SCALE MODEL NEWS

This week in 1962 – actually September 23 – saw the first episode of the Jetsons, a US cartoon TV series featuring a ‘space age’ family living in the Orbit City of 2062. Mat Irvine:  75 episodes of the Jetsons were made by Hanna-Barbera Productions, who also made the famed Flintstones cartoons. The Jetsons featured family man George, his wife Jane, their children Judy and Elroy, and the family dog, Astro. The family’s main form of transport was George’s flying car. Remember this was written at a time when we all reckoned that in the future there really would be a such a machine in everyone’s driveway. However, it took until 2001 for the first model kit to appear of this car, from Polar Lights. It was one of the company’s simpler kits with snap-together pre-coloured parts, and all five family members.  Twelve years later, the kit was reissued in a different box, though this time with only two of the figures, George and Astro, and these were pre-painted in a different pattern to...

FOR THOSE WHO don’t know their science-fiction, this kit from Polar Lights represents one of the ‘flying hubcap’ UFOs that featured in a 1959 B-movie called  Plan 9 from Outer Space . Mat Irvine:  The ‘Worst Movie – Ever’ as The Simpsons’ Comic Book Guy might have said.  Plan 9 from Outer Space  continues to intrigue, and for science-fiction fans here is a new release of one of its flying saucers. Although it used to be quoted that Plan 9 ’s invading saucers were ‘hubcaps from a Chevy’ (a myth perpetuated in the movie  Ed Wood ) there were also the Lindberg flying saucer kits. And Round 2, which owns the Lindberg name and tooling, has reissued the kit literally ‘as seen in the movie.’ The kit is issued under Round 2’s Polar Lights brand, though it has at various times been been released by Atlantis, Glencoe, and Lindberg. So in effect, this kit is a Polar Lights reproduction of a Lindberg kit, even if it really is the Lindberg kit. Frankly, most of the kit’s app...

I WANT TO BELIEVE is another release in the Atlantis Models range of 5-inch flying saucers. Mat Irvine:  This Atlantis model is not intended to be a ‘real’ UFO. Instead, it depicts the flying saucer featured on a poster seen hanging in the basement office of Agent Fox Mulder, star of the hugely successful X-Files TV series. As with other Atlantis five-inch flying saucer UFOs, this is a very simple kit, containing all of three components, the upper and lower hull, plus a flashing LED. There are another four parts for the stand. The back of the box ( below ) has the very simple instructions. Note the stand has twice the number of parts as the saucer! However, more interesting is the subject mattter. Although Mulder has always had a poster on his wall, over the series there were actually four or five different ones, the common features being a similar design, a UFO, and text that declares, ‘I Want to Believe.’ The first poster was made by the X-Files props department, backing up a sto...