SCALE MODEL NEWS

YOU CAN SEE TOM GRIGAT’S wonderful workmanship again in the video (above). The fascinating subject is a 1:35 scale kit of the one-off Romfell Panzerwagen, built in 1915. SMN report: The Romfell armoured car consisted of just one vehicle, designed by Hauptmann Branco Romanic and Oberleutnant Simon Fellner of the Austro-Hungarian army in 1915. They named their design the Romfell, and it was first used to defend against a major Russian offensive. After that, the Romfell was moved to enter service on the Italian Front in 1917.  There is little information on how the vehicle actually performed, but its unusual curved lower armour must have helped deflect exploding enemy ordnance. And that curved armour plate is what makes the Romfell unlike anything else in battle at the time, so all in all, it was a unique piece of equipment. The 1:35 scale kit comes from Copper State Models, and partners with CSM’s other armoured car kits, featuring unusual models from countries as diverse as Canada,...

SMN VISITORS MAY WELL BE familiar with Peter Chiang, the dynamic head of Singapore's Hobby Bounties model store.  Here's a video that shows us how Peter turned his life-long interest into a popular destination for model makers, and one that's also home to regular scale competitions.

A NAME THAT WILL BE familiar to many modellers, Andy Yanchus sadly died in Florida on 11 September 2021. Mat Irvine: For many years Andy Yanchus worked with Aurora Plastics in West Hempstead, New York State, where he one of the two Project Managers there. Andy worked across the subject range, but in particular he came up with the Monster Scenes idea, a smaller version of Aurora’s classic monster kits, but presented in ‘scenes.’ In recent years he collaborated on a book with Dennis L. Prince to tell the controversial story of the Monster Scenes idea. The tale includes enraged parents, news headlines, and eventual cancellation - not bad for for a series of plastic models!   Click here to read more about Monster Scenes. Andy amassed a large model collection at the family home in Brooklyn, NY, and was extremely knowledgeable on the kit industry and its history. I encountered him when I wrote my first space models article for Scale Models International magazine, for the August 1974 is...

AS AN ALTERNATIVE TO using the matter transporter on Federation Starships, there were the box-like shuttlecraft.  Mat Irvine: And AMT, the originator of Star Trek kits, and for many years the only company associated with the world’s most well known science fiction series, made the one featured in the Star Trek episode  The Galileo Seven , which first aired in 1967. It was a small kit, but did come with an interior. And for many years, it was the only model kit of the Galileo shuttlecraft  Then Round-2, by now owner of the AMT name, polled modellers and found that a new Galileo kit would be appreciated. So the design and manufacture was begun, though several things would change. Firstly, it would be a much larger kit; secondly, it would be released under the Polar Lights name; and thirdly, there would not be an interior. The new Round 2 kit is quoted as being to 1:32 scale, and is larger than the old AMT model. An interior was initially considered, but abandoned because ...

HOBBY BOUNTIES is run by Peter Chiang in Singapore, who ran another of his model competitions on 7 August 2021. Mat Irvine and Tony James of Timeless Hobbies (ex-Comet Miniatures) were asked to judge the entries. Mat Irvine: The subjects concentrated on vehicles and figures; I dealt with the former, Tony the latter. However when we’d both done our initial judging, we each looked at all the entries, then swapped notes and found we’d come to exactly the same conclusions for both! (Tony reckoned it was about the first time we both agreed on anything!) It was a small but eclectic selection of entries. Particularly notable was a rally version of the 1:32 scale Ford Escort by Paul Tattersall. Also two conversions using the ‘Quick Build’ VW T1 Bus by Razali Ahmed. In the figures section we were both very impressed with Victor Wong’s ‘shadow boxes’ featuring Airfix’s 54mm figures. Both cleverly used existing paintings as the background, with figures added to make a 3D foreground – and it was ...

THIS IS AN EXCELLENT KIT FOR science-fiction and fantasy lovers. It’s to 1:48 scale, and is based on a TV series from the 1960s. Mat Irvine:  Land of the Giants (LOTG) was an Irwin Allen TV show, with a plot loosely based on the flight of a suborbital spaceship, the  Spindrift . The craft was travelling from Los Angeles to London, when it went through some sort of space warp which sent it to crash-land on a mystery planet, where things are a dozen times larger than normal – including human-like giants, who regard the  Spindrift  crew as 'little people.'  A lot of time in the two-year LOTG series was spent with the  Spindrift  crew defending themselves from assorted giant-sized creatures, although I should point out that the particular scenario depicted by this kit never actually existed on screen, being based on publicity artwork. However, three of the  Spindrift  crew, Captain Steve Burton, Betty Hamilton and Dan Erickson, are shown here usi...