News From The iHobby Show

IHobby, a huge trade show for hobby companies, is held every October in Chicago.  I attended three of the four days (two of them helping with the make-n-take along with other members of the Techmages club).  There was a bunch of neat stuff to be seen – and thanks to Robb ‘kylwell’ Merrill, I saw most of it.

The first thing we saw were a new line of 35th scale diorama accessories from GC Laser.  These are wooden crates, pallets/skids and cable spools laser cut ftom birch plywood.  They have a bunch of painstakingly researched ammo, vehicle and food crates (mostly WW2 era) as well as some generic boxes and spools.  These impressed me so much I signed up Starship Modeler as a retailer, so look for these things in the Store soon.

Lindberg/Hawk had the big surprise of the show:  two new WW2 Japanese ‘mother subs’ with their ‘offspring’.  The first is the I-20, a C-1 class boat, which will have a HA-20 midget sub to lash to the deck.   The other is the very similar I-53, a C-3 boat, which will have 4 Kaiten kamikaze torpedos on deck.   The models looked pretty impressive (though the painting/weathering was way overdone); even the anti-aircraft guns looked nicely tooled and not over- or under- scale.  The HA-20 and Kaiten looked very close in detail to the ones Fine Molds has out now – and who knows, maybe that’s what they used to have something to display.  Anyway, I’m excited – now I’ll have something to go with my Revell Gato and U-Boat.  Release is scheduled for the third quarter of 2008.

Also on display was the box for Lindberg’s upcoming 1/245 Los Angeles ZR-3 airship.  Obviously it’s a variation on their nicely done Graf Zepplin (released this year).  It looks like the kit will include an itty-bitty Sparrohawk parasite fighter plane.  And coming in the last quarter of this year is a reissue of their very cool 1/48 scale Snark guided missile with ground crew and launch rail.

Revell (USA)’s Battlestar Galactica re-pops are slated for November/December of this year.  Starting in January (and continuing through May) of 2008, they will also be re-issuing the pre-painted, snap-tite Star Wars kits  in Revell Germany’s  first two series.  Retail prices are not terribly lower than what the imports were costing:  the Jedi Starfighters (for instance) are slated for $16.95 (vice $25 for imports).  There was no word on whether the third series kits (AT-AT, Y-Wing, Slave 1, TIE) would be imported as well. I presume that Revell will make that decision based on sales of these other kits.   The models will be sold through big-box retailers such as Wal-mart and Toys-R-Us because they are pre-painted snaps, and so akin to the die-casts those chains already carry.

 Moebius Models had a video of their upcoming Seaview kit running (it’s still on track for release later this year; the Voyager from Fantastic Voyage should be out soon), with the Diving Bell , Flying Sub, and Mini Sub that will come with the kit on display.  Mockups of their forthcoming (200  Space Pod and Chariot (which will include a Robot figure) from the original Lost in Space were also on view.  These were pretty big – 1/24scale? Also planned for next year are a Conan the Barbarian figure, based on the cover of the  first issue of Marvel’s comic;  The Invisible Man, from a design by noted illustrator Chris White, and; the Aurora Monster Scenes Giant Insect  kit.

 Monarch Models showed a resin pattern for their forthcoming (200 Ghost of Castle Mare kit, as well as a large poster depicting their upcoming Moon Suit kit (which looks for all the world like one of the old Major Matt Mason toys). They plan to produce a new kit of The Fly as well.

Delta of Sweden was on hand with some very interesting play sand that has a lot of potential for diorama use.  The stuff is an inert, non-toxic polymer that looks like very fine-grained beach sand.  But press it together and you can sculpt it; heat that (by baking at low temp, using a heat gun or torch) and it becomes hard and retains its shape.  Coat that with a sealer and it can be painted with any paint.  If you use their proprietary sealer (which is some sort of latex-based material) you can peel it off later.  Heat/bake again, then rap with a hammer, and it crumbles back into ‘sand’.  Press the sand together and it will hold water (or, I presume, liquid resin).  I’m definitely going to have to get some to experiment with.

Mercury Adhesives  was showing off their line of CA glues, accelerator and debonder specifically designed for hobby use.  They have a rubber-toughened flexible CA that seems to be equivalent of the wave MX stuff that we all know and love.  I’ll be getting some of this to try out as well.

Finally, on the way out, we ran across BC Imports from San Francisco.  They carry  a HUGE line of Japanese ‘gashapon’/ trading kits.  Their Star Trek stuff looked very good, for what it is (cube/desk decoration, essentially), as did the various mecha, monsters and planes.  Of particular note were some 54mm-ish (1/32) Samurai figures, which had fantastic detail  and great, dynamic poses, as well as several cutaway naval ships.  The detail all around on those was spectacular.

So ….. all-in-all a good show.  And Sparky even built a model (thus endangered his standing in the club by actually finishing something!)

The Next (Little) Big Thing

Thorsten is making steady progress on the next Blue Moon offering.  This time the subject is in 1/48 scale, an Imperial Escort Fighter …… “inspired” …. by the  V-Wing seen briefly at the end of RotS.  The fuselage is pretty much done.  As always, he’s done a phenominal job with the detail and the scribing.

With the casting queue what it is, I have no idea when this will actually be available – probably early next year.  Hopefully well before Wonderfest….

Revell AT-AT

I have one (actually, I have many - but I took one home and whipped out the dykes and the sanding sticks).  A quickie review:  It does not suck. It is, in fact, the definitive mass-market injection kit of the subject.

Which is not at all a difficult feat.

The scale, I’m told, is around 1/52.  Seems small for that - the Wong 1/48  (marketed by SMY and Blue Moon) is half again as large.  My guess would be closer to 1/72 - but since Revell didn’t care to do any of these Easy Kits at an established scale, it’s anyone’s guess what it really is.  That aside - if you like small and sucky, the MPC/AMT/ERTL kit is for you. If you like tiny and sucky like a wet-vac, the ERTL Structor is for you.

Detail is simplified over the studio models … in fact, it looks like Revell used a CAD file “interpreted” from the studio models, or maybe even a CG rendering from Lucas.   I’ve been looking up various pictoral reference and the most definite discrepancy I can find is the “head”.  Revell has a pronounced bar running back from the “ear” position.  I don’t see that on the ESB models, but I do see that in the latest Soviet Revisonism version of the original movies.  As with every previous plastic version of the machine, the ass-end of the model is just a “stamped” piece protecting the rear drive unit.  From the pictures of the studio model it looks as if the inside face of the end cap should have some sort of detail.   It’s also missing some scribed detail, especially on the “feet”  Easy enough to add.  There’s some sink marks on the foot “yokes”.  Other than that, no mis-matched molds, no flash on parts, no overly large sprue attchments - in short, the molding is pretty good.

  As a snap fit, it’s very well done - you really need to sand off all the attachment stubs after snipping the parts from the sprues - any extra WILL interfere with the fit. Once the parts are together, they don’t wanna come apart.   Seam lines fall in areas - for the most part - where they will not be obvious. Of course, gluing and putty will make for a better model - but honestly, even without glue there’s not a lot of room for putty. And hey - no rubber-bands. 

The paint job is …. OK.  Serious modelers will immediatly plan on repainting…. but as is, the  finish is OK from 3 foot away.

Not a perfect kit by any stretch - buy Fine Molds Y-Wing if perfect is what you’re striving for - but pretty darn good, considering …(considering it was built to be played with, for a foreign market, and not as an exacting testimonial to the scale modeler’s art),