This was a toy released by Hotwheels (lemmy thread) to commemorate the success of NASA's 1997 Sojourner Mars Rover.

Sojourner was a milestone in planetary exploration beyond the earth+moon system. Planetary missions before it were orbiters or stationary landers limited to studying things directly next to them. There was a Soviet moon rover in the 70s, very advanced for its day.

Newer rovers are far more capable than Sojourner, but it was the first of its kind, and gave invaluable experience to scientists and engineers designing newer vehicles to explore our solar system. There are Mars helicopters, a planned ESA rover launching in 2028 to search for biosignatures, and an upcoming octocopter to explore Titan, which has tried to survive in the face of staffing cuts and proposed 47% reductions to NASA's science mission budget.

This is the actual Sojourner as photographed from its Pathfinder lander. The lander is also included in the Hotwheels pack.

Vehicle being prepared in a JPL laboratory in 1996.

Edited to add Lunokhod link.

I’ve wanted to build a 1:1 RC model of Sojourner ever since I saw The Martian. I don’t currently have the skills, time, or equipment to do it, but learning about it has been fascinating. The rocker-bogie suspension is a fascinating design.

I found a youtube video of somebody's RC version. It's cute! And impressive how the suspension articulates over little rocks and things.

I think for people who were kids and watched this thing land and the first images come down, it felt like the moon landing. It got a whole generation into science and exploration.

This is good too! It's a panorama on NASA's site taken by the lander portion. If you zoom into the full res, and look toward the right side of the image, you can see the rover next to that large boulder.

I had this actually. Just the rover.