Saturday, 24 March 2012

In a hole ? Stop Digging

The Thunderbirds Excavator is a model which I previously assumed was a design which had been added to the model range purely as a filler and had no basis in actual Thunderbirds history. While I was looking into the SPV series of articles, a cursory exam of a Thunderbirds annual revealed the machine in all its glory. It was quite a revelation to see the machine in print, but also a surprise because it was illustrated by another of my favourite artists, Ron Turner. Next to Mike Noble and Ron Embleton, he is one of the illustrators that I immediately think of when I consider TV21. Around the the same time, I won a set of Imai kits on ebay of the Mole and Excavator. I have already blogged the large kit of the vehicle which I built earlier, which revealed that a smaller version existed.  The large one had an option to motorise it, but in  the set I got recently, was a smaller, simpler kit,
Where the large kit has tracks included, the small version has simple wheels. The claws also are static, but the arms move and the front grate opens. As with the big model, I decided to customise it considerably, cutting out the front of the vehicle and adding in some interior detail to represent the grinding and crushing apparatus. The cockpit included a tiny thunderbirds pilot, which I cut out and replaced with a golden Zoid pilot. I had used this figure in the large model, but due to the difference in scale, I swapped it to the small kit and used a Mega Rig figure in the bigger kit. As the kits are quite simple and toy like, I wanted to preserve the toy look, so I kept the paint job minimal and relied on the self coloured plastic. The kit came with a similar scale Mole, molded in yellow and blue, the Excavator in silver and blue.
The smaller kit reflects Turners slick artwork even better than the larger, more colourful kit, the clean lines and simple shape shining through.

2 comments:

  1. Cool bloglet Wote. Which Thunderbirds Annual is that great Excavator artwork in?

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