Marx Toys "Operation Moon Base" Morse Code Signaling Device -- It Really Works!!

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This thing rules! And once you think about it, the device actually works. And served as a nicely subtle little introduction to Morse Code for future Military-Industrial Complex employees. Already thinking of how to utilize it in some sort of performance art video and I am not kidding.

Rosevelt dime for scale.

Very very cool. And yeah, once you think about it, this actually works. OK the rockets are great, you can spit one across the room or put an eye out with it. But here kids could actually not just send each other "secret messages", but actually learn something applicable to their later placement in some branch of the military or service industry like shipping where knowing Morse Code would give you a leg up on the other recruits.

... I'd actually wondered what the point of the thing was, other than for show, while while researching the set online. And indeed it has the same outer casing of a very static placard on tripod from the "Tom Corbett Space Academy" set. And in the end concluded there must be some sort of spring mechanism that shutters a grid or something like that, flipping from black to white, and had to know. Saw one listed for sale and was like, Mine.

Yup.

As it turned out the piece was sold to me by the same vendor who'd had the Mercury Space Capsule from the previous week, so it's a given the both came from the same estate sale and authentic to the same "Operation Moon Base" set. 

And will likely pass on from me in similar fashion. Have even already thought about it and the niece will be the one to have Uncle Steve's Space Toys bequeathed, along with an "eB4y for Dummies" book + disc ... "Here's that trip to Europe I wish I could have sent you & your college roommate on. Get busy with selling it off and have a great time!!! <3"

Just another look at the mechanism in action, here at rest.

And pressed down. Ingenious, and I would expect the form was utilized in any other space or military type playset Marx saw fit to include it with. Universally applicable!

The hinge is faux. One position only, so the guys would have to turn it around and find some way to point it up or down in the right direction. But it's still cool.

Learning their morse code. 

Eyeballs watching more OMB components, stay tuned.