THE BAT TAKES FLIGHT WITH THIS POLAR LIGHTS BATPLANE KIT

 

EVERY NOW AND THEN you look at your unbuilt-kit collection and pick one that may not be brand new, but still could do with being changed from a box of components to a finished model. Which was the situation I faced with this Polar Lights Batplane kit.

HALLOWEEN TREAT: THE MUNSTERS LIVING ROOM KIT FROM POLAR LIGHTS

 

IT’S HALLOWEEN AGAIN and here’s a chance to look at a kit that definitely fits the idea of ‘spooky.’ 

JETSONS ANNIVERSARY: FLYING SAUCER FAMILY CAR

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.

LIKE NOTHING ON EARTH: PLAN 9 FLYING SAUCER LANDS ON THIS WORLD

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.

BUILDING THE POLAR LIGHTS 1:25 SCALE BATMOBILE

BATMAN MODEL KITS and collectibles are as popular as the movies themselves, and this 1:25 scale Batmobile kit from Polar Lights is no exception.

SAME BAT TIME, SAME BAT CHANNEL - FIVE NEW BATMOBILES FROM POLAR LIGHTS

IF YOU ARE OLD ENOUGH to remember the headline phrase from the 1960s TV series Batman, you are also old enough to remember a time when a conventional 1:25 scale Batmobile kit didn't exist. But now, a bit like waiting for the proverbial bus, several come along more or less at the same time.

SAUCER SIGHTING: C-57D SPACE CRUISER FROM ‘FORBIDDEN PLANET’ ZOOMS IN FROM POLAR LIGHTS

Forbidden Planet, ‘the’ classic 1950s science-fiction movie, memorably gave us not only Robby the Robot, but also the C-57D Space Cruiser. Polar Lights has already issued a larger kit of this flying saucer, but has now come up with a brand new, half-size version to 1:144 scale.

ROBBY THE ROBOT FROM POLAR LIGHTS: HUMANOID MACHINE CARRIES ALTAIRA, THE LUSCIOUS SPACE-GIRL

Mat Irvine: Robby the Robot, mechanoid star of the classic movie ‘Forbidden Planet’ is now available as a 1:12 scale ‘Movie Poster Edition’ kit that depicts the space-girl Altaira in its arms.

BETTER LATE THAN NEVER? ANOTHER BATMOBILE COMING SOON - THIS TIME FOR KIT BUILDERS

Mat Irvine reports

It’s one of the mysteries of the modelling universe - why has there never been a conventional injection-moulded styrene kit the Batmobile in traditional 1:25 scale? Well, now there is.

Batmobile on a tight schedule

The vehicle in question is the Batmobile, as built for the 1960s television series, starring Adam West and Burt Ward as Batman and Robin. The series was less ‘dark’, more ‘comic book capers’, than the more recent movies, and in keeping with the action-adventure rhythm, the TV studio decided it needed a ‘star car’ in just three weeks. The well known car customizer Dean Jefferies started work on adapting a Cadillac, but had to turn the job down as being too impracticable in the time available. However, another Los Angeles customizer took up the challenge - mainly because he had the raw material parked outside his workshop.

BATMOBILE SOLD AT AUCTION FOR SIX FIGURES

David Jefferis reports

Holy Moley, we like Batmobiles, but $370,100 USD (£232,000 GBP) is stretching the SMN wallet way past breaking point. But eBay buyers certainly didn’t think so, for that’s what the befinned black beast (top pic above) that starred in two Tim Burton Batman movies fetched on Wednesday this week. Mind you, the car - from Batman (1989) and Batman Returns (1992) - didn’t hit the ‘Buy It Now’ price of $499,000.

Batmobile's atomic engine

For power, Burton’s Batmobile had an ‘atomic-turbine’ engine, with a neat flamethrower-style exhaust, just the thing to toast the toes of an unwary bad guy. The real thing that just found a new buyer has a somewhat more prosaic Chevy 350 cu in engine, though we have to admit even that puts the tiny three-cylinder motor that powers the SMN Ibiza in the shade!

DICK TRACY DETECTIVE CAR AT THE VOLO AUTO MUSEUM

Report by Mat Irvine
One of the original comic book ‘superheroes’, (though strictly speaking he actually wasn’t), was the fast-shooting detective Dick Tracy. Inventor of the wrist-watch radio, Tracy has been immortalised in model form by two kits from Aurora, (since reproduced by Polar Lights), and by his car from the 1990 movie starring Warren Beattie, by AMT, though this was really no more than a 1936 Ford two-door Coupe. But visit the Volo Auto Museum in the small town of Volo, about 80 km (50 miles) north of Chicago, as I did recently and you can see the much more exciting model of transport for the yellow-coated detective, seen in pictures shown here.

Volo is a treat for anyone interested in cars. It is basically an auction house for collectible cars of all eras, from classic to modern. But over the years it built itself up into a museum par excellence, with not only many of the cars for auction on display pre-sale, but many acquisitions made by the museum.



Many of the acquisitions are ‘Star Cars’ - cars that have featured on TV and in the movies - and although this Dick Tracy car wasn’t in the Beattie movie, it certainly looks the part.

More on the Volo Museum is just one of the ideas that are currently being discussed as an e-zine, examples of which you can see on Volo’s website.

Visit the Volo Museum online here.

The pictures show, top to bottom:
1  The 1:25 scale AMT Dick Tracy car, as featured in the 1990 movie. It is actually a black-painted 1936 Ford two-seater coupe. The kit is nicely done, and builds into a handsome replica of the full-size collectible car.
2-4  The ‘new’ Dick Tracy car I saw recently at the Volo Auto Museum, complete with a life-size figure of Dick Tracy.
5  Volo Museum poster.

SMN note:
That yellow car is a great looking retro design. Sad to say, it’s not available as a kit but would make a great kit-bashing project.
Incidentally, Dick Tracy is one of the longest-running comic strips - it was launched in the pages of the Detroit Mirror newspaper on October 4, 1931, and is still going strong today.

ROBBY THE ROBOT KIT FROM THE MOVIE ‘FORBIDDEN PLANET’

Mat Irvine reflects
“Welcome to Altair IV gentlemen…” were the words of one of science fiction’s best-known robots, Robby, from the 1956 movie Forbidden Planet, which had its first US screening on this day 54 years ago.

Forbidden Planet was a very loose reworking of Shakespeare’s The Tempest, and if you feel inclined, you can find a movie parallel to all the play’s characters, not least the spirit Ariel, which takes on a more solid movie form as Robby the Robot.

In the scale model world, Robby is one of the classic kits that the original Aurora model company never made. Aurora had already produced the robot from the TV series 'Lost in Space', so Robby would have made a natural follow-on, especially as ‘he’ came first and the LiS design was influenced by Robby - not surprising, as it was created by Bob Kinoshita, one of Robby’s original designers.

Robby may not have appeared as an original Aurora kit, but this situation was rectified when the Polar Lights kit company came on the scene. One of its kits was a Robby the Robot to the same scale as the Aurora LiS robot, which Polar Lights had already recreated.

But a somewhat misleading aspect of the movie’s publicity was the poster, echoed on the box-art. Although voted ‘Fifth Best-Ever Movie Poster’ in a ‘Premier’ magazine poll, it shows Robby carrying Altaira, the daughter of scientist Dr Edward Morbius, in his arms. She wears a skimpy gold costume, and despite spending much of the movie changing from one costume to another, none of them were this shade of gold, and - also to the point - Robby never carried her like this at all!

However, this didn’t stop the doyen of figure modellers, Jimmy Flintstone, producing a simple resin kit representation of spacegirl Altaira, to the correct size and shape to be carried by the Polar Lights Robby. She is clad in a costume seen briefly, (which is both the scene length and nature of the costume), near the end of the movie. This costume is in pale blue metallic fabrics, not gold, and in a shade more used to being painted onto model cars. So it almost represents the movie poster - but not quite.

Robby has since been reissued by Round 2 Models, a US company that owns a family of brands, including the Polar Lights name. The kit comes without Altaira though - the Jimmy Flintstone figure I used here came from CultTVMan’s on-line shop.

My model shows Robby carrying Altaira on a simple scratchbuilt base I made, to represent the alien planet Altair IV, where the movie's events take place.

And Finally...
Forbidden Planet is one of those movies often quoted as being ‘down for a re-make’. Latest rumours are for a James Cameron project slated for 2011, though one has to wonder, ‘why?’

The pictures show, top to bottom:
1, 2 My builtup model of Robby carrying Altaira, and a closeup.
3 The Forbidden Planet poster.
4 Old Polar Lights box.
5 New version from Round 2 Models.

Visit Robby the robot at Round 2 Models here.

Visit Jimmy Flintstone Studios here.

Altaira is available from CultTVMan here.

RETRO ROD CAR KITS FROM ROUND 2

Mat Irvine reports
One thing that has come out of Round 2 taking over the AMT, MPC and Polar Lights names is that a lot of kits that haven’t seen the inside of an injection moulding machine for decades are now being reissued. One AMT series that Round 2 has rediscovered is the way out ‘Show Rod’ car series, first released in the early 1970s.

Show Rods - usually defined as custom cars built purely to do rounds of the car shows - can be mild or wild, and the wilder they are, the more visitors like them. Admittedly many 1:1 scale show rods are really bizarre (many of Ed Roth’s creations, for example) but they are still drivable, even if in some cases ‘only just’! But many of AMT’s Show Rods went beyond this, as they have existed only as 1:25 scale kits, with no real-world equivalent.

One thing they usually have in common is that each 1:25 scale rod revolves round a theme. Two recent reissues that demonstrate this are the Li’l Stogie, a variation on a Wild West theme, and the Royal Rail, or what Henry VIII could have driven to get away from all those wives…!

Li’l Stogie is a covered wagon with a V-8 engine, a pick and shovel, plus a gear shift that wears a Stetson hat! And yes, you also get the Injun arrows.

The Royal Rail is even wilder (some may say even ‘stranger’) and is perhaps best summed up by the box caption: “Our ‘crowning achievement’ in far-out showrods! Majestic ‘Henry V-8’ Mill propels rolling throne, ground-gripping ‘gumballs’ provide traction, way-out extended ‘chopper’ forks guide high-and-mighty king thing down the royal rod road…” The kit includes a mass of decals to personalise your own member of royalty, and a small reproduction of the kit box, which you can cut out from the flat card.

The pictures show, top to bottom:
1 AMT 1:25 scale Royal Rail. The box has a sticker that indicates it is the special issue from the October 2009 iHobby Expo, Chicago. This version was moulded in luminous plastic, so if you don’t paint it, the rod will glow in the dark! Normal (if you can use the word for such a creation) issues will be in standard opaque plastic.
2 Both boxes for the AMT Li’l Stogie. The original 1970s issue is on top, present reissue supporting it.
3, 4 You get decal ‘patches’ for Li’l Stogie’s canvas top, and a set of arrows.
5 Opposite box sides show some of the ‘Stogie Stuff’.

Visit Round 2 here.

FEELING BLUE? THEN NOSFERATU IS THE VAMPIRE FOR YOU!

Mat Irvine reports
I was watching The Simpsons recently, and it reminded me that there was a kit I’d acquired some time ago, but had yet to build.

It was a figure in the style of the old Aurora kits, of a subject that Aurora perhaps should have done, the original vampire movie of 1922, named Nosferatu for copyright reasons. Later versions of Count Dracula by Bela Lugosi and Christopher Lee set the benchmark for what a self-respecting vampire should look like (it was good enough for Grandpa Munster, after all), but the German actor Max Shreck’s portrayal of Nosferatu was far more frightening, even though - or maybe because - the movie was black-and-white and the vampire was seen mostly only in shadow.

The Canadian model company Monarch Models, run by Scott McKillop, is one of the companies often cited as the ‘new Aurora’, along with Polar Lights and Moebius Models. Monarch’s Nosferatu has been nicely produced in the style of the original Aurora company, even down to the vertical blue box. The only real change is that the instruction sheet is in full colour, whereas Aurora’s would have been black and white.

The features of the model match Max Schreck as Count Orlok, aka Nosferatu the vampire. He is shown descending the steps to his cellar, with added features (again typical of Aurora) that include a spider, centipede, human bones and a couple of rats. There’s also a version that includes luminous parts, which is just as well, as the standard version has a 'Sold Out' sign.

Oh, and The Simpsons reference? Mr Burns of course. Apart from having an uncanny likeness to the undead, he actually took on the role in Treehouse of Horror IV, which briefly featured a scene with a passing nod to Nosferatu.

The pictures show (top to bottom):
1 Monarch kit box.
2 Box and parts.
3 Nosferatu assembled on base, blue skin and all.
4 Colorized frame from the 1922 movie. btw German director Werner Herzog made an excellent 1979 remake, which is well worth a look if you’re into the genre.

Visit Monarch Models here. You may have to reload the page, as it seems to be a bit iffy at the moment.

DVDs of the movies are available on Amazon here.