicle that seems like a rover you would actually see being used on the moon. The clincher, and I didn't know about this until I just picked up this set cheaply recently, is that the astronaut's chair is a vehicle in itself, lifting off the chassis to become a nifty, little hovercraft. For a kid, there's a lot of play options here. As an adult, I appreciate all that Lego's designers back then packed into this tiny set.

The namesake of #6885 Crater Crawler which I reviewed earlier, both are four-wheeled land vehicles with a small flying chair but this is where the similarities end.

Box/Instructions

I only have the instructions for it now, I'm not even sure we kept the box of this set as we did with most of them. Again just a small folding sheet rushing you through in seven steps and another four for the hoverchair. The drawings are on the standard space background which was used in every space set instructions back then, some yellowish hills under a black sky, simple but effective. The paper for these instructions has always been extremely thin, at least most of this type of instructions we had have been torn or ripped, usually at a fold.

Parts

A strong example of the grey classic space colour scheme, not a trace of blue or white. Black and trans-red provide the only other colour accents on the vehicle. The balloon tyres are still connected to a 2 x 2 plate with metal axle on red wheels, but those wheels are not visible with the tyres in place. Some useful space parts, or even castle since most are grey but nothing particularly special, although the bracket used as vehicle base apparently was only used in two sets in this colour.

Minifigures

One standard yellow classic spaceman, he doesn't have a radio or tool but he does have that small flying chair which is better than any tool. On one point he was very different from the other yellow spacemen (or even any other spaceman) we had though: this one had his logo on a sticker! It's the only spaceman we had like this, the advantage is that it hasn't faded but the disadvantage is that the edges have collected some dust over the years and look a bit dirty. I found it weird back then and I still do, even all the spacemen we had from older sets were printed, why specifically this one came with a sticker we never knew.

The build

With~30 pieces you can't expect that much, but still it's nice how different connections are tried here (the antenna pointing upwards from a sideways headlight brick, for example). The best part is the flying chair and the way it connects to the surface crawler, it's not special or complicated but to a six-year-old it just gave the insight to use tiles and jumpers for 'loose' connections for all manner of detachable gizmos!

The completed model

It never was my favourite, to me it looked too long and narrow (especially with that 4 x 2 space wing on the front) with not nearly enough ground clearance to crawl around in a cratered landscape. Seriously, how is this supposed to negotiate steep crater walls? Still, it's got balloon tyres and balloon tyres go a long way in making it look like a futuristic all-terrain vehicle. The best part of the set was the small, detachable flying chair, the one in #6885 is rather similar except that one is piloted by a small robot.

Overall opinion

Despite some flaws this is still a nice little ATV (or supposed to be one, anyway) especially considering the low amount of parts. Balloon tyres, trans-red parts and above all a flying chair lift this set up from what would otherwise be a rather mediocre space vehicle.

I just picked this up today. I never knew it had the little hover chair that broke off from the main chassis. That is an ingenius little addition to simple little set. I also like the inverted antenna just to be different from every other set. The only drawback is that is has such a small numbeer of pieces, I can't justify giving it more than a three, but as far as small sets go, this one is a winner. I'll definitely pick up more if I can find them. Fun.