ARTIST HEROES WHO PAINTED MODEL KIT BOXES

THE VISUALS ON MODEL KIT BOXES are what the marketing men call ‘primary sales tools.’ Simply put, if you can spot an attractive box in a store or on screen, the odds are that you’ll want to home in for a closer look. 

INCOMING: NEW-TOOL 1:72 SCALE AIRFIX BOEING B-17G NOW RELEASED

WE'RE PLEASED TO SAY that the new Airfix Boeing B-17G Flying Fortress is now available, and very good it looks, too.

ROY CROSS, KING OF THE KIT BOXES - ORIGINAL AIRFIX BOX ART FOR SALE AT AUCTION

The auction house Vectis has a sale that will include the last major tranche of original Roy Cross Airfix artwork, selected by Roy himself from his personal collection. The Vectis sale is on Thursday July 24, 2014.

AIRFIX MODEL WORLD MAGAZINE - THE LAUNCH ISSUE

David Jefferis reports
Here we have 100 colour pages of the new and revived Airfix Magazine - well, it's now retitled Airfix Model World for 2010 - and a pretty good effort it is too. I’ve been involved with several magazine launches over the years, and know a little of the sweat and toil that goes into the first one. It’s always a steep learning curve and I doubt this launch AFW is an exception. So well done to the team involved.

What’s it like?
First off is the cover - and centre-spread - both of which feature the work of the Airfix ‘wunderkind’ box-artist, Adam Tooby. He’s already up there in the pantheon of the best - Roy Cross, at last you have a decent successor. Tooby manages to combine the precision of computer generated imagery with an artist’s touch for the finished work. I reckon we’ll see a few of his box-tops appearing as art prints before too long.

See inside
Editorial is wide-ranging, with a strong feature on the 1:48 Sea Vixen kit from Airfix, which has some very nice detail photographs, including closeups of the neatly-modelled observer’s cockpit and radarscope. Elsewhere we have articles on the 1:32 Aston Martin DBR9 racer, and a Hasegawa 1:48 F-4J Phantom II. There are also the expected extras, including news, skills, books, kits and decals. All in all, the mag makes a good read, with a flavour that’s not overly ‘Airfix’. In fact, I might want a bit more of this - there is lots of background detail to the company that I would be fascinated to learn about.
   
Space with Mat Irvine
I couldn’t finish without a mention of SMN’s own Mat Irvine, with his ‘Space Build’ feature. This one takes you through the Airfix 1:144 scale Saturn V, pulling no punches with its faults and features. Interesting article - nice one, Mat!

Visit Airfix here.

Visit Mat Irvine here.

Airfix Model World here.

BATTLE OF MIDWAY 2: AICHI VAL JAPANESE DIVE BOMBER

The Aichi D3A, codenamed Val by the Allies, was Japan’s most important dive bomber in the early part of World War 2. Like the German Ju-87 Stuka, the slow-flying Val had a fixed undercarriage, with the wheels enclosed in aerodynamic spats. After early development, the Val became a highly manoeuvrable machine that was capable of fighter-like agility.

Vals were deadly weapons in 1942 - apart from bombing the aircraft carrier USS Yorktown at Midway, they had also sunk the British carrier HMS Hermes in the Indian Ocean earlier that year.

There are plenty of Val models around, but one of the most interesting is the free-flight laser-cut balsa kit from US manufacturer Dumas (top picture). It’s a big model, with a 30 inch (762 mm) wingspan (making it just under 1:20 scale), with a rubber-band powered prop for flights of several hundred metres in calm air. Take time out to look around the Dumas site - there are some fascinating kits on offer.

Online supplier The Flying Mule offers the hefty 1:48 Marushin diecast kit (middle picture). These kits are pre-painted, with metal and plastic parts. Assembly is simple, and having separate parts makes adding extra detail easy to add in the early stages.

Among the classic 1:72 offerings, the old Airfix kit was not bad at all, though if you want one it’ll mean an online search. There’s a kit presently on offer on eBay here. Note the excellent Roy Cross artwork, typical of Airfix kits of the time. If, like me, you’re a Cross fan, this Val could be worth buying just for the box.

Visit Dumas here, and Flying Mule here.

FAB FIVE: AIRFIX AIRCRAFT WE LOVE

We’ve all got our favourite kits, and this Airfix Fab Five is the second in a series that started with diecasts and will go - well, who knows exactly - but it will span the whole world of scale miniatures. So, here we go - Mr J’s five faves from the vaults:

1 1:144 Handley-Page HP-42
Maybe this is an unusual choice, but 1930s biplane airliner kits are not common, and the HP-42 was a significant aircraft in the days of the British Empire. It’s a nice little kit that assembled well, with pleasant cover art by ace artist, the late Roy Cross.
2 1:72 Avro Lancaster
This was a birthday present as a boy, and I recall expecting it to be in a big plastic bag - and was a bit miffed for a few moments when a ‘trad’ cardboard box was revealed! No matter, it built up into a young man’s dream of air power.
3 1:48 TSR-2
Its accuracy and build-quality are no great shakes - it’s here because it just looks so great and because of the tragedy factor. The real thing could and should have been a world-beater that would have still been flying today, but for the crass ineptitude of British politicians.
4 1:24 P-51D Mustang
This was a knockout kit at the time, and occupied a substantial part of the tiny little London flat I occupied when it was released. Sad to say, the first one did not survive an extremely noisy Saturday night party - the replacement never got finished!
5 1:24 de Havilland Mosquito
OK, so it’s not released yet, but the sales material that Airfix has released so far makes it an absolute must-have. I predict a massive hit for this one - there’s room on the bench for it, even now.

OK, that’s my Airfix Fab Five - what are your own choices?

Another HP-42 picture can be viewed at the German Modellversium site here.

BOX ART: IS ACADEMY THE BEST?

Here at SMN we’re huge fans of beautiful boxes – kit boxes, that is. Way back in the 1960s and ’70s, Airfix led the way with the remarkable work of the renowned British artist, Roy Cross. Then Japanese companies like Tamiya came on the scene with their take on what a box should look like. Hasegawa’s Shigeo Koike also has compilation art books that are hot favourites with connoisseurs of the genre.

So which kit company leads the pack today? As ever, art style is a matter of personal taste, but we reckon that Academy’s boxes are well up to the pace, with gorgeous paintings that glow with colour and, more importantly, show detail and markings particularly clearly. They are not so much hard-sell images, more frameable paintings, with dynamic views and angles that work especially well with subjects like combat aircraft in action.

And talking of Academy, its new 1:48 F-15 Eagle in Republic of Korea (ROK) markings, looks like a winner. The pictures here show stunning levels of detail for your delectation. It’s really apparent how much work has gone into this F-15, when you study the weapons fit, and the sparkling precision of the tailpipes. A real gem for F-15 fans, it will be available shortly from various retailers and online sellers, including Model Hobbies.