SCALE MODEL NEWS

  IT’S HALLOWEEN AGAIN and here’s a chance to look at a kit that definitely fits the idea of ‘spooky.’  Mat Irvine:  I’m in the process of writing a book on dioramas, and for one of the chapters there’s a look at kits that already come as a diorama. And this kit from Polar Lights certainly fits the bill.  The Polar Lights model started out as an Aurora kit way back in 1965, but was on sale for less than a year. Most Aurora tooling originally ended up with Monogram, and Monogram did reissue some kits, but nothing like the whole of the range. Some tools were also licensed to other companies, so we did see again kits that Aurora had made, but which hadn’t seen the light of day for many years. Then we jump forward several decades, and the idea of ‘lost Aurora’ model companies started to emerge. Only two ever really fulfilled the promise though, those being Polar Lights and Moebius, which have created kits that Aurora might have made, but that it actually did not....

MATTHEW TEEVAN IS AN illustrator who shows his work on Art Station, an online centre for the visual creatives community. SMN report:  In Matthew Teevan's words: "I like to build models in my spare time, and grew up on plastic model kits, Airfix, Revell, Matchbox and Aurora kits. Some wishful thinking here in the form of fantasy what-if box-top artwork. Also some wishful thinking on movies that could have – and should have – been made!" We say, well done Matthew – there's plenty here we'd like to spend our Autumn nights constructing. THUNDERBIRD 2 ( header, below ) We can all dream of a top of the line, large-scale Airfix Thunderbird 2. As the scale size was imagined as being more than 76 m (250 ft) long, even a 1:144 scale kit would be a biggish build, some 530 mm (20.8 in) in length when assembled. RTL 2 ( below ) This was a supersonic transporter that appeared in the Thunderbirds episode,  The Cham-Cham . At 1:144 scale it would be some 457 mm (18 in) long. MAC’...