Apollo 8 which they made a Christmas Eve television broadcast in which they read the first ten verses from the Book of Genesis. At the time, the broadcast was the most watched TV program ever. Apollo 8's successful mission paved the way for Apollo 11 to fulfill U.S. President John F. Kennedy's goal of landing a man on the Moon before the end of the 1960s. The Apollo 8 astronauts returned to Earth on December 27, 1968, when their spacecraft splashed down in the Northern Pacific Ocean. The crew members were named "Time" magazine's "Men of the Year" for 1968 upon their
Johnny Apollo (toy) were molded in gold plastic. Jane Apollo was molded in blue plastic with "flesh" colored hands and head. Her accessories were molded in white or blue plastic. Both could be found boxed with accessories or boxed with a Space Crawler and Moon rover vehicle (the former was battery operated: 2 D-Cells, which powered spoke-like wheels). The vehicles were each sold with a Johnny Apollo figure, separately or as part of a deluxe "Lunar Exploration Set", featuring both figures and both vehicles. Johnny and Jane Apollo were marketed by all the major toy stores and also in department store catalogs like