T.A.G - I'm it!

Well, colour me happy. This months Thunderbirds are Go magazine arrived on time and as its the fourth issue, it sports Tb4 on the cover. This in itself is unsurprising, but what really made me smile was the standard of the free gift toy.

Firstly, it was much bigger than previous models, dwarfing TB2 in physical size and a completely different scale to the first three toys. But what was especially impressive is the build quality - TB1 suffered from a slight lack of detail and some distortion of the soft vinyl wings, TB2 was good, but small, as was TB3, but 4 is a good, solid well detailed model.

At 10cm, it comes very close to the Vivid Supersize TB4, which rolls in at 11.5 cm, but it actually beats it out of the water by a considerable margin both in terms of quality and detail.

The 'official' Vivid release, which comes packaged with the huge TB2 does have an opening rear hatch and removable 'surfboards' under the side panniers, but the Tag Mag version includes clean molded detail of the folded grab arms underneath. It also benefits from a much richer, buttery yellow and doesn't need the fiddly decals applying!

In terms of overall proportion, its much closer to the original craft, with a squarer nose and deeper pannier tanks. Whether it accords with its on screen version is more difficult to tell, but it certainly looks good.

Thunderbird 5 awaits next month and it will be interesting to see how it compares with Tomy Takara's new line of toys, the only appearance of five so far.