HAPPY NEW YEARS!!
Did you have a good New Years? I did! Thank goodness 2018 is over, although it was largely a good one, time for a renewed sense of optimism for the future.
So this is a bit different, it's not an update but a review of a kit I recently acquired, a 1979 Vintage Klingon Cruiser from Star Trek The Motion Picture. About 2 years ago I did a similar entry for the Vulcan Shuttlecraft https://fordosmodels.blogspot.com/2017/01/retro-review-vulcan-shuttlecraft.html
I feel this entry is appropriate as this year will be the 40th anniversary of the release of Star Trek The Motion Picture.
The callout on the front of the box.
'Quality molded in a way which will allow the younger modeler to build an attractive model without painting.' Well, when I was a young modeler, this was true, but I think both Round 2 and Bandai have really cornered the market I feel in terms of releasing kits with multiple coloured sprues.
A sign of the times with the hanging method as a display option.
And the best part of this box art is pictures of the studio model, but truncated.
And this I love, a picture of Spock and Kirk with an early version of the Enterprise Refit, also known as the Taylor/Dow Refit Enterprise which doesn't have the internal spotlights and TOS styled bridge and sensor dome on the bottom of the primary hull.
Inside the box, the first thing that stood out for me was the vintage promotional art. I have one of these from an old USS Enterprise AMT Refit from TMP, often referred to as a smoothie.
So here are the parts laid out. What's interesting to me is that it's molded in battleship grey. The kits I got in the 80s (in Canada) were a light blue, much like the TOS Klingon D7. I had heard some of these kits were released in many different colours, even including black, much like the current 1/350 K'Tinga.
And the instruction sheet which at the time used to show the parts layout, much like Revell kits.
And of course, the rub-down transfers and the holographic stickers.
THE COMPARISON...
So here is the vintage kit in comparison to current Round 2 re-release.
Here are a direct comparison of the parts. No changes here, but anything missing here just fell off the sprue.
This is the only sprue/part that did change, the lower main hull.
The new part omits this part, the burnishing tool for applying the rub-down transfers.
The other major change is the new stand system for the model vs. the original one.
The original stand is on the left and the standard large Round 2 stand on the right.
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| vintage K'Tinga |
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| new re-release K'Tinga |
You can also see a dramatic height difference too.
Here are the decal comparison with the new version on the bottom.
Instructions comparison
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| original |
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| re-release |
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| original |
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| re-release |
That will wrap up this entry, until the next time!
Happy Model Building!
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