SCALE MODEL NEWS

SMN REPORT Here’s a well-timed kit release, a movie tie-in that’s bang up to the minute. It’s a variation on Italeri’s existing AW-101 kit to 1:72 scale, modded slightly to represent the triple-engined beast shown in the latest James Bond movie Skyfall . We haven’t see the new James Bond movie yet (though an SMN  Crew cinema outing is slotted for Wednesday this week) so we can’t comment on the accuracy or otherwise of this special Skyfall edition. But it seems a good idea and we’re all for kits like this, not least because they help attract newcomers to scale models. Smaller diecast Matching the theme of the 1:72 plastic kit is a smaller diecast version, this time to 1:100 scale. It’s ready to fly out of the box and comes in Skyfall colours and markings. Big boat President John F. Kennedy’s World War II command, PT109, is a famous boat all right, and here is Italeri’s 1:35 scale model of it. As with other motor torpedo boats from Italeri, the PT109 is superb, and comes complete w...

SMN report: We mostly associate Tamiya with top-line traditional plastic kits - and quite rightly, for they are superb products, as we recently showed with the newly-released 1:32 scale P-51D Mustang. But Tamiya doesn’t stand still, and the company recently paid the advertising agency Ogilvy & Mather Vietnam to create an ad campaign based around the catchline, ‘Tamiya Put It Together’.  Print ad series Ogilvy & Mather’s solution to the brief was a series of print ads featuring fictional kits based on popular and continuing conspiracy themes - Elvis Presley lives, Roswell UFO aliens, Moon Landing hoax, Who killed JFK, and the death of Marilyn Monroe. Fictional the kits may be, but O&M put much hard work into the visuals, which look really convincing until you look hard, and notice a few pointers to the truth - for example, the Lunar Rover sports a 1950s-era auto steering wheel, a cute in-joke we reckon, as the originals had side-stick controllers. Request to Tamiya Howev...

Mat Irvine inspects: The US Patrol Torpedo Boat is a kit that has appeared in various forms over the years, including one branded under the ‘McHale’s Navy’ name, from the US TV series that ran from 1962-1966. This new Classic Kits release features another boat, PT-167, and a bonus is that it comes in 1:72 standard model scale, matching similar water-borne craft from Airfix. When assembled, PT-167 is 334 mm (13.15 in) long, a size that’s suitable for display on virtually any shelf or desk. Unusual finish PT-167 is noted for surviving a Japanese dive-bomber attack off the Soloman Islands in 1943, including a torpedo hit that went straight through the tough mahogany double-hull - fortunately without exploding! As displayed in the cover art, the kit should be painted in a black and white dazzle finish, which the instructions show in detail, and - this is unusual with model kits - there are useful photographs of a built-up and painted model. Lt John F. Kennedy, standing at right with other ...