SCALE MODEL NEWS

STAND BY FOR MORE DOCTOR WHO with the latest in the long-running BBC TV sci-fi drama. SMN report: Doctor Who is set to premiere in Autumn 2018, in a ten-episode series. This will be the 11th series to air following the concept’s revival in 2005, and the 37th season since 1963, when Doctor Who first hit the small screen. This latest series will feature Jodie Whittaker as the 13th Doctor, an alien Time Lord who travels through time and space in her TARDIS. The series is set to include a Christmas 2018 special. Jodie Whittaker has form in the science fiction scene, having appeared in the cult sci-fi movie Attack the Block and the Black Mirror episode The Entire History of You . Jodie takes over from actor Peter Capaldi. In the 2017 Christmas special, Capaldi's 12th Doctor regenerated to become the first female Doctor. We await her performance with interest!  In the world of scale models, a current attraction is the Doctor Who Figurines Collection, on current release from partwork pu...

WE HAVE JUST STARTED BUILDING this 1:48 scale Bandai Star Wars walker, and what a delightful kit it's proving to be. SMN report: There'll be a full build update soon, but we thought these shots of the various components would be interesting, as well as Bandai's own pictures of the assembled machine. And then there are the figures, and the multi-coloured mouldings. All very high-end indeed, especially the nice sculpting of everyone's favourite Wookee. We'll probably finish our AT-ST in colourful post-Imperium markings. Perhaps an AT-ST suitable for the off-world tourist market. Keep looking and you should find out in times to come. And here are pictures direct from Bandai that show this 1:48 kit fully assembled. Nice stuff, though we'd leave off the weird dull red 'laser' beams.

THESE SMALLER THAN LIFE-SIZE cars are weird but rather wonderful. They are hand-built replicas of retro machines from times past. SMN report:  Mat Irvine often writes reviews of car kits, and these dwarf machines echo the era that inspires so many 1:24/25 scale models.   Enjoy the movie below, then click here for more retro stuff at SMN . Click here for plenty of retro machinery at SMN.    

THE ANNUAL SHOW for lovers of space, science fiction and fantasy touches down this Sunday, July 1, 2018. Click here for full details of Smallspace 7. Click here to read about previous Smallspace shows at SMN.

THIS NEW VERSION OF THE famed British 'Wimpey' looks to be a good kit. SMN comment: Bearing in mind the amount of interior detail Airfix has incorporated, we'd ask again: please include a transparent fuselage half with kits like this, so inside-information addicts can actually see their work when the model is finished!

AT FIRST GLANCE this attractive model could be a reissue of the 1:25 scale Chevrolet Monte Carlo kit released by AMT in 1970. Mat Irvine:  Actually, this Chevrolet Monte Carlo is a newer kit, or at least, ‘newer’ as in it’s from the mid-1990s. The original kit from 1970 was available as a standard ‘annual’, with detailing parts and ‘build one of three ways’ - stock, custom or competition. There was also a ‘Motor City Stocker’ version, a series which were basically unassembled promotionals. But both had then-standard one-piece chassis, and limited underhood detail, so in later years some of these annuals were retooled to incorporate new levels of detail. This occurred with the 1962 Ford Thunderbird, particularly as the tooling for the original Annual kit had been updated to the later years, and now with this 1970 Monte Carlo. Now you get a fully detailed engine bay and a fully detailed chassis with separate parts for the front and rear axles, and twin exhaust system - all lacking in...

  MAT IRVINE GOES GO BACK TO THE WACKY PAST with four Build and Play MPC kits. Mat Irvine:  The kits involved are hardly new, but I suspect many SMN readers will have not have seen them before. And even if you have, I doubt if they will have been in this form. Way back in the heady days of the 1970s, MPC issued four kits of vehicles from the 1968-9 cartoon series Wacky Races. Kits of cartoon subjects are hardly unknown, but for some reason these particular four have become some of the most sought-after model car kits ever made, making silly prices on online auction sites - even for badly-built kits with missing parts! I never got these kits first time around, and missed a good few auctions, even for ‘bits’! However, I was recently handed all four by old friend Andy Yanchus in New York with the comment, “You’re the car guy’ and “I’ll never finish them…”  So I acquired all four kits in one go! The comment regarding ‘… never finish them’ was useful. If you have a rare kit wo...