Smash Hit Space Opera

Jerry Bruckheimer of Transformers fame, had a great stab at putting 'real men' in space with his 1998 film, 'Armageddon'. A disaster/thriller/sci-fi/comedy epic, it was your basic 'largerockheadingtowardsearth' kind of plot, and starred Bruce Willis and Ben Affleck as a pair of oil riggers who are employed to drive a special drilling vehicle on the rogue asteroid with a view to planting a nuclear device deep enough in the crust to blast the rock in two, thereby missing Earth. Besides having some great comedy moments, the beguiling Liv Tyler and some spectacular effects, it also had an absolute beast of a central vehicle, the Armadillo.

Two Armadillos were to be launched at the asteroid via specially modified military shuttles and a full size, driveable vehicle was made for the shoot. Mattel, using the Hot Wheels brand, made a number of cool toys featuring elements from the film.

The main toy is the Armadillo itself, a 12 wheeled, independantly sprung all terrain craft. Like a Scramble Bug on steroids with a PCP chaser, the Armadillo really looks the part and is fitted with a working (if overly massive) drill and large missile cannon. Unfortunately, the toy doesn't come with its own figure, but does fit the standard 25mm figures that came with other toys in the range. Of these, three smaller versions of the vehicle were made along with a die cast shuttle and space station. The small armadillos each came in a separate set, the white crane version came with an exploding crater and the silver one with a bomb trailer. The third green one has fold in wheels and is designed to sit snugly in the back of the other large set, the shuttle.

To offset the lack of good figures with the toys, Mattel made two large toys of the principal characters, A.J Frost (Affleck) and Harry stamper (Willis). These jointed figures have surprisingly realistic sculpts of the actors faces and chunky, rugged armoured suits. Frost comes complete with a clockwork nuclear device which cracks open to reveal a 'hot' core and Stamper appears to have ripped the missile cannon off the side of the 'Dillo and is carting it around in typically gung-ho fashion.

The military shuttle is essentially a modification of the standard NASA shuttle from the Matchbox/Mattel Mega Rig series, a modular set of vehicles which covered a wide range of themes and included the great X-33 shuttle that I used as the crew module for my Nuclear Ferry scratchbuild.