SCALE MODEL NEWS

  EVERY NOW AND THEN you look at your unbuilt-kit collection and pick one that may not be brand new, but still could do with being changed from a box of components to a finished model. Which was the situation I faced with this Polar Lights Batplane kit. Mat Irvine: This is a Polar Lights reissue of the original Aurora Batplane, a kit that dates back to the 1960s. Except that, while the kit is a re-tooling of the Aurora original, and while the two kits layouts match, the Polar Lights parts are from a newer mould.  But it remains a simple kit, with a one-piece cockpit interior that features the busts of Batman and Robin. It also has two-piece wings, one-piece tailplanes and a very simplified landing gear assembly. If you want to spray finish the completed craft, it’s best to paint the interior first. You can get in quite a lot of detail with what is after all a single moulding. You can then fit in the fuselage halves, attach the canopy and mask it off, which will allow an overs...

  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....

IF YOU LOOK HARD enough, you can usually find an interesting anniversary. And in 2019, Round 2 used the 65th Anniversary of Godzilla, perhaps the most famous of all movie monsters, to add a creature-feature to its list. Mat Irvine: Round 2 already had a license for Godzilla, so decided to take the old MPC Willys Jeep, and reissue it as a Godzilla movie star. This movie is in fact the sixth from 1965, this one being ‘Invasion of Astro-Monster.’   The MPC kit is the first Jeep model kit to 1:25 scale, being issued in 1968 as the ‘star car’ from Hogan’s Heroes , a US sitcom of the time. Putting aside the improbability of a World War II German prison camp internee being allowed his own vehicle, the kit has provided modellers with a Jeep in an automotive scale, rather than the more usual military 1:35.  The model is fairly comprehensive with a separate engine, chassis and four-wheel drive running gear. It has the simplified interior you get with a utility vehicle, plus an optional...

Five years ago, we looked at Aurora kits which, "...represented a goldmine of exotica in years gone by. While other companies were giving us familiar (even then) P-51 Mustangs and Spitfires, Aurora teased us with luridly marked P-36 Peashooters and of course, movie monsters like The Mummy…" Even today, the grisly old Mummy beats most nasties hands-down, and we said about the Aurora kit, "...Creatures from the movies were Aurora’s stock-in-trade, and made the range very different from the likes of, say, Airfix. Of the various Aurora offerings, The Mummy wins, for his classic gruesomeness." Mr J added, "... But the nearest I got to frightening anyone with the model was to fix him inside a sealed black box, with a pair of eye holes in the front. “Look inside the box, Sue”, I said to my elder sister. She emitted a faint squeak as she stared at the dim ‘Glow in the Dark’ bits of The Mummy, then sighed and went back to combing her hair..." The Lockheed XFV-1 (be...

REPORT BY MAT IRVINE: Here I continue my review of the 2012 WonderFest science-fiction and fantasy show, held at the end of May in Louisville, Kentucky - and take a close look at the test shot ( above ) of the huge 1:350 scale USS Enterprise due for release soon. The large scale means that the bridge of the Enterprise is clearly visible (above).  Main runners (below) for the kit.   Mighty starship Jamie Hood of Round-2 showed off the upcoming Star Trek USS Enterprise . This is the original version from the first series, and ‘the best’ as Scotty might maintain, “No bloody A, B C, or D…” The kit is made to a massive 1:350 scale, and stretches some 813 mm (32 in) long. Five moulding colours are involved: two shades of grey and three transparent tints. The Enterprise will be sold under the Polar Lights name, and should be available in October. You even get a tiny Galileo shuttlecraft, seen below next to a business card. Munsters at home Frank Winspur and Dave Metzner...