SCALE MODEL NEWS

This elegant spacecraft model is a reissue of the Glencoe Models Marsliner, itself a reissue of the original Strombecker kit of the TWA Moonliner that stood in Disneyland from 1955-1962. Mat Irvine: There is a new box, still with the Ron Miller artwork. It occupies the whole box-top, with no lettering to spoil the illustration. Underneath, poster-style art invites you to, Travel to Mars the Fastway . The kit tooling dates from 1956, and is now approaching 60 years old, so some allowance has to be made for its age. But Glencoe Models is owned and run by Nick Argento, and part of his company’s work is general injection moulding, so if anyone can get this half-century old tooling to run, it’s Nick. The component layout (below) shows that most parts are in white styrene, with portholes and flight deck windows in clear. The original Strombecker kit had these in a tasty shade of green, with instructions to fit a pencil-torch through the rocket nozzle to illuminate them at night. Given the k...

SMN report With the news of an Earth-type alien world being found - the exoplanet Gliese 581g - it’s worth remembering the physicist Stephen Hawking’s warning that intelligent ETs might not be friendly. And that of course was the theme of English author HG Wells’s masterwork The War of the Worlds . Music and Martians So when Mat Irvine’s colleague Nick Argento of Glencoe Models sent a link to a stop-frame animation of this classic invasion story, we had to look it up. What a hoot, and the classical music scores fit well with the subject too. The humans are ringers for Action Man and Co, while the Martian tripod models (you can see them in action at the 4:03 timing mark) are pretty convincing, and a reminder of the splendid artwork printed in Classics Illustrated many years ago. See Glencoe Models here . View a Pegasus Hobbies Martian here . Visit the Classics Illustrated War of the Worlds graphic novel here .