Mettoy U 1240 construction diagrams

The UK toy manufacturer Mettoy produced a short-lived series of kits on various subjects between 1971 and 1973 called Science Adventure. The only electronics kit in the series, U 1240, was a repackaged version of EE 1050, presumably under a licence from Philips who seems to have stopped marketing their own kits in the UK around 1970.

The set of construction diagrams shown here is from a kit with a manual dated 1973, and is printed with the insulated wires in green; a set claimed to be from 1972, have the wires printed in red as in the Philips kits, but are otherwise identical to this one in the limited sample I have seen.

Despite their late date, their design is based on the earliest Philips version. It makes several minor changes, some similar but not identical to ones in the later Philips version in the placement of some insulated wires. The most marked difference is how the BC 148 transistor is shown. It no longer has a cooling rib, but instead a black triangle at the collector corner, corresponding to a yellow dot on the actual component. The constructions for EE 1050 only were interspersed with those requiring its expansions, and thus not consecutively numbered. Since there is only one electronics kit in the Mettoy series, the constructions are reordered here, loosely from simplest to most complex, and renumbered from 1 to 12. At the same time the now superfluous kit requirement information is removed. In addition all external terminal connections are identified by a letter.

Philips version 1a	Mettoy 1973 version
Surprisingly, to illustrate the construction diagrams in the parts list in the instruction book, a simplified version of a diagram requiring EE 1051 is used rather than one actually included in the kit. This is an inaccurate redrawing which does not align to the construction board grid, but retains the BC 148 style of the Philips kits and not the one used by Mettoy.

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Tor Gjerde <i@old.no>