SCALE MODEL NEWS

THIS UNUSUAL KIT depicts a Toshiba EC 160, a moulding machine that can inject more than one colour into a single plastic runner. Bandai uses machines like this to produce kits such as Gundam action figures and Star Wars models. Mat Irvine:  Bandai’s Toshiba EC160 kit dates from 2007. It was intended for the internal Japanese market, but is now more widely available. The kit was almost certainly made primarily for publicising the machine's ability to inject more than one colour on the same runner. In fact, kits made in several colours are not unusual, Revell doing this as far back as the 1950s. But the colours were each on a separate runner, unlike those produced by the Toshiba EC 160. It uses specialist technology to goes through several injection cycles, with gates opening and closing relevant sections for each colour plastic. Here the EC160 kit is moulded in four colours, white, dark grey, yellow and blue.  It is a very simple kit, intended to snap together, with decals that...

CHRISTMAS COMES EARLY IN HOLLYWOOD and the new Star Wars teaser-trailer is already here. The countdown begins for the latest movie in the long-running saga, called  The Last Jedi . SMN report: We're Star Wars suckers here at SMN, and  The Last Jedi  looks as if it will be up to the standard of the recent movies, especially in the hardware department. View the trailer ( below ) and see what we mean, especially those tasty desert aeromechs with their vermilion surface exhausts. As always for scale model makers, the mechanicals are at least as interesting as the characters. See below for stuff to make you drool - that is, if the likes of Revell will oblige with yet more Star Wars kits in time for Christmas 2017.     Star Wars The Last Jedi arrives in your galaxy on December 15, 2017. Among the players are Daisy Ridley (Rey), John Boyega (Finn), Mark Hamill (Luke Skywalker), Adam Driver (Kylo Ren), BB-8, and many others. Click here for the tasty and pricy Revell ...

‘The Wind Rises’ (Taze Tachinu) is a hugely successful 2013 Japanese animated movie, the fictionalised story of Jiro Horikoshi, designer of the Mitsubishi A5M, and its famed successor, the A6M Zero. And this 1:48 scale Jiro ‘Bird-Type’ aircraft features in the movie. Fine Molds have made a delightful little kit, the wingtips having a characteristic feathered design. When assembled, the Jiro has a wingspan of 190mm (7.5in) and length of 110mm (4.3in). It’s an easy enough build, with just 33 components, plus decals. The parts are precoloured which makes things easy, though you’ll have use your brushes to paint the blue wingtips, and also the anime-style pilot figure. One nice point - which we’d like to see elsewhere as more of a standard feature - is that the wing is moulded in just two pieces, top and bottom, meaning that there’s no chance to get the dihedral angle wrong. Regular readers will know that the SMN Crew are sci-fi and steampunk fans, and this little aircraft seems made for t...

SMN report: We’ve long had the popular modelmaking genre ‘Luftwaffe 1946’ catering for alternate-history buffs of European World War II-era warfare, but less well-known are alt-history scenarios for the Far East. So it’s all the more interesting to see this 1:48 scale Fine Molds kit, of a Japanese pusher-prop fighter. Dramatic box-art (above) from Fine Molds for the Sky Crawlers. Canard-wing Shinden The Fine Molds ‘Sky Crawler’ is a nifty-looking machine, based loosely on the layout and appearance of the Kyushu J7W1 Shinden, an unusual aircraft that first flew on August 3, 1945, shortly before Japan surrendered to the Allies. Whether it would have proved worthy of combat against Mustangs and Lightnings is debatable, but the planned jet-powered successor certainly could have been a deadly foe. Comparison between the two ( Sky Crawler below ) is interesting - scroll down to the bottom for various Shinden pix.  Push that prop! The so-called Concept A kit has at least one unusual feat...

David Jefferis reports: It’s something of a sci-fi fest at the moment in the scale model world, and here we go again with another Star Wars kit from Japan’s Fine Molds. This time it's the super-sleek twin-engine Naboo N-1 Starfighter. Starfighter scale And it gets better, as this combat craft is being produced to model aircraft-standard 1:72 scale. The kit has vaguely recognizable figures included too, in the form of a battle-ready Anakin Skywalker and a seated Naboo Royal Space Fighter Corps pilot. Docking station base The N-1 Starfighter comes ready to berth safe and snug in a ‘detailed docking station’ display base, which makes a change from the usual flying pedestal design. The N-1's rear spike slots into a vertical post for refuelling. The kit has just 39 components, coming in yellow and grey plastic, plus a clear transparency and decals. We don’t have hands-on measurements for the actual model, though it’s not huge, as the ‘real’ thing was envisaged with a length of just ...

SMN report We came across a pile of old MPC Star Wars kits in the SMN Garage the other day. The boxes are somewhat battered and bent, but the components inside seem good as new, so the kits are now in the studio, warming up for a build in those winter nights to come. Pick of the bunch is the good old Millennium Falcon, Han Solo’s starship that he piloted against the mighty forces of the evil empire. White and weathered, or bright and cheerful? It’s fair to say that the standard white paint job of the Millennium Falcon has been used as the basis for almost all builds, big and small. It’s possible of course, to overdo the weathering on surface details, and you can see a borderline case in the top pic above. It looks great, but maybe R2D2 should give the ship a wash and polish! Of course, there is absolutely no reason to stick to white - it’s certainly a standard spacecraft scheme, but there’s nothing to stop a civilian-model starship being finished in bright colours, much like a present-...